Non-violent Islamist movements have finally come to be accepted as part of Morocco’s changing political landscape. Islamism still challenges the religious monopoly of the Moroccan monarch, but it has adapted well to new circumstances following the rise to power of King Mohamed VI. It has toned down its radical ambitions and some of its elements have accepted to work within the existing system—for now. This paper will focus on the birth and evolution of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), which recently became the second party in parliament, and will tackle the following questions: Does the political integration of the PJD constitute a successful cooptation of the Islamist movement or have the Islamists themselves opted for integration as a tactical path to a future hard challenge of the regime? Do this integration and the PJD itself constitute a successful taming of the Islamist challenge or are they a mere example of the “post-Islamism” moment, as claimed by some (Olivier Roy’s 1998, Gilles Kepel 2000). In “post-Islamism”, political Islam is characterized by a gradual moderation with a preference for the political over the religious. Since the PJD is no longer a danger, does then the real challenge reside elsewhere—possibly in the al Adl Wal Ihsan movement, which refuses to be part of the system, or in latent radical religious factions, or in the military? The paper will propose that if the integration of the PJD is part of a genuine political opening, then the test of the pragmatic adaptation of both Islamism and the monarchy will rest on how popular Islam and official Islam will coexist without cutting into each other’s legitimacy. It will also argue that since the PJD is far from representing the bulk of the Islamist current in Morocco, its integration will not suffice. Both, Political Islam and the monarchy need to accommodate one another within an overhauled political system; the monarchy must shift its legitimacy base from tradition and religion to serious political reform, substantive social and economic programs and negotiated public policies in all important areas. These steps and a substantially revised constitutional order may help safeguard a democratizing polity when secular and religious forces will finally, and equally, be entrusted with governance. Work on this paper will include archival research and interviews.

This paper will discuss the following questions. Why does the Justice and Development Party (JDP) attach importance to European politics? And which kinds of factor direct the JDP towards European Union(EU)? The JDP, which for the first time came into the power in 2002 and repeated the same success in July 2007 general elections, attached much importance to EU politics in the first years of its power, opposite the way of where its roots are belonging to, National Outlook tradition. As a result of intense and successful politics of JDP, Turkey started negotiations with EU in 2005. However, after the negotiations have begun, there is an unproductive period that until now only ten of the thirty five titles could be opened. The founders and leaders in JDP were grown up under the influence of National Outlook tradition. It is of great interest to find the factors that attracts JDP towards EU unlike the traiditon of National Outlook. Erbakan, who is the leader of National Outlook, defines EU as a Club of Christians. How come JDP, founded by reformist people that separated from Welfare Party, turned its face to EU? Since back from 1960's EU become the government's major pursuit. The power of JDP, realizing the mistakes that they did during Welfare period, made reforms in all levels, and strengthened its power. JDP, berried by starting of the negotiations. On the other hand, owing to internal affairs of unexpected complications ( president election, e-revolution, headscarf problem, closure case against JDP), since the second half of 2006, I do not think that enough consideration was given for the EU. I wonder, whether JDP lost its enthusiasm for EU or not? Which kind of political issues might have made JDP to slow down the process for EU membership? Right now, what JDP thinks about EU and what they are exactly expecting? Considering all of these, I will try to examine the position of the JDP towards EU membership.

Scholars have only recently begun to appreciate the diverse lives of young Islamists and the progressively divergent paths of their movements--of inter, as well as intra, Islamist competition. In Morocco, two major Islamist movements dominate the political sphere. Hizb al-'Adala w'al-Tanmiya (Party of Justice and Development) is the country's first official Islamist political party and the principal opposition party in parliament, on an upward ascendance since its entry into the electoral process in 1997. The illegal and electorally excluded Jama'at al-'Adl w'al-Ihsan (Justice and Spirituality Organization) is the largest and fastest growing Islamist--and, indeed, social or political--movement in Morocco. This paper examines the divergent patterns of Islamist mobilization in modern Morocco. How do young people navigate this diverse sea of Islamist movements? Who constitutes the membership of these movements? To examine these questions, I unpack the contours of the Islamist base--the often overlooked youth who constitute the majority of these two movements. Young people navigate a fluid trail of Islamist activism in Morocco, where their membership fluctuates across organizations, within neighborhoods, blocks, and even homes. This presentation draws on extended ethnographic fieldwork among these young activists in Morocco's economic and political capitals, Casablanca and Rabat. This research contributes to emerging debates on Islamist mobilization (specifically a greater appreciation of why young people join legal and illegal Islamist movements and the relationship between the two) and casts new light on the understudied Moroccan case.

This paper analyzes the Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya al-Muqatila Fi Libya (LIFG), which perpetrated attacks against the Libyan regime during the 1990s but has since 2008 undergone an ideological reversal, exceptional among Islamist movements. The leaders of the group have given up violence and reformed their ways by promoting a new ideology of dialogue and coexistence with the Libyan regime. This paper explores the chronological and ideological development of the LIFG reversal, exposes the changes in the group’s thought, and elucidates the causes of this change. The case of the LIFG is noteworthy as it provides insight into the ideological structure of radical Islamism on the whole, extending beyond Libya, and can provide predicative power. In addition, this paper discusses how Libya might have believed that closer relations to the United States could diminish other threats (such as the LIFG), conceivably threats more dangerous to Libya than the renunciation to its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs. Qaddafi even offered to cooperate with US officials in fighting al-Qaeda cells in the Maghreb well before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Libya has been at open war with al-Qaeda and its affiliates since at least 1996 after members of the LIFG participated in an attempt to assassinate Colonel Qaddafi. The Libyan regime accused al-Qaeda of having orchestrated and financed the LIFG coup attempt. By assigning blame to al-Qaeda, Qaddafi perhaps believed that he could assist in the US-led global war on terror (GWOT) and thereby create a normalized diplomatic relationship with the United States while diminishing the threat by the LIFG. Thus, WMD disarmament became a way to facilitate this normalization. Indeed, precisely one year after Qaddafi’s renouncement of WMD, in December 2004, the State Department listed the LIFG as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. This paper will use analysis from Arabic media sources, and examine statements and speeches by both LIFG leaders and Libyan government.

Much of the debate in recent studies on Islam and democracy has centered on what has been referred to as the “inclusion-moderation hypothesis” (Schwedler 2006). Does the entrance of ambivalently democratic Islamist parties into the sphere of electoral competition favor the incorporation of those actors into the political sphere, creating democracy “without democrats”(Salamé 1994), or does it empower the lesser democratic elements within those parties to manipulate their newfound political leverage for non-democratic ends? This paper proposes moving beyond this debate and presents a dialectic theoretical model for understanding the interaction between religion-state relationships and processes of democracy in predominantly Islamic societies. As the moderation thesis posits, governments can strengthen the ascent of pragmatic Islamist politicians by empowering Islamist parties to participate in electoral competition and power-sharing coalitions. However, such a strategy also gives such actors a powerful voice over the formation of the moral economy of the country, allowing them to guide the regulation of moral society in ways the state (or western intellectuals) neither desired nor expected. Inviting ambivalently democratic religious actors into the public democratic space, therefore, can produce dialectic dynamics of both “moderate” incorporation into democratic institutions as well as “radical,” illiberal change in the social discourse of society. After presenting the theory, the first part of this paper analyzes the interaction between religion-state relationships and levels of national democracy by using cross-national data on religion-state relationships in the Muslim and Arab world collected by Grim and Finke (2006) and Fox (2006). Then, drawing on original interviews from the field and recent electoral data, the second half of this paper evaluates the mechanisms of the theory by tracing the growth trajectories of two Islamist political parties in Algeria, the MSP and HAMAS, through their strategic responses to government policies of inclusion and the logic of electoral competition.