Chapter Twenty-Three

The Moroccan Model

One nation’s twelve-step program to combat the Radicals

It is not just talk, though. It’s not just theory.

King Mohammed VI and his team have a plan. Indeed, they have developed what amounts to a twelve-step program to battle the Radicals and spread Morocco’s message of reform throughout the region and around the world. The steps are:

1. Know the enemy

2. Stop the enemy

3. Embrace the East

4. Embrace the West

5. Teach the theology of the Reformers

6. Expand democracy

7. Empower women

8. Combat poverty

9. Let the voiceless speak

10. Build and maintain strong relations with the Jewish community

11. Reach out to evangelical Christians in the West

12. Counter the “Hollywood stigma”

Allow me to explain.

Step 1: Know the Enemy

First and foremost, the king and his team believe that good intelligence is critical to identifying terrorist threats before they materialize. They are absolutely right.

This involves building effective networks of human agents and electronic surveillance to monitor extremist groups and individuals. And it requires close cooperation with other intelligence agencies in the region and around the world to monitor subversives that may be planning to enter or traverse Moroccan territory.

But it also involves understanding the mind-set of the enemy. And given that the main enemy today involves followers of an extreme interpretation of Islam, religious scholars like Ahmed Abaddi have emerged as key players in helping the king and his court understand more deeply and completely what they are up against.

“When you study the extremists’ literature and you visit their Web sites and watch their DVDs and what they produce, you see that there are six repetitive items that come back all the time,” Abaddi explained.

The first issue, he said, is that of colonialism, in which the West is demonized because, as the Radicals say, “They came in and colonized our countries and killed our people!” While it is true that Morocco was a protectorate of France for nearly a century, little violence ensued. But in Algeria, Abaddi noted, some 1.5 million Muslims were killed by French colonialists, to say nothing of numerous other cases of violence committed throughout North Africa and the Middle East by the British, the Italians, and others. Add to this what Abaddi calls the “Afghani-Iraqi cocktail” in which the Radicals say that the Americans and the Europeans are occupying Islamic territory as colonialists, imperialists, and oppressors, and you have a highly charged emotional issue that resonates deeply within the Muslim world and helps the Radicals recruit vast numbers of new jihadists.

The second issue is the belief that the West is “draining the wealth of the Islamic world” by exploiting the region’s natural resources, notably oil. The West, of course, is paying Muslims enormous sums of money for these resources. Each year, the U.S. alone sends hundreds of billions of dollars to Muslim countries in return for oil, in addition to what the Europeans are paying. We hardly see ourselves as “exploiting” anyone. But Abaddi notes that as one might expect, such facts are never mentioned by the Radicals; thus the exploitation issue has great populist appeal.

The third recurring theme among extremists is the “Hollywood stigma,” a widespread and deep-rooted feeling of humiliation throughout the region due to the belief that major American motion pictures are constantly showing Arabs and Muslims as being stupid, dirty, and evil.

Fourth, Abaddi said, is the historic “conspiracy” by the West “against the Ottoman Empire,” which was the seat of the caliphate and represented the unity of Muslims. Radicals constantly repeat facts about the 1915 attack by the British, French, and Germans to reclaim control of Istanbul. Even though the Allies actually lost the Battle of the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli campaign, the conflicts resulted in a quarter of a million Turkish casualties, and the Radicals have vowed never to forget. Moroccans, Abaddi conceded, were not as concerned with this issue because they were never a part of the Ottoman Empire. Still, he added, “this is what is being said in Radical literature,” and it has been working to recruit more jihadists.

The fifth issue is the perceived double standard Westerners have regarding Israel versus the Arabs. The Radicals say that the Jews possess advanced major weapons systems, weapons of mass destruction, and even nuclear weapons, and the West says nothing. But when Iraq or Iran or other countries in the region seek such weapons, “then everybody tries to get rid of those nations,” say the Radicals.

The sixth issue is the existence of Israel in the first place. Radicals insist that a great injustice was done to the Muslim people when the Jews began flooding into the Holy Land, buying up land and driving out the local population. The Jews, of course, say that the rebirth of Israel—aside from being a prophetic event—was specifically designed to correct a great injustice: the Holocaust. In response, the Radicals say, “There was no Holocaust! And even if there was, let the Jews have a state in Europe, where the alleged atrocities were committed, not in Palestine, which was not directly involved!” It is a vicious cycle, compounded by all the deaths and dislocation experienced by the Muslims of the area since 1948.

Step 2: Stop the Enemy

It is one thing to know the enemy. It is another thing to stop the enemy, and here having crack security services able to intercept terrorists and dismantle jihadist cells before they can strike is essential. Morocco has excelled in this arena, and to understand why, Fred Schwien, John Moser, and I took some time to visit the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior. There we met with Khalid Zerouali, a senior official in Morocco’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

I took a liking to Zerouali, who was in his early forties and thus similar in age to me, right away—and not simply because he began our meeting by telling me that he had read and appreciated Epicenter. I also appreciated his passion for his job and how well he understood the nature of the evil Morocco is facing.

“The threat to us is real and serious,” Zerouali told us. “We were the first Arab country to stand with you after 9/11. His Majesty was in Mauritania and sent condolences to the U.S. from there. Then we began to work closely with the U.S. to stop al Qaeda. It was the right thing to do, but the fact is it made us a target. We are still a target. So far we have been successful. But we can’t rest for a moment.”542

Zerouali noted that bin Laden and Zawahiri have established a new branch known as “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,”543 or AQIM, a clandestine network of sleeper agents and infiltrators whose mission is to kill innocents, overthrow moderates, and ultimately establish new regimes that can create new base camps for the original al Qaeda operation, on the run since the liberation of Afghanistan. “Al Qaeda leaders are looking for new harbors,” he said matter-of-factly. “And the Sahara region historically has had all the right conditions—poor people, porous borders, states that cannot control their own territories. His Majesty recognized this right away and ordered us to take actions to safeguard our people. Our strength is intel—knowing who is in our country, what they are doing, whether they pose a threat, and stopping them in time.”

“What keeps you up at night?” I asked him.

“Self-radicalization,” he said. “We can find people when they are acting in a group. We can pick up their calls or intercept their e-mails or recruit an informer. But the Internet today is posing a real challenge. You can go on there and learn to build a bomb. You can find jihadist teachings. You can learn how to be a terrorist. . . . How can you stop that? How can you prevent the chemistry in the mind to prevent the fatal work of terrorism?” He calls this problem “disposable terrorism,” lone wolves who can prepare to blow up themselves and lots of other people and then be gone without a trace. “You can’t detect them. You can’t track them. You can’t infiltrate them. You can rarely stop them. This is what I worry about.”

The good news: ever since the Casablanca bombings in 2003, the Moroccan security forces are getting a lot of tips from citizens watching for guerrillas in their midst. A few months before we arrived, for example, police raided a house to bust up a cell of suicide bombers preparing to strike. During the raid, several of the bombers blew themselves up, killing only themselves. But in the commotion, one of the terrorists slipped away, unnoticed by the police. He tried to blend into the crowd, but several people saw him. They didn’t know he was one of the terrorists. They thought he was simply a thief. But they pounced on him, captured him, and turned him over to the police. “The population is against all this extremism, all these suicide bombings,” Zerouali explained. “This is not Islam, they say; this is not human.”

Border protection is one of Zerouali’s top priorities. “My main concern is not airports or seaports,” he said, though his department has worked hard to shore up security procedures at all such entry points, including making Morocco the first country in the region to have biometric passports that are nearly impossible to counterfeit. “My main concern is open land.” Mindful of this threat a generation ago, King Hassan II ordered a 2,700 kilometer “berm” or security wall to be built in the Sahara along Morocco’s (disputed) southern border, beginning in 1982. The goal at the time was to stop illegal immigrants, drug smugglers, and gun runners from entering the country. The security fence was completed in 1988, long before the U.S. government decided it needed to build such a fence along its southern border with Mexico. Today, the wall is the first line of defense against al Qaeda operatives and other Radicals hoping to slip across the border unnoticed.

But it is not a perfect system. As evidenced by how many foreign-born terrorists Moroccan authorities have rounded up in recent years, much more needs to be done.

Step 3: Embrace the East

Judging it wiser, safer, and more effective to build strong strategic alliances with other moderate Islamic nations rather than to go it alone against the Radicals, King Mohammed VI—positioned at the farthest western edge of the Islamic world—has made it a priority to embrace the East.

He has built strong ties with Turkey over the years. In March of 2005 he welcomed Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan to Rabat for a state visit in which the two countries signed a historic free trade agreement. The king has also been very supportive of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, believing that would be a huge step forward in healing long-standing tensions between the Islamic world and the West, particularly given Europe’s conflict with Istanbul in 1915.

The king has also been strongly supportive of democratic reforms in Afghanistan. He sent humanitarian aid to the Afghan people immediately after the fall of the Taliban, and Morocco was one of the first Islamic countries to endorse and support the government of President Karzai from the earliest days of his administration. “Morocco . . . has been constantly following up with interest developments experienced by Afghanistan, a Muslim country . . . hails the major step [of] the agreement concluded between Afghan parties to form an interim government to manage public affairs . . . and considers this event as a major step in the path leading to restoring peace, security, and serenity for the Afghan people after the conflicts and misfortunes they underwent,” said a statement by the Moroccan Foreign Ministry on December 24, 2001. Since then, the king and President Karzai have established and maintained regular diplomatic contact.

Morocco was also the first Arab state to condemn Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and sent troops to help liberate the moderate Gulf state in 1991 as well as to defend the Saudis. On the other hand, the king and his aides have taken a “wait and see” approach to the newly democratic government in Iraq. After the abduction and murder of two Moroccan diplomats in Baghdad in the fall of 2005 and repeated reports that al Qaeda has been recruiting Moroccans to launch terrorist attacks inside Iraq, the issue of democracy in Iraq and U.S. and European military involvement there apparently have been simply too sensitive for the Moroccan government to tackle thus far.544

The king’s closest ally in the East has been the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. As I noted earlier, His Majesty was holding a bilateral summit with Jordan’s King Abdullah II while I was in Rabat. Indeed, the two monarchs actually meet regularly and are considered good friends.

And it makes sense; they share many similarities. Aside from being among the region’s leading Reformers, they are also close in age (Mohammed was born 1963, Abdullah in 1962) and thus have a similar generational outlook. They are both married with children (Mohammed has a son and a daughter; Abdullah has two of each). They both love adventure and high speeds (Mohammed loves racing his Mercedes and his Jet Ski, earning him the nickname “His Majetski”; Abdullah loves racing his Harley and skydiving). Their fathers—King Hassan II and King Hussein, respectively—were friends and allies and were both sympathetic to the West and to Israel. Their fathers also passed away within months of each other, turning power over to their sons with little notice (Mohammed’s father passed away on July 23, 1999; Abdullah’s father passed away on February 7, 1999).

Most important, they both face the same enormous challenge—trying to move their monarchies in the direction of representative democracies, knowing all the while that al Qaeda is gunning for them and that the Radicals would love to overthrow them or use the electoral process to seize control. Both kings are walking a tightrope without a net, and neither can afford to slip.

Step 4: Embrace the West

Continuing his belief in not going it alone in the world, King Mohammed VI has clearly chosen to strengthen strategic alliances with Europe and the U.S.

Morocco has even expressed a desire to join the European Union after Turkey is accepted—if Turkey is ever accepted.545 Given that Ankara’s bid appears to be a long shot at this point, the king has agreed to join the new “Mediterranean Union” made up of twenty-seven E.U. states and twelve other nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea, an initiative launched by French president Nicolas Sarkozy at a July 2008 summit in Paris.546

His Majesty has cooperated with Washington on a wide range of security, economic, and cultural issues. He made his first state visit to the U.S. in the summer of 2000 and returned in the summer of 2004 when the Bush administration gave Morocco the designation of “major non-NATO ally.”

The king also regularly welcomes high-level delegations to Rabat, including Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and his government signed a historic free trade agreement with the U.S. in 2005, the second such agreement the U.S. signed with an Arab country (Jordan was first), and the first in North Africa. The agreement eliminated 95 percent of all tariffs on goods flowing between the two countries and made arrangements to phase out the remaining 5 percent over the next decade.

Moreover, Morocco agreed in 2002 to allow the U.S. government to build a $225 million transmitter in its country for Radio Sawa, which broadcasts news, information, music, and some entertainment programming in Arabic to young people throughout North Africa and the Middle East who have few other sources of accurate news reporting from around the world and few other sources of pro-American commentary and analysis.

Step 5: Teach the Theology of the Reformers

This is one of Dr. Abaddi’s main assignments from the king, and it is one he takes very seriously. The strategy has two key components.

First, Morocco believes it must train a new generation of moderate Islamic preachers.

After the 2003 bombings, the king ordered the Ministry of Islamic Affairs to launch a theological training program for new imams to teach them how to promote moderation within Islam, to educate them about Western history and the importance of Christianity and Judaism to Western social and political development, and to help them identify and oppose extremist forces and trends within Islam. Participants take thirty-two hours of instruction each week for a full year. The first class graduated 210 new clerics, including fifty-five women, in 2006.

Abaddi and his team also helped organize the “World Congress of Rabbis and Imams for Peace” in Brussels (January 2005) and Seville (March 2006), where some 150 Muslim and Jewish leaders “sit beard to beard” to explore common ground, denounce extremists, and “write declarations of peace.” They are publishing books and producing Web sites, tapes, and DVDs to drive moderate theology deep into the culture.

Abaddi has also placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs some nine thousand mosques that had not previously been subject to government oversight, raising the total number from thirty-three thousand to forty-two thousand.

Second, Morocco believes it must train a new generation of moderate Islamic scholars.

The king is not concerned just about those who teach the Qur’an day by day. He is also concerned about those who would shape Islamic theology for the next century to come. To help me understand the king’s long-term approach, Abaddi sent my colleagues and me across town to meet a man named Dr. Ahmed Khamlichi (pronounced “Hahm-lee-shee”), director of Dar Al Hadith Al Hassania, the most famous religious institute in Morocco.

Now in his seventies, Dr. Khamlichi has trained scores of imams, professors, and judges since founding the institute in 1965. But at the king’s insistence, he oversaw a dramatic transformation of his entire operation after the Casablanca bombings of 2003. Neither he nor his staff had been teaching anything close to Radicalism before the bombings. But neither had they been intentionally and proactively developing future leaders who would be ready to combat extremism and make a clear, principled, well-researched, and theologically persuasive case of Islamic moderation throughout Morocco, much less to the rest of the Arab world. Now, using a completely revamped curriculum, this is precisely their mission.

Sitting in Khamlichi’s ornate Rabat office, covered with exquisite, hand-painted tiles and handsome wooden shelves holding hundreds of tomes by Islamic scholars across the ages, we sipped sweet mint tea as he explained what he is doing and why.

“The situation is urgent,” he told us in no uncertain terms. Morocco, he said, cannot rely on the police rounding up all the Radicals and putting them in prison. Nor should it even think of executing Radicals en masse, as other Arab states have done in recent decades. He pointed to the executions of thousands of Radicals, including Sayyid Qutb, in Egypt. “Did it work?” he asked. “Were the Radical movements”—such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian Islamic Jihad—“stopped?” To the contrary, he noted, “human rights violations have been deplorable in this region. This gives rise to revolutions, not peace.” The only way to win the battle for the soul of Islam and thus establish lasting peace and prosperity in the region, he insisted, is to fight and win a battle of ideas. “Extremism is gaining new ground,” he warned us. “It is urgent to develop a new generation of scholars to counteract these Radical ideas.”547

His approach: recruit the best and the brightest Muslim students—true up-and-coming leaders—and turn them into scholars who are fully devoted to teaching the theology of the Reformers and applying their moderate theology at every level of Moroccan society.

Today, some 160 students a year take classes from Khamlichi’s handpicked staff, studying Islamic history, society, and jurisprudence, but also studying comparative religion, including the merits of Christianity and Judaism. The students also take English and even Hebrew.

After spending most of a day talking with the director and his staff, touring the urban campus, sitting in on a few classes—including a Hebrew class in progress—and chatting with several students, I must say I came away impressed. Obviously, we do not share the same theology. But like Khamlichi, I would much rather see a young Muslim become a Reformer than a Radical, and thus I am grateful for what he and his team are doing. They are not playing games. They are true Reformers. They have a sense of mission. They understand the stakes could not be higher. And they are not afraid of Christianity and Judaism. Indeed, they believe now is the time for Muslims to understand both faiths better than ever before.

My only disappointment when the day was done was that there was only one Arabic copy of the Bible in the library for the students to use in their comparative religion classes. I asked the librarian if she thought they needed more.

“Oh, absolutely,” she replied. “We just don’t have the funds in the budget.”

When I asked whether the Joshua Fund could supply a case of Arabic Bibles to help the students study it in their own heart language, her eyes lit up. “Well, that is very kind,” she said, and in a small but telling sign of the true openness of the institute’s leaders, she quickly got approval. By the time we left the country, the Bibles had been ordered and were soon delivered.

When Abaddi told me that “Dr. Khamlichi is one of the most prominent men in Morocco,” I had no difficulty understanding why. Nor was it a stretch to believe that “his is a very sensitive office” in Morocco’s overall strategy because, as Abaddi put it, Khamlichi “is training the gatekeepers of tomorrow.”

Step 6: Expand Democracy

In a rare interview with Time magazine in the summer of 2000, King Mohammed VI agreed that “Morocco has a lot to do in terms of democracy.” He went on to say that “the daily practice of democracy evolves in time—trying to apply a Western democratic system to a country of the Maghreb [North African countries], the Middle East, or the Gulf would be a mistake. We are not Germany, Sweden, or Spain. I have a lot of respect for countries where the practice of democracy is highly developed. I think, however, that each country has to have its own specific features of democracy.”548

“People speculate that the Moroccan monarchy will evolve like the Spanish one,” noted Time’s Cairo bureau chief Scott MacLeod. He was referring to the fact that after the 1975 death of General Francisco Franco, Spain’s longtime Socialist dictator, Franco’s handpicked and personally educated and groomed successor, King Juan Carlos, came to power. No one expected the young monarch—then only thirty-seven—to buck the system Franco had created. But to everyone’s shock, that is precisely what he did. Beginning in 1976, the king slowly but surely began helping the country make the transition to a full-blown and robust constitutional democracy without violence or massive social upheaval. He legalized political parties. He authorized the creation of a constitution. And then he actually relinquished absolute power, putting control of the country in the hands of the people and their elected representatives, while still serving as the head of state.

It was a perceptive point, and the king’s reply was interesting.

“I have a lot of respect for His Majesty Juan Carlos,” said the Moroccan monarch. “I call him ‘Uncle Juan’ because he is an extraordinary person whom I have known for a long time. He is a relative almost. We often speak on the phone, and I ask him for his guidance. But Moroccans are not Spaniards, and they will never be. Democracy in Spain was very good for Spain. There should be a Moroccan model specific to Morocco.”549

That was nearly a decade ago. Today, I believe the Moroccan king knows precisely where he is headed. He knows precisely how he is going to get there. And he has a proven leader in King Juan Carlos to answer his questions and advise him along the journey. He may not have known exactly how to proceed back in 2000. But he does now. And personally I believe he is following the Spanish approach. Not so precisely. Not so quickly. He does not want to frighten the Rank-and-File. He does not want to alarm the rest of the Muslim world. He does not want to enrage the Radicals, if he can help it, or give them an opening to seize control of his country and turn back the clock on democracy and progress as Hamas has done in Gaza after the West unwisely pressured the Palestinian Authority to hold elections before building a truly free and civil society. But he knows where he is going, he is going in the right direction, and he is learning how to persuade people to follow him step-by-step.

Today, Moroccans enjoy far more freedom to say what they want, write what they want, and organize their political parties, labor unions, human-rights organizations, and social reform groups than they did under the current king’s father—and far more than almost anywhere in the Islamic world. The country has a functioning bicameral legislature. It has held several successful, transparent, and relatively corruption-free elections for parliament—including as recently as 2007—in which thirty-four democratic political parties openly competed.

Still, more must be done. Prodemocracy and human-rights organizations should not lessen their pressure for more change. Indeed, they should accelerate such pressure.

Step 7: Empower Women

According to Ms. Fatiha Layadi, among the king’s most impressive moves has been his commitment to improving conditions for women and children and expanding democratic opportunities for women to run for political office and serve in positions of power and authority. Layadi was a well-known newscaster in Morocco before being elected to Parliament in 2007, where she has quickly emerged as one of the most influential women in the country. I interviewed her in the gardens of the Rabat Hilton and was immediately impressed.

“How many other women are in the Moroccan parliament?” I asked.

“Thirty-four,” she said.

“Out of how many seats?”

“Out of 325,” she replied—more than 10 percent, one of the highest percentages in the Islamic world. “Four women were elected in direct election, and thirty were elected under what we call here in Morocco the ‘National List,’ which is a list for women that was agreed on six years ago, to make access to Parliament easier for women, so that 20 percent of the House of Representatives should be made of women.”550

But even that is not enough for Layadi. Now she and her colleagues are pressing for legislation that would make a full third of the representatives women.

“Had there ever been a woman elected in Morocco prior to the changes encouraged by the king in 2002?” I asked.

“Yes, four of them,” she said.

“Four total, in all of history?”

“Oh yes. Women have been running for election since the very first elections in Morocco in the ’60s. But the very first ones to be elected—there were two of them—were in 1992.”

“So this is real progress,” I noted, even more impressed after learning that a Moroccan Jewish woman ran for a seat in Parliament in 2007, making news all throughout the Islamic world.551

“Yes, it’s a historical trend in Morocco. We have to keep in mind that in his very first address to the nation, the new king said that the country could not move forward on only one leg, since women did not have their whole rights, political and also civil rights. Since the king came to power in 1999, there have been major reforms that have been conducted. The first and most important one for me is the ‘Family Law.’”

On October 10, 2003, the king delivered a major address laying out eleven reforms he wanted the legislature to pass. Known as the “Family Code” or “Family Law,” they included giving men and women equal rights before the law, giving wives living in abusive and destructive marriages the right to divorce their husbands, giving wives equal rights to the couples’ financial property, and making polygamy—hotly debated by Islamic scholars but still very common in the Muslim world552—nearly impossible by requiring the husband to obtain not only his first wife’s written permission but also a judge’s assent that “the husband will treat his second wife and her children on an equal footing with the first [and] provide the same living conditions for all” before being legally permitted to marry another woman.553

The landmark legislation passed on January 25, 2004, and was a shot heard around the Muslim world. Layadi readily conceded it made the Radicals unhappy, but she did not care. She was convinced that the kind of social and political reforms the king has been pursuing are absolutely essential to helping Morocco become a model of Muslim moderation in an age of Muslim radicalism.

“May 16, 2003, was a terrible day for me as a journalist and for me as a Moroccan,” she told me. “I could never imagine that Moroccans would kill Moroccans. I could not imagine that young Moroccans—sixteen of them—could just go all over Casablanca and explode themselves, blow themselves up, and kill forty-four people with them. It was a shock. And 9/11 was a shock to me too. I remember staying all day stuck to my TV, trying to understand, trying to feel what these people in the Twin Towers felt when they saw the planes coming to strike the towers. Terrorism is something crazy. Terrorism is something—I don’t know how to say it in English—I’m shocked. . . . It’s something incredible.”

“But it is driven by those who say they are fighting in the name of Islam,” I noted.

“Osama bin Laden is not a Muslim for me,” she shot back.

“What is he?” I asked. “How would you define bin Laden?”

“I don’t know, a sort of monster,” Layadi replied. “All these people are sort of monsters, creatures coming from out of nowhere. The people who killed Benazir Bhutto—why? The lady came to speak about democracy. The lady was coming to speak about reform in her country. And they came and blew themselves up. What does it mean? They are creatures of chaos. . . . I just cannot understand where they are coming from and where they want us to go. We have nothing in common as Muslims. They say they are Muslims, but I am a Muslim and I have nothing in common with them.

“My parents used to have Jewish friends. I used to play with Jewish friends of mine. I had no problems going to Jewish houses, no problem going to Christian houses. I think most Moroccans are like me. Islam in Morocco has always been different. I think Morocco and Jordan are trying to show themselves—the two young monarchs are trying to show themselves—as models for the other Arab countries. I’m cautious because I think both countries have to consolidate their own affairs before trying to turn the others. There are reforms here in Morocco and there in Jordan that have been under way less than ten years, don’t forget. We have to consolidate all this . . . but I hope we can make a true difference.”

Step 8: Combat Poverty

In 2000, Time magazine asked the new monarch what Morocco’s most important problems were.

“First of all, there is unemployment, and agriculture, drought,” he replied. “There is the fight against poverty. I could talk about this endlessly: poverty, misery, illiteracy.”554

Ever since, the king has taken a series of positive steps to boost Morocco’s economy and increase national wealth and individual wages. In addition to providing political stability and taking strong measures to prevent terrorists from driving away tourists and investment, he has also privatized state-owned businesses, reduced taxes, and encouraged diversification from an agriculture-based economy to more manufacturing and technology-related industries.

Though there is still a long way to go, progress has been noticeable. In 1999, the gross domestic product was $108 billion, or about $3,600 per person, and there was absolutely no growth that year. Over the next few years, the economy grew between 4 percent and 8 percent a year. By 2007, the GDP was $125 billion, or about $4,100 per person. Annual foreign direct investment has more than quadrupled. There is a construction boom under way in Casablanca, the country’s commercial capital. And unemployment has fallen from 14 percent in 1999 to just 10 percent today.555

Step 9: Let the Voiceless Speak

One of the most distinctive reforms the king has pursued is creating a national forum to allow those Moroccans who suffered injustices at the hands of judges, generals, and security officials under his father the right to be heard, to be valued, and to be compensated. In 2004, victims of past government oppression were actually invited to testify on live national television about what happened to them, and they were provided with financial reparations as a sign of goodwill.

“It was striking,” Layadi recalled, and it sent an unprecedented message of change in an Islamic nation. “I mean, it was the new way of government in Morocco. Everybody knew that these things had happened. So why not talk about them? Why not have a real catharsis? Why keep them quiet like something that you are ashamed of?”

“It was the king’s way of saying he did not agree with the previous generals, judges, and others who were responsible for the oppression,” Abaddi told me.

Obviously, the harm could not be undone. But at least it was no longer hidden, and people could begin to reclaim some sense of dignity by telling the nation what they had experienced, why it was wrong, and how they felt about it.

Step 10: Build and Maintain Strong Relations with the Jewish Community

The current king, like his father, has been second to none in the Middle East in terms of honoring and respecting Jews and treating them as equal citizens. Few people understand this remarkable relationship better than Serge Berdugo, a man who holds a unique place in the Islamic world. From 1993 to 1995, he served in government as Morocco’s minister of tourism. Yet since 1987, he has also served as the secretary-general of the Council of Morocco’s Jewish Communities.

That’s right—Berdugo is Jewish.

When I visited Casablanca and Rabat in the fall of 2005, I had the privilege of meeting Berdugo in his home, and he gave me some fascinating insights. He noted that the first thing King Mohammed V (the current king’s grandfather) did when he returned from exile in 1956 and led his country to independence from France was to declare that “Jews are equal citizens.” From 1956 to 1961, the king made a point to install at least one or two Jewish leaders into senior-level positions in each cabinet ministry. The king also allowed Jews to freely emigrate when they wanted, and there are now around six hundred thousand Moroccan Jews living in Israel.

Berdugo also told me it was King Hassan II (the current king’s father, who came to power in 1961) who initiated a relationship with Israel in the late 1960s through a series of top secret meetings with Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe Dayan, then two of Israel’s leading defense officials.

By 1984, the king had decided to make such contacts public. He invited fifty Jewish and Israeli leaders to Rabat for an interfaith conference. As expected, this sparked controversy in the region. The Syrian government under then president Hafez al-Assad was particularly vocal in their outrage—so vocal that King Hassan decided to push back. He ordered that the entire senior leadership of the Moroccan government, including the crown prince, attend the conference’s gala dinner. The following year, the king helped create the World Council of Moroccan Jews. In 1986, he invited Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres to Morocco for a highly publicized visit, a move that stunned most of the rest of the Muslim world.

King Mohammed VI has certainly continued in this remarkably positive tradition. One of his most senior foreign policy advisors is a Moroccan Jew by the name of Andre Azoulay. After the 2003 bombings in Casablanca, the king personally blessed a series of candlelight vigils and later a rally in which one million Moroccans, including more than a thousand Jews, marched in unison to denounce the radical jihadists and called for peace. “We were applauded as Jews,” Berdugo told me. “We were kissed. People came up to us and said, ‘You are our brothers.’ It was extraordinary.”556

A few years later, several Moroccan officials confirmed to me rumors swirling about in the Arab press that the king had been quietly laying the groundwork with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to hold a new round of high-level peace talks as soon as the climate is right. “This king is a new generation,” one official who requested anonymity told me. “He is ready to help make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. The deal is easy to do. We are now in a supermarket, not in the souk. We all know the price of peace. There is no more need to haggle. It is time to get the deal done.”557

Step 11: Reach Out to Evangelical Christians in the West

To his enormous credit, the king launched an initiative in late 2004 to build a “bridge of friendship” to evangelical Christians in the U.S., despite long-standing sensitivities about Islamic-Christian relations throughout the Arab world. Abaddi and his colleagues have established ongoing dialogues with prominent evangelists and church leaders such as author Josh McDowell, Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, and Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council. They have invited evangelical pastors, business leaders, and authors to visit Morocco and meet with Muslim leaders. They have even organized a series of concerts in Marrakech where Christian and Muslim rock bands have performed together for tens of thousands of Moroccan young people.

“Why is the king doing something so few leaders in the Islamic world are doing?” I asked Abaddi during his first visit to my home.

“The king knows the real America is not Hollywood and the pornography industry but people of faith,” he told me. “Historically, it has been the Christians who have held America together. Anyone who traces the history of America knows that evangelicals are behind it.”

“But why would Morocco specifically reach out to evangelicals when one of our central goals is to evangelize, a practice frowned upon in the Muslim world?”

Abaddi told me he feels evangelicals are “gentlemen” who can be trusted. “We are trying to reach out to the real America. Evangelicals are serious people, helpful people.” Abaddi acknowledged that the idea of Muslims converting to Christianity is a very sensitive subject in his country. But he also told me that he has written and spoken about the importance of encouraging religious freedom within Islam, including ensuring that “Muslims have the right to change their religion” if they so desire. “Islam cannot be a prison,” he stressed when I saw him in Rabat. “People shouldn’t feel trapped, like they’re in jail and they can’t get out. What kind of religion is that?”

These were remarkable steps, and they should be lauded. Hopefully the king and his court will take other positive steps in the years ahead. Among them: hosting major conferences (perhaps nationally televised) in Morocco where prominent evangelical and Muslim leaders discuss areas of theological agreement and disagreement in an open, kind, and candid manner; inviting Western evangelicals as well as Moroccan believers to freely publish books, DVDs, and other material inside the kingdom; and having His Majesty address major evangelical gatherings in the United States, including the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., as Jordan’s King Abdullah II did in February 2006.558

However, it must be noted that since the publication of the first edition of this book, the government of Morocco has taken some deeply disturbing steps in the wrong direction. In 2010, some one hundred American and European Christian workers were unfairly and inexplicably expelled from Morocco by the government, accused of being ”missionaries.” What’s more, an accredited American school in Casablanca was legally attacked by a parent of a sixth grade boy enrolled in the school, accused of trying to convert minors.

Regarding the expulsions, I was amazed and disappointed that so many followers of Jesus Christ could be so hastily deported or refused entry to Morocco without due process of any kind. It appeared that Morocco’s own immigration laws were not even respected. This action sent shock waves into the American business community, raising concern over doing business there if due process is no longer respected in Morocco. It certainly also sent shock waves through the American Christian community, as it suddenly appeared that evangelical Christians—particularly those running orphanages and doing other humanitarian relief work among the poor and needy—were no longer welcome in Morocco.

In regards to the court case, here is the background: several sixth-grade classmates shared their Christian faith with a Moroccan Muslim boy, and the boy decided to put his faith in Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord. The legal complaint stated the names of fourteen people associated with the school and accused them all with “shaking the child’s [Islamic] faith.” The problem is that only a few of the fourteen people cited had ever even met the boy. The only evidence the lawyer provided was that these fourteen people have membership in Christian churches and organizations and are in some way connected to the school. At one point, the lawyer cited that a certain individual made charitable contributions through a well known Christian foundation. The lawyer cited an “army of evangelists” in Morocco from “extremist denominations” (Baptist, Community Church, United Bible Society, etc).

It was noteworthy that the lawyer representing the boy was also the parliamentary leader of the Muslim fundamentalist political party in Morocco (PJD). He was turning the decision of one young boy into a political debate pitting Christians against Muslims. This has potentially far-reaching implications and reminded me of the largest complaint of al Qaeda dating back to 1991. Osama bin Laden was incensed at the time because there were hundreds of thousands of “Christian” soldiers in Saudi Arabia. This was the rallying cry that led to most of the terrorist attacks leading up to September 11, 2001. Are the members of the Moroccan PJD party now bringing this same logic to Morocco? Do they want to rid Morocco of all evangelical Christians? Do they want to turn the tolerant Muslim kingdom into a new Iran or Saudi Arabia?

Were these developments anomalies, or did they represent a new policy for the Moroccan government? It appears the king and his government are at a crossroads. They have been reaching out to Christians in the West and seeking to promote the Moroccan model. But if they continue expelling foreign Christians who love Morocco and refusing to allow back in those Christian workers they have already expelled, they will be reversing course and tragically undermining the progress they have made in recent years. If they furthermore convict people of shaking the faith of a Muslim—even those have never even met that person—it will be clear that merely holding the evangelical faith would be a crime in Morocco. Let us be watching and praying.

Step 12: Counter the “Hollywood Stigma”

Finally, Morocco has decided not to whine and complain about Hollywood’s unfair depiction of Muslims and Arabs. Instead, they are actively encouraging Western directors to come to Morocco to shoot major motion pictures that deal with Islam fairly and respectfully.

They are not looking for “puff pieces” or hagiographies. Rather, they are looking for a little balance. Officials in Rabat do not expect to see lots of scripts coming across their desks that tell the story of Muslim Reformers. But at the very minimum, the kingdom does look for scripts that have examples of Muslims being mistreated by the West, and have examples of Muslims working with the West to hunt down the Radicals.

Among the recent films that have been shot in Morocco are Black Hawk Down (the story of America’s fight against the Radicals in Somalia); Charlie Wilson’s War (the story of America’s assistance to the mujahadeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan); Kingdom of Heaven (about the European Crusades against the Muslims); The Bourne Ultimatum (in which, in part, former CIA agent Jason Bourne chases an assassin through Tangier, Morocco); and Body of Lies (the story of a CIA operative who hunts down a terrorist in Jordan).

Reflections

Bottom line: I have been impressed in recent years by the Moroccan model and by the king and his team who have set it into motion. The jury is still out on whether these steps will turn Morocco into a full-blown Jeffersonian democracy over time, or whether Morocco will continue moving in the right direction. If they do choose to continue bravely going down this path, it remains to be seen whether other Muslim leaders or nations will embrace the model as their own. I am praying for the king and for the future of this wonderful country that my family and I love so dearly. I hope you will join us in praying as well.