This paper analyzes the ideational landscape of the Moroccan nationalist Istiqlal Party by looking at gender representations in the pages of its official newspaper al-‘Alam (*1946). More specifically, it traces the shifting depictions of what constituted appropriate modern Moroccan womanhood during both the last decade of the anti-colonial struggle and the first years after independence in 1956. Initially, the newspaper’s women’s section projected a hyper-paternalistic vision that called for the education of Morocco’s females so that they could serve their nation by better managing their households and fostering their children. Moreover, a substantial number of articles during the initial years of al-Alam’s publication highlighted Princess ‘Aisha as the “female leader of the women’s renaissance,” who appeared unveiled in photos to announce the good news that King Mohamed V had decreed the “liberation” of his female subjects through both modern education and a return to the emancipatory ideals of Islam. Yet by the early 1950s, al-‘Alam shifted towards a focus on semi-autonomous females that occupied modern professions (nurses, teachers, flight attendances) as most representative of the ideals of the emerging Moroccan nation. While still emphasizing the importance of domestic duties, the ideal woman now “cooperated” with her husband instead of merely “complementing” him in accordance with new ideals that reached the country from across the Third World. While Princess ‘Aisha did not completely disappear from its pages, it was nationalist women activists from countries like Egypt, India and Pakistan that received substantial coverage as the embodiment of “national liberation” and “societal advancement.” This ideological shift offers us insights into the political transformation that occurred in Morocco at that time: the party elites were pushed internally by a new generation of activists predominantly educated in the secular French school system, on the one hand, and pulled externally by the desire to represent the Istiqlal as the embodiment of liberal “progressive” values that could legitimize the party both abroad and vis-à-vis the (former) colonial masters. Equally important was the Istiqlal’s desire to free itself from the towering personality of the King, who had risen to become the embodiment of the nation and whose popularity often overshadowed the mass-based nationalist movement. Thus, without completely abandoning their patriarchal attitude, the nationalist leaders used the shifting image of the modern Moroccan woman to carve out their position on the political stage and cement their reputation as the true leaders of their country.

During the early to mid-twentieth century, the halls of the Sorbonne in Paris were bustling with scholars nostalgically revering the French Revolution as one of many markers of an inherited modernity. Through the civilizing mission of the French colonial project, this modernity was imposed upon the subjects of empire throughout the Global South. As the epistemological heart of the metropole, the Sorbonne eventually became the site where future nationalist leaders and intellectuals would receive their higher education, before going on to pen declarations, manifestos, and laws that eventually ushered in a wave of independence. What resulted was the formulation of ideologies and discourses of nationalism that are strongly rooted in ideologies and discourses of colonialism. Historian Edmund Burke III argues that "colonial and nationalist histories are deeply imbricated in one another" (Burke, 11). One of the ways in which they are imbricated, Burke adds, is through the teleology both historical narratives embrace: "Both derive from post-Enlightenment thought in which they appear as the successive stages of a world historical narrative--the march of freedom from the French Revolution to the present" (Burke, 11). Among those French-educated intellectuals who played a major role in formulating discourses of nationalism in Morocco was historian and public thinker Abdallah Laroui. This paper seeks to demonstrate how French colonialist discourses of modernity, while the object of Laroui's critique, essentially frame Laroui's conceptions of nationalist history and ideology in Morocco. In seeking to trace a modernity native to Moroccan history, Laroui ultimately transposes a bourgeois Arab nationalist consciousness into his characterization of Moroccan history that excessively situates the history of the indigenous Amazigh community on the margins and the monarchy at the front and center. This elision carries significant implications into the postcolonial context and through the present, as many of the major contestations that have challenged the Moroccan state's control since independence have emanated from the Amazigh community.

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.