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Secret Politics of the Sufi: the Sultan And THE SECRET POLITICS OF THE SUFI: THE SULTAN AND THE SAINT IN MODERN MOROCCO By Abdelilah Bouasria Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Public Affairs of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Political Science Chair: Mark Sedgwick Dean of the School of Public Affairs Date 2010 American University Washington D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 95^ UMI Number: 3415750 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT Dissertation Publishing UMI 3415750 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 © COPYRIGHT by Abdelilah Bouasria 2010 All RIGHTS RESERVED DEDICATION To my parents whose unconditional love and financing made me believe that I could do To my wife Paula whose greatness, sweetness and love are so huge that no word could fit, To my sister Leila whose chit chats and debates came to my blurring confusions as a split, To Sidi Hamza, my Sufi master, who taught me that dreams are a school of olives without a pit, To Michel Foucault, the archeologist, who befriended me in times of despair witch such abnormal wit. THE SECRET POLITICS OF THE SUFI: THE SULTAN AND THE SAINT IN MODERN MOROCCO By Abdelilah Bouasria This dissertation studies the relationship between Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, and political activism in Morocco. Its goal is to see if the Sufi saint, in his relation with the sultan, is apolitical, acquiescent, rebellious, or expert in retracing the boundaries of political dissent. This dissertation compared two Sufi Islamic movements in Morocco: Al Adl Wal Ihsane (AWI) known for its disobedient political behavior towards the monarchy and its resentment of open political participation in general and the Boutchichi order, famous for its co-opted submissive attitude towards the Moroccan monarchy. The Boutchichi order appears to be politically acquiescent when one looks at its deference towards the monarchy, a site known as public transcripts (appointments of its members to public positions, public marches, writings of the members, and public positions towards politics), and nonpolitical when one trusts its discourse to its disciples to avoid politics, assumed to be a dirty game. One needs to analyze the kryptopolitics of the Boutchichi order, its meta-hidden transcripts (rumors, dream narratives, silence, and songs), and mistrust its claim to political emptiness in order to conclude that the Sufi rituals are disguised daggers of silent insurgency. ii Ill Since the very politically prohibitive Boutchichi discourse needs to describe in detailed manner how politics corrupts the soul, it displays a political knowledge so big that it redefines it in its own occult and esoteric terms. Kryptopolitics goes beyond the informal and hidden levels, since it argues that the height of political activism is achieved through eloquent silence and lucid dreams. If the quantitative survey of 634 Sufi members randomly sampled reveals that AWI is the competitor of the Boutchichi order in the Sufi market, a six-year fieldwork participant observation approach unveils the great invisible Boutchichi insurgency potential. Abdessalam Yassine, AWI's leader, is unveiled as the avatar of Sidi Hamza, the head of the Boutchichi order, in the sphere of politics. The state counteracts kryptopolitics not in its invisible realm but precisely by rendering its secret too visible. PREFACE The system of transcription and transliteration used in this dissertation has been chosen for its simplicity and accuracy to represent spoken Moroccan Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic in readable form for an English speaking audience. The symbols used for vowels and consonants are an adaptation of the IJMES transliteration system with some variants. It goes as follows: Transliterated English Arabic Th J Dh 5 glottal stop b kh C D T G K H c R J Z IV t CJ d J z J t t gh t f i_i q J k S 1 J m ? n u h 0 w J y c5 a 1 The long vowels were expressed by the letters a, i, and o for fatHa, kasra, and Damma. When it is a long vowel, the letters are doubled (aa, ii, oo). When there is a stress on a letter (chadda), I repeat that letter twice like hadd. Rather than use the transliteration system for proper names, place names, and frequently translated Arabic words, I have used their conventional spelling either in English or in French sources. Sometimes a word is spelled in two ways because it was spelled that way in the original Arabic name like Boutchichi and Boudchichi. However, I used Boutchichi in the entire thesis except when it was a quote that I could not change. For the "ta" marbuta of v femininity at the end of the word, I followed conventional of the words containing it like tariqa instead of tariqah, unless it is a quote. The definite article "al" was used for ease of visual recognition like al-kattani unless the name appears otherwise (Kettani) in quoted works. The challenge here was that many words and names were spelled in one way in French sources, in another way in Spanish sources, and in a completely different way in English sources. I spelled these names according to the context in which they occurred in my research like mawlay and moulay for "Sir." Being a Moroccan student in an American university, I had to please the French, the Spanish, and the English people. Whenever I used a word that was crossed, it meant the presence and absence of that word simultaneously like with the word "politics" which means politics and non politics at the same time. Pseudonyms are used for some individuals mentioned in connection to my fieldwork to protect their privacy or fulfill their wishes. For other informants, only their first names were kept, and I have used in few instances real names for public figures or informants that asked to be named. This book is neither an attempt to dump Sufis in an ocean of exoticism nor is it an appeal for a suspension of rational judgment. It is a condemnation of the separation of "religion" and "politics" and a demonstration that invisible Sufi practices are effective political instruments and not mere relics of the past. VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study was conceived from an anthropological interest in contemporary Moroccan society for Sufism. Three persons have been invaluable to me in course of writing this dissertation. For many years, my supervisor, Diane Singerman has guided my work with her advice and her supervision. I was then a Masters student when she fought for me so that I can get into the PhD program. Her mentoring is a debt that can never be paid back. Her push led me to rewrite my thesis in a creative way and come up with new concepts. Professor Abdulaziz Said had taught me how to remain positive in the face of adversity. His mentoring fed the Sufi flame inside me and showed me that an academic does not have to be at odds with Sufism. Mark Sedgwick has done an admiringly profound close reading of my thesis and had helped me- since our encounter in Montreal- craft the body of this thesis. I am indebted to all three of them. From among the many other persons who have been of help, I wish to express my gratitude to Vincent Cornell, Mohamed Tozy, Mohamed Darif, Ahmed Taoufiq, Fatima Ghoulaichi, Nadia Yassine, Abdullah Murshid, Kenneth Honerkamp, Alan Godlas, Taha Abdurrahman, Jamal Tadlaoui, and Bruce Maddy-Weitzman. I would like to thank many professors who have impacted me at American University, McGill and Sussex and opened my eyes to the wonderful world of investigative scholarship. Dean William vii VIII Leogrande taught me about social movements and opened my appetite for research with his class on Cuba. Joe Soss enlightened me about the importance of qualitative research. Nathan Dietz convinced me that econometric models are not a waste of time. Ruth Lane and Saul Newman taught me, in their own ways, that the 'first time' is not always the most romantic expression. Randolph Persaud allowed me to see how postmodernism and security studies could find a symbiosis. Eileen Findlay taught me how to delve into oral stories and historical narratives, and her course was one of the most memorable ones that I took at American University. Joseph Greenberg taught me the value of Game theory at McGill University and was the prototype of the charming extra-smart professor that one can have. Thomas Naylor taught me Underground economics and heightened my sensitivity for the invisible and the hidden while still an undergraduate student at McGill. John MacLean, my cherished supervisor at Sussex University converted me from a staunch realist freshly coming out of economics to a postmodern being who hailed from poststructuralist hubs. His sentence "what people do does not explain what people do; what people do needs to be explained" took me a year to understand it. To all those professors, and others who chose to remain anonymous, I say: "Thank you for enlightening my journey to truth." I would have liked to thank an institution or a university for a grant or a scholarship but I guess that I have to proudly announce my virginity in this field.
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