The 2022 World Cup and the ‘Aboukhal Affair’: Marocanité, patriotic celebration, and Salafism
24th Jan 2023 by Guy Eyre
Zakaria Aboukhal, a Netherlands-born professional footballer of Moroccan descent, was one of the revelations of the Moroccan men’s national football team’s historic run at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Yet amidst the widespread euphoria and disbelief that followed the Atlas Lion’s shock streak to the World Cup semi-finals, a different outcry of incredulity erupted back in Morocco. A Moroccan media platform, called Achkayne, published an article connecting Aboukhal to an all altogether less profane, but no less stunning, revelation. Titled ‘Aboukhal, a Salafi in the national team’, the articleaccused the footballer of following and propounding a ‘fundamentalist’ and hyper-conservative Islamic ideology, known as Salafism, to his team-mates. According to the report, the footballer, currently plying his trade at the French League 1 team Toulouse, had also ‘appeared on several occasions with people affiliated with a European Salafi movement’.
Perhaps most interesting, however, was the widespread uproar and indignation back in Morocco at the article. The Kingdom’s National Press Council swiftly condemned Achkayne’s assertions, warning ‘against the danger of a sensationalist drift [in] ...stigmatizing the Moroccan national team by distorting the behaviour of its players, who are spontaneous expressions of their attachment to their authentic cultural and family values.’ The Royal Moroccan Football Federation also publicly underscored Aboukhal’s ‘exemplary behaviour alongside his colleagues’.
Additionally, the Moroccan Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, denounced the accusations, reasoning that the article aimed ‘to damage the image of the national team’. Arguing that the Moroccan national men’s team ‘has honoured Morocco’, in a thinly veiled threat he observed that the Moroccan Penal Code can ‘punish such acts of defamation’. Achkayne withdrew the article and issued an official apology.
What, then, might this outcry disclose about public and state-sanctioned ideas and representations in Morocco of marocanité (Moroccan-ness or Moroccan national identity), patriotic celebration, and Salafism?
Salafism is an intellectual hybrid that emerged from a puritanical Sunni movement, known as Wahhabism, in Saudi Arabia since the 1960s. Both Salafism and Wahhabism call on scholars to ‘use independent and direct interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunna’ (the Prophet Mohammed’s sayings, practices, and legal precedent), i.e. without using ‘extra-textual means to interpret these sources’. Salafis and Wahhabis also understand themselves as seeking to emulate the ‘authentic’ beliefs and practices of the first three ‘generations’ of Muslims (al-Salaf al-Salih, or 'pious ancestors') in an extremely detailed way in every sphere of life.
Yet Salafis denounce what they consider to be Wahhabis’ attachment to the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence, arguing that Wahhbais are therefore not truly Salafi in matters of Islamic law. In this way, Salafis broadly reject the opinions of most Islamic scholars and all canonical Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence.
A Salafi trend slowly emerged in Morocco in the 1970s as a result of the activism of the Moroccan preacher Muhammad Taqi al-Din Abd al-Qader al-Hilali (d. 1987) and his protégé, Muhammd Ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Maghraoui (1948-), both students of the Islamic University in Medina in Saudi Arabia, a global centre of Salafi learning and scholarship. Both figures remained closely aligned with key figures within the Salafi clergy in Saudi Arabia.
Between 1979-2000 the palace-oriented political establishment in Morocco (or makhzen) permitted the spread of Salafism in the country. The makhzen considered Morocco's Salafis a pro-status quo movement and so a useful ally in undercutting domestic Islamist and leftist challenges. Consequently, Salafism expanded its socio-religious presence in the country through mosques and associations.
However, the terrorist bombings in Casablanca on 16 May 2003 by violent Salafis – known as ‘jihadis’ – shattered Salafism’s working relationship with the makhzen. A regime crackdown on many Salafi networks ensued. Salafis in general were debarred from the public sphere. This regime repression was accompanied by the makhzen's promotion of a ‘Moroccan’ Islam focused on Sufism and the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence (typically repudiated by Salafis) in order to challenge Salafi religiosity. The regime argued that this ‘Moroccan’ Islam constituted the true ‘indigenous’ and ‘moderate’ nature of Islam in the Kingdom, and contrasted it with a constrution of Salafism in toto as a ‘violent’, ‘radical’, ‘non-indigenous’ security threat emanating from the Arab Gulf.
Inspired by the wave of anti-regime ‘Arab Spring’ protests in Egypt and Tunisia, the 2011 ‘20 February’ protest movement in Morocco however saw the makhzen shift its policy towards a new logic of selective and controlled Salafi inclusion as part of strategy aimed at co-opting Morocco’s Salafis and isolating them from the demonstrations. The regime permitted the integration of small numbers of the Salafi ex-jihadis – many of whom had been imprisoned for the alleged roles in the 2003 bombings but who were released en masse since 2011 – into minor pro-Palace parties, on condition that they explicitly rejected violence and accepted the religious and political authority of the King. Further, it allowed Salafis more generally to return to the Moroccan public sphere from which they had been excluded since the 2003 bombings.
By 2015 the Moroccan regime began to move away from its post-2003 policy of repressing all Salafis as an unauthorised ‘extremist’, ‘violent’ trend. Instead, it now enclosed the overwhelming majority of Morocco’s Salafis – known as ‘quietists’, who disavow violence – within the conceptual limits of a state-sanctioned articulation of ‘authentic’, 'Moroccan' Salafism, understood as an indigenous religiosity compatible with Malikism, and Sufism, non-violence, and Moroccan nationalism. In other words, rather than delegitimising Salafism as a whole the regime primarily rebuked non-violent Salafis because they advocated a ‘foreign’ and ‘inauthentic’ (mis)conception of Salafism. In doing so, the regime argued, they failed to avow 'Moroccan' Salafism, and so could not be considered true Moroccan ‘patriots’
It is this context of shifting approaches to Salafism in Morocco that makes the commotion that followed the Aboukhal affair during the 2022 Qatar World Cup particularly interesting. Whilst Salafis can turn to ‘jihadi’ approaches that advocate violent or revolutionary violence, such as ISIS and al-Qae‘da, the Achkayne article simply alleged that Aboukhal was an acolyte of Salafism writ large. The outcry in Morocco did not rebuke Achkayne's article on the grounds that it explicitly linked Aboukhal to a violent, revolutionary Islamic movement. Rather, the clamour impugned the article's allegations on the basis that Achkayne had brought the player, the Moroccan national men’s team, and Morocco more broadly, into disrepute on the global stage. In this way, Morocco’s political and cultural elites argued that Achkayne's claim that Aboukhal was ‘Salafi’ was a slur, one that insinuated that Aboukhal engaged in ‘un-exemplary’ (religious) practices. Describing the footballer as ‘Salafi’, therefore, compromised the legitimacy of the patriotic celebration of and national pride towards Aboukhal and the broader Moroccan national men’s team – hence the feverish attempts to undercut the veracity of the article.
Put differently, the outcry in Morocco reveals particular understandings of Salafism and ‘authentic’ marocanité in play in contemporary Morocco. Salafism is understood to connote not only deplorable practices but also an allegiance to a global religious community that is considered incompatible with Moroccan national belonging, and religiosity, and national pride.
The National Football Federation’s and the Moroccan Minister of Justice’s comments also reasoned that the article had sullied the Moroccan national men’s team’s – and, by extension, Morocco’s international – standing. This exemplifies long-standing representations in Morocco of Salafism as an inexorably ‘imported’, and ‘foreign’ movement - one that jars with both ‘authentic’ Moroccan identities and religiosity and that is the upshot of ‘foreign’ forces that seek to degenerate Morocco’s domestic religiosity and society, and its international standing with (Western) allies.
In sum, on the one hand the Aboukhal affair indicates that, despite the softening of state and public discourses on ‘Salafism’ in recent years via the circulation of a state-sanctioned brand of ‘legitimate’, ‘Moroccan’ Salafism, on the international stage at least Moroccan political and cultural elites continue to police a notion of Moroccans (or at least those worthy of patriotic celebration) as members of a ‘moderate’ community, coded as, amongst other things, the antithesis of a ‘foreign’, even ‘extremist’, Salafism centred on ‘dishonorable’ practices.
Yet, on the other hand, the Aboukhal affair also reveals the persistence of the Moroccan regime’s post-2015 strategy of delegitimising Salafism by representing Salafis first and foremost not as a ‘security’ threat but more as ‘illegitimate’ or ‘unpatriotic’ Moroccan national subjects; subjects who, in their supposed ‘allegiance’ to ‘foreign’ Salafi scholars and concern for a global Salafi, rather than a patriotic Moroccan, community, cannot be the subject of patriotic pride and celebration.