The Exploitation of Moral Controversies and the Marginalization of Morocco’s Justice and Charity Association
When a moral controversy arises in Morocco, the two main actors of the official political stage carefully play their specific role. On one side, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD), the party that leads the Moroccan government and as such is accountable to the electorate, reliably endorses the Moroccan majority’s socially conservative attitudes in order to fulfill its electoral mandate. On the other side, the king fully exploits his wider room for maneuver by adopting, according to circumstances, either a progressive stance or a conservative one. While the rhythm of moral controversies sets the tempo of the official political game and shows that Moroccan society is still very much conservative, the largest Islamist opposition group, the Justice and Charity Association, seeks to escape its marginalization within the civil society sphere.
