During the interwar period in Morocco, popular Sufi orders played an influential role among urban population and dominated many aspects of cultural spiritual life. After the uproar that was triggered by the Berber Decree and the emergence of the nationalist movement, many intellectuals perceived the practices and festivals of these popular Sufi orders as religiously anti-Islamic and politically reactionary. In this paper, I argue that the controversial debates between advocates of the Sufi orders and the so-called enlightened Salafi intellectuals played an important role in shaping the ideological agendas and political discourse of nationalist movement. These debates during the period of the 1930s helped pave the way for the emergence of a new polarized cultural landscape in which intellectual and socio-political debates would culminate in the submission of the bill of independence of 1944. These debates appeared initially to be strictly concerned with arguments about the correct understanding and interpretation of Islam and its place in the competing reform programs. However, in my analysis I demonstrate how the conflict and debates reflect a crucial power struggle to dominate public culture in Morocco and how socio-cultural ideologies competed to repurpose spiritual and religious questions for social domination and mobilization of civilian population.