Mr. Abdellah Boussouf, General Secretary of the Council of the Moroccan Community living Abroad (CCME) presented his works, Saturday, February 17, 2018 CCME’s stand in the Casablanca Book Fair.
“Islam and the universal common”, published in Arabic, French and Spanish, “Islam, the West and the media: The fabric of fear” and “A citizen monarchy in the land of Islam”, narrations on Islam and its relationship with the West and the values of living together and peace.
The issues dealt with try to answers to the question and concern that “we all carry, that of how to make our heritage, our culture and our values, tools for development and integration, wherever we live”.
In “Islam and the universal common”, Mr. Boussouf presents Islam as a religion carrying universal human values that transcend any cultural or ethnic belonging, “without any form of what it sometimes can be attributed to extreme currents. “.
A 14th century synthesis of Islam, where the principle of tolerance and respect for others have been invariably present, shows that Islam has always been a project of life and not a project of death. Moreover, “the golden age of the Jewish religion, for example, took place in Andalusia, when Muslim sultans guaranteed all persuasions to practice their religion ».
A historical, social and political argument that proves to the agitators of hatred, the extreme right-wing in the West or radical Islamists, legitimize their acts in tne name of Allah, wheras the Moslem religion has absolutely no relation with the Islam, as stated by His Majesty King Mohammed VI in his speech against jihadism when he said that “terrorists who act in the name of Islam are lost people doomed to hell forever” and that they “only hawk falsehood in the name of God and the prophet”.
In the second book presented in this meeting, “Islam, the West and the media: The fabric of fear”, Mr. Boussouf tries to explain why extremis mis growing and how the medias play a critical role
“In this essay, it is shown that extremism is not linked to Morocco or the Maghreb but takes it’s roots in the West because Islam practiced by the first generation of Moroccan immigrants which was : the were the authentic Moroccan values of living – together and tolerance, “said Boussouf. He added that” the generations born in the West have experienced episodes of instrumentalization of Islam during the war in Afghanistan to face the Soviet Union (USSR).
The United States then used the expression “soldiers of freedom” to designate Muslim soldiers at war against the USSR and transformed them as heroes for Western youth.
Mr Boussouf recalled that “several European countries have authorized Saudi Arabia with the mission of controlling Islam in Europe, the representation of Muslims and the teaching of the Muslim religion in exchange for petrol, which explains why the North Africans are not the cause of extremism but the West itself which « produced » terrorists “.
A complex problem that, according to Mr. Boussouf, can be solved if “Muslims and Westerners contribute to transparency and intellectualy conscientiousness” around the question of radicalization.
As a contribution to the debate on Islam in the West, Mr. Boussouf exposes a model of religiosity that has proved its effectiveness in a contemporain state which is Morocco, through his book “A Citizen Monarchy in the Land of Islam”.
In this book, “I show that Moroccans are not subjects but citizens in a country that has never known a « citizen monarchy » in 13 centuries of history.” The bayaa which is the core of the monarchial power in Morocco, “has the double aspect of contract and agreement which governs the relation between the governor and the governed”.
The contract of bayaâ admits the notion of revocation, as in the social contract of Rousseau and that of the decision-making by a collegial committee constituted by the ulema, the scientists, the craftsmen, etc., which corresponds to the concept of the great voters in the United States.
These are some spects to the concept of universality that “is not unique to the West but also comes from the South,” said Boussouf, saying that “today we must not only read the history of peoples from Western history because there is not only one historical model. In this context, he gave the example of the secularism that was the consequence of the despotism of religion in the West, “what we have never known in Morocco, a country where the state has lasted 13 centuries without interruption unlike many Western countries and has known the nation-state before France.” In his book, Mr. Boussouf demonstrated how “the commandery of believers is not only about Muslims, but also Jews and Christians” because it guarantees freedom of belief: “for us in Morocco, synagogues and churches are as holy as mosques “. A model of religiosity based on three fundamentals : the Asha’arite dogma, the Maliki rite and Sunni Sufism.
The Asha’arite dogma, is flexible and judges only the apparent behavior of individuals avoiding excommunication (takfirism) . The Maliki rite, which respects the cultural and social contexts of societies preaching the values of living together and peace between the different religious components of society to avoid shocks and clashes between populations and Sunni Sufism, an intermediary zone between beliefs or making the monotheistic religions know each other. Andalusian art, marabouts or neighborhoods called “Mellah” that exist in almost all Moroccan cities “are the common heritage of all religious components in Morocco and manifestations of this culture of diversity and pluralism or the Jewish and Muslim tributaries are among the fundamental of the unified Moroccan identity “.
“A citizen monarchy in the land of Islam” presents the historical depth of the Moroccan model, the aspects of contribution of the model to change and its utility :”I concluded that the Moroccan model of religiosity is useful and transposable in it’s spirit and it’s philosophy because it has proven it’s efficiency in a plural society and protected Morocco from the terrorist wave that has affected almost every country in the world, “said Mr Boussouf. A model that can be transposed : knowledge of religion with a critical spirit, represented by Ibn Khaldoun, the rationality and study of the context represented by Ibn Rochd, and love, or the religion of love advocated by Ibn Al Arabi.
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