HSNW conversation with Robert M. HolleyMorocco changes offer U.S. “very important opportunity”

Homeland Security NewsWire: What does it mean to be a “moderate” Islamist political party in today’s Morocco, as the Justice and Development Party (PJD) has been described?

Robert M. Holley:PJD is often described as a “moderate” Islamist political party in large measure because their platform concentrates on issues related to economic and social development, justice, accountability, and transparency in government rather than what many in the West think of as more “Islamist” issues such as the imposition of Islamic law as the sole legitimate reference for the actions of government in society. Indeed, PJD does not describe itself as an “Islamist” party. Rather, they refer to themselves as a political party that has an “Islamic reference.” That distinction is less subtle than it sounds at face value. It is more helpful to think of the PJD as one would think of the Christian Democrats in the European political framework. Another helpful way to understand the PJD in Morocco is to look at the governing PJD party in Turkey, which has accepted the larger and deeply ingrained secular norms of Turkish society and not sought to impose its own religious preferences over the will of the majority.

HSNW: Are there similarities between the Justice and Development Party and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood?

RH: The PJD in Morocco has much less in common with an organization like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt than one might assume from reading the popular press. In the first instance, the PJD is a political party, unlike the Brotherhood, with a well established track record as an active political party with policy experience in both the legislature as well as in the executive offices of several important cities and communes in Morocco. By contrast, the Brotherhood has largely been an opposition political force that has had little opportunity to participate in the legislative and executive functions of Egypt under Mubarak’s tightly authoritarian rule that kept the Brotherhood under constant pressure and repression.

Further, the PJD is functioning today in a political environment where there is a very substantial and largely open competition for political office and influence in the society. Morocco has at least eight very well developed political parties with significant constituencies among the more than thirty that registered candidates and contested the recent Parliamentary election.  The Brotherhood, on the other hand, is operating in a political space that is largely bereft of other organized political competition as a result