In 1935, Muhammad al-Hajwi (1874-1956), the minister of education in the French Protectorate and an avid reformer of Islam and Moroccan society, wrote a very long essay entitled “The Firm Cooperation (al-ta‘adud al-matin) between Reason, Science, and Religion.” In it, al-Hajwi argued that science and Islam were compatible and that there could be no conflict between modern scientific knowledge and scripture. More importantly, for al-Hajwi a collaboration between science and Islam was essential for the progress of civilization. He maintained that despite the advance of modern sciences and technology, they have not improved man’s conditions of life. Religion, he insisted, was a necessary ally to reason and science. In this presentation, I analyze al-Hajwi’s text, while paying close attention to his ideas on the compatibility of Islam with science and his conception of civilizational progress. I specifically examine his reasoning and the precedents in Islamic law and history that he cited in order to support his vision. In confronting the meaning of al-Hajwi’s reformist discourse and project of revivalism, I argue that his essay is deeply embedded in the context of the dramatic change that marked the Moroccan Protectorate period. Al-Hajwi’s career developed in government service as the new local elite of state functionaries and power brokers that was facilitated by colonial imperatives. His identity, politics, economic interests, and cultural aspirations bound him to an efficient state, rational administration, social order, economic development, modern education, and preservation of Islamic cultural heritage. His essay is a contemporary critique of Muslim jurists and ‘ulama’, who in his view misunderstood the relationships between modern knowledge and true Islam, on the one hand, and Westernizing Muslims who popularize the idea that Islam was a barrier to reason and science, on the other. It intended to empower Moroccan society not only in the face of a foreign occupation, but also in the face of older forms of knowledge and authority that became outmoded and Westernization.