Allal al-Fassi

Zaʿīm[1]
Shaykh[2]
Allal al-Fassi
علال الفاسي
Allal al-Fassi in 1949
Minister of Islamic Affairs
In office
1961–1963
Personal details
Born10 January 1910
Fes, Morocco
DiedMay 13, 1974(1974-05-13) (aged 64)
Bucharest, Romania
Political partyIstiqlal
ParentAbd al-Wahid
Religious life
ReligionIslam
MovementNeo-Salafiyya
Alma materal-Qarawiyyin University
Moroccan literature
Moroccan writers
  • Novelists
  • Playwrights
  • Poets
  • Essayists
  • Historians
  • Travel writers
  • Sufi writers
Forms
  • Novel
  • Poetry
Criticism and awards
See also

Muhammad Allal al-Fassi (Arabic: محمد علال الفاسي, romanized: Muḥammad ʿAllāl al-Fāsī; January 10, 1910 – May 13, 1974) was a Moroccan revolutionary,[3] politician, writer, poet, Pan-Arabist[4] and Islamic scholar[5] who was a leading member of the Istiqlal Party and who became one of the leaders of the Moroccan nationalist movement early on in his life. He was a "neo-Salafist" who advocated for the synthesis of nationalism and Salafism. He developed the idea of Greater Morocco which later came to influence the official policy of Morocco.

Early life and exile

Muhammad Allal al-Fassi was born in Fes on 10 January 1910[3] to a prominent Andalusian family claiming descent from Uqba ibn Nafi[6] and a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad which produced hundreds of Islamic scholars[3] known as the Fassi Fihri family.[7] His father, Abd al-Wahid, was a judge,[8] grand mufti,[9] doctor of divinity at and curator of the library of Qarawiyyin.[3] Abd al-Wahid was also a merchant who founded the Nasiriyyah Free School in Fes.[10] Allal al-Fassi's mother also came from another prominent family holding considerable influence in Northern Morocco.[3]

At the age of 5, he entered a Quranic school.[11] He memorized the Quran by the age of 7.[12] Before attending Qarawiyyin at the age of 14, Allal al-Fassi was a student in the Nasiriyyah Free School his father founded.[10] Beginning in 1924,[13] he studied at the University of al-Qarawiyyin[14][15] where he received a purely Arab education and came under the influence of the Salafiya movement.[6] His uncle Abdallah Al-Fassi (1871-1930), another judge, was in charge of his education. For many years, his professor and mentor was Abdeslam Serghini. He started his anti-French political activities very early on in 1926, immediately after joining the University of Al-Qarawiyyin, which would lead to his expulsion from the university in 1927, and banishment from the city of Fes by the French colonial administration who decided to confine him in Taza. He finished his studies at the Zawiya Nassiriya, a Zawiya historically known for its intellectual potency and hostility to European invasions of Morocco.

In 1931, he was allowed back to Fes, and he again picked up his political agitations in the city, and started campaigning and giving nationalistic speeches which gathered success and emotions amongst the masses who admired his eloquence. This prompted the French to exile him again in 1933, this time to Geneva where he met the Lebanese political leader Shakib Arslan, and would assist him in his historical works on the Maghreb region. Arslan, already in contact with young Moroccan nationalists in Switzerland such as the future PM Ahmed Balafrej, mentored him in political organization, and introduced him to many political contacts, and also publicized his name in his various journalistic articles and correspondences. Allal came back to Morocco in 1934, and founded the kutlat al-'amal al-watani كتلة العمل الوطني, Comité d'Action Marocaine (CAM) and the first Moroccan-led workers' union in 1936, and in December of that year officially petitioned the French Colonial Residence in Rabat demanding a number of reforms. This led the French authorities to decide to disband and persecute the members of his political organization, and in 1937, exiled him to the small town of Port-Gentil in Gabon where he would remain for the next nine years until 1946, receiving very little information about the affairs of the outside world during that period.[16]

While he was in exile, the CAM was renamed in 1944 as the Istiqlal Party, which became the nationalist party and the driving force after the Moroccan Army of Liberation (Jaysh al-Tahrir).

Istiqlal party and post-independence

al-Fassi with other Moroccan nationalists, Makki Nasiri, Abdelkhalek Torres and Ahmed Bensouda (from left to right) c. 1951

He broke with the party in the mid-1950s, siding with armed revolutionaries and urban guerrillas who waged a violent campaign against French rule, whereas most of the nationalist mainstream preferred a diplomatic solution. In 1956, as Morocco gained independence, he reentered the party, and famously presented his case for reclaiming territories that have once been Moroccan in the newspaper al-Alam. In 1959, after the left-wing UNFP split off from Istiqlal, he became head of the party.[17]

From 1961 to 1963, he served briefly as Morocco's Minister of Islamic Affairs.[18] He was elected to the Parliament of Morocco in 1963, and served there as an Istiqlal deputy. He then went on to become a main leader within the opposition during the 1960s and the start of the 1970s, campaigning against King Hassan II's constitutional reforms that ended parliamentary government. He died of a heart attack on 13 May 1974,[19] on a visit to Romania where he was scheduled to meet with Nicolae Ceaușescu.[3]

Literature

Allal al-Fassi in his office, c. 1951

In 1925, Al-Fassi published his first book of poems. In 1954 his The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa was published, a translation of a book he wrote in Arabic in 1948.

Views

Arabism

A meeting of nationalist revolutionaries from the Muslim World with Allal al-Fassi on the right

Allal al-Fassi wanted an independent Morocco that was closely linked to Arab culture and the Middle East.[20] He supported the Arab League.[21]

Salafism

Allal al-Fassi was one of the most prominent Salafists in Morocco[22] and he became influenced by Salafism during his time at al-Qarawiyyin.[6] He advocated for what he called neo-Salafiyya (al-salafiyya al-jadida)[23][24] and belonged to a liberal trend of Salafism.[13] According to scholars Frederic Wehrey and Anouar Boukhars, al-Fassi saw Salafism as "a constructive force that fostered progress and kindled nationalistic revolutionary consciousness".[22] According to al-Fassi, Salafism "was synonymous with nationalism".[13]

Greater Morocco

Main article: Greater Morocco
Greater Morocco as claimed by the Istiqlal Party, 1956[25] Allal al-Fassi put forward this map of the "Moroccan Sharifian Kingdom in her natural and historical borders".[26]

Allal al-Fassi was the thinker behind Greater Morocco[27] which he believed was the territories that were historically a part of Morocco[28] before colonialism truncated Morocco's borders. In July 1956, he put forward a map in the Istiqlal newspaper, Al-Alam, which included all of Mauritania, parts of Western Algeria and a section of Northern Mali and all of the Spanish Sahara.[26][27] He did not think the independence of Morocco would be complete without these territories:[25]

... so long as Tangier is not liberated from its international status, so long as the Spanish deserts of the south, the Sahara from Tindouf and Atar and the Algerian-Moroccan borderlands are not liberated from their trusteeship, our independence will remain incomplete and our first duty will be to carry on action to liberate the country and to unify it.

Personal life

Both of Allal al-Fassi's daughters were married to leading figures of Moroccan politics; ex-Prime Minister and longtime Istiqlal party Secretary General Abbas El Fassi, and Mohamed El Ouafa ex-Minister and vocal dissident figure within the party.

See also

References

  1. ^ Schriber 2024, pp. 351–352
  2. ^ Wyrtzen, Jonathan (2016-01-05). Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity. Cornell University Press. p. 151. ISBN 978-1-5017-0425-3.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Reference Library of Arab America: International Arab figures. Vol. 2. Gale Group. 1999. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-0-7876-4174-0.
  4. ^ Haller, Tobias; Käser, Fabian; Ngutu, Mariah (2021-01-06). Does Commons Grabbing Lead to Resilience Grabbing? The Anti-Politics Machine of Neo-Liberal Development and Local Responses. p. 194. ISBN 978-3-03943-839-6.
  5. ^ Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale Research Inc, Edition: 2, Published by Gale Research, 1998, ISBN 978-0-7876-2541-2, p. 167
  6. ^ a b c Bidwell, Robin (2012-10-12). Dictionary Of Modern Arab History. Routledge. pp. 137–138. ISBN 978-1-136-16291-6.
  7. ^ Fleet, Kate; Krämer, Gudrun; Matringe, Denis; Nawas, John; Rowson, Everett (eds.). "al-Fāsī family". Encyclopaedia of Islam (3rd ed.). Brill Online. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_27016. ISSN 1873-9830.
  8. ^ Schriber 2024, p. 354
  9. ^ Howe, Marvine (2005-06-30). Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges. Oxford University Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-19-534698-5.
  10. ^ a b Bano, Masooda (2015-03-20). Shaping Global Islamic Discourses. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-0348-1.
  11. ^ Johnston 2007, p. 84
  12. ^ Mohammed, Bek; Zine, Abdallah; Abdesslame, Akkache (2024-12-21). "Moroccan leader Allal El Fassi and the Algerian revolution". Journal for ReAttach Therapy and Developmental Diversities. 7 (6): 492. doi:10.53555/jrtdd.v7i6.3371. ISSN 2589-7799.
  13. ^ a b c Bruce, Benjamin (2018-08-25). Governing Islam Abroad: Turkish and Moroccan Muslims in Western Europe. Springer. p. 52. ISBN 978-3-319-78664-3.
  14. ^ Bulutgil, H. Zeynep (2022). The Origins of Secular Institutions: Ideas, Timing, and Organization. Oxford University Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-19-759844-3.
  15. ^ Dwyer, Kevin (2016-03-22). Arab Voices: The human rights debate in the Middle East. Routledge. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-317-24591-9.
  16. ^ "Allal al-Fassi - Philosophers of the Arabs". www.arabphilosophers.com. Retrieved 2024-11-19.
  17. ^ "Reflecting on the legacy of 'Allal al-Fassi". Crescent International. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
  18. ^ Schriber 2024, p. 355
  19. ^ "Allal el Fassoi, 82, Dead; Top Moroccan Nationalist". The New York Times. 13 May 1974.
  20. ^ Howe, Marvine (2005-06-30). Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 172. ISBN 978-0-19-516963-8.
  21. ^ Pennell, C. R. (2000). Morocco Since 1830: A History. Hurst. p. 276. ISBN 978-1-85065-273-1.
  22. ^ a b Wehrey, Frederic M.; Boukhars, Anouar (2019). Salafism in the Maghreb: Politics, Piety, and Militancy. Oxford University Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-19-094240-3.
  23. ^ Spadola, Emilio (2018-07-03). "The Call of Communication: Mass Media and Reform in Interwar Morocco". In Eickelman, Dale F. (ed.). Middle Eastern and North African Societies in the Interwar Period. Brill. p. 103. ISBN 978-90-04-36949-8.
  24. ^ Spadola, Emilio (2013-12-25). The Calls of Islam: Sufis, Islamists, and Mass Mediation in Urban Morocco. Indiana University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-253-01145-9.
  25. ^ a b Baers, Michael (2022-10-10). A History of the Western Sahara Conflict: The Paper Desert. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 146–147. ISBN 978-1-5275-8573-7.
  26. ^ a b Lecocq, Baz (2010-11-15). Disputed Desert: Decolonization, Competing Nationalisms and Tuareg Rebellions in Mali. Brill. p. 62. ISBN 978-90-04-19028-3.
  27. ^ a b Zunes, Stephen; Mundy, Jacob (2010-08-04). Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution. Syracuse University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-8156-5258-8.
  28. ^ Abourabi, Yousra (2024-05-13). Morocco’s Africa Policy: Role Identity and Power Projection. Brill. p. 59. ISBN 978-90-04-54662-2.

Sources

Further reading

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