During the interwar period when Morocco was a protectorate under French and Spanish colonial control, Moroccan nationalist intellectuals played a major role in negotiating the new and emergent culture of the country. Through their contact with the Arab nationalism of the Mashreq and the reform movement spearheaded by reformers in Egypt and the Levant, most of them sought to resist French and Spanish acculturation by emphasizing cultural production that centered on revival of Arabic and Islamic cultures. Allal Al Fassi (1910-1974), a leader of Moroccan nationalist movement, sought through his poetry and critical writings to bolster a sense of nationalism through critique of traditional Islamist thinkers and their passivity. In this paper, I argue that in his seminal text al-Naqd al-Dhati (Self Critique), he offered a program that sought to build a modern national culture in Morocco by foregrounding Arab-Islamic tradition and resistance of French and European culture and values. However, the main tenets of this visionary platform nonetheless reinstated patriarchal authority and reproduced elite and bourgeois values because the Salafist school continued to maintain a powerful grip on Al Fassi’s progressive political vision.