Religious Revival (tajdīd) and Politics in Contemporary Morocco:

‘The Prophetic Path’ of Shaykh Abdessalem Yassine (d. 2012)

(Rachida Chih – Cnrs/Ehess)

Abstract:

Shaykh Abdessalem Yassine (d. 2012) founder of the the so-called ‘Islamist’ movement
Justice and Spirituality (al-‘Adl wa-l-Iḥsān) in Morocco claimed for himself the title of
‘reviver of religion’ (mujaddid al-dīn), pre-destined to restore the purity of the faith and
renew Islamic Law. He identified with this role on the basis of his Sharifian and spiritual
legitimacy and set himself the mission of the moral reconstruction of the Muslim mind as a
preliminary step that would lead to the building of a society defined by Islam; he also founded
his own community as a model for this, his jamā’a. On the basis of the examination of his
major work, The Prophetic path (Al-Minhāj al-nabawī), this paper analyses Yassine’s
conception of prophetic heritage in order to show that his predication followed a religious
concept and cultural model of messianic mysticism that has been identifiable in Morocco
since the Middle Ages: in the eyes of his followers, the very existence of Al-Minhāj al-nabawī
demonstrated and proved that Yassine was the guide (imām) predestined to set in motion a
great social transformation that would restore the Islamic community to its original purity by
placing it under the direction of a Prophet’s Sunna that is re-actualised.

The most popular of the so-called ‘Islamist’ movements in Morocco, Justice and
Spirituality (al-‘Adl wa-l-Iḥsān), was not born out of opposition to Sufism, as was the case for
most such theological and political movements in the contemporary Muslim world, which
have rejected Sufi practices as reprehensible innovations (bid‘a). On the contrary, it was
inspired by Islamic spirituality and the Sufi concept of imitation of the Prophet (ittibā’ al-
nabī) in the interior lives of believers as in their outward acts. The founder of this movement,
Shaykh Abdessalam Yassine (d. 2012), laid claim to the earthly heritage of the Prophet, in
competition with both Morocco’s monarchy, to which he was openly opposed, and the Sufi
brotherhoods from which he sprang and ultimately distanced himself. Unlike the monarchy,
Shaykh Yassine does not justify his prophetic legitimacy by means of sharaf, genealogy
(although he nevertheless remembered to underline the fact that he was also a descendent of

1
the Prophet, in the Idrisside branch), but because of his exemplary conduct, conforming in
every way to the Muḥammadan model. In addition, his mission is different from that of the
monarchy, which exercises political power, or that of his original Sufi brotherhood, the
Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya, which teaches spiritual progression and realisation: Shaykh Yassine
worked towards reform and social justice, which may explain why his teachings have mostly
been studied by sociologists or political scientists.1

Yassine’s ideas were not restricted to the field of politics, in which his positions
earned him the position of principal opponent of the monarchy. Above all a man of religion,
very heavily influenced by or even impregnated with Sufism, he was an important Muslim
thinker of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, author of an important body of work that is
much discussed at international conferences. The Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya Sufi brotherhood
and Justice and Spirituality are probably the two largest religious groups in Morocco today.
Shaykh Yassine and the charismatic leader of the Būdshīshiyya, Sīdī Ḥamza (d. 2017) were
both taught by the same spiritual master, Sīdī Bel-‘Abbās (d. 1972), Sīdī Ḥamza’s father. Sīdī
Bel-‘Abbās’s teachings sprang from the Darqāwiyya, a Sufi brotherhood that was very
powerful in Morocco and the west of Algeria during the nineteenth century and the first
quarter of the twentieth, and whose many branches spread as far as the Near East. 2 Sīdī
Ḥamza and Shaykh Yassine both described themselves as continuing a model of Islamic
tradition that had become classical from the time of the prominent theologian al-Ghazālī (d.
1111): that of a reviver of religion (mujaddid al-dīn), pre-destined to restore the purity of the
faith and renew Islamic Law. They identified with this role on the basis of their Sharifian and
spiritual legitimacy. Sīdī Ḥamza did not set himself up in opposition to political power, but
built up around his own person a group that claimed to reproduce the spiritual community of
the Prophet and his companions. Yassine, on the other hand, was in open conflict with the
King; he set himself the mission of the moral reconstruction of the Muslim mind as a
preliminary step that would lead to the building of a society defined by Islam; he also founded
his own community as a model for this, his jamā’a. 3 His theological and metaphysical ideas
are sometimes complex, and his books not accessible to all readers. On the basis of our
1
Belal, Le Cheikh et le Calife; Chekroun, ‘Islamisme, messianisme et utopie au Maghreb’; Darif, Jamā‘at al-‘adl
wa l-iḥsān; namūdhajān; El-Ayadi, ‘Abdessalam Yassine ou le poids des paradigmes dans le parcours d'un
nouveau clerc’; Lauzière, ‘Post-islamism and the Religious discourse of ‘Abd al-Salam Yasin’; Tozy, Monarchie
et islam politique au Maroc; Zeghal, Les islamistes marocains.
2
Chih, ‘Shurafā’ and Sufis: the Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya in Contemporary Morocco’. The Darqāwiyya, an
offshoot of the Shādhiliyya Sufi path, was founded at the end of the eighteenth century by Mawlāy al-ʿArbī ad-
Darqāwī (c. 1737-1823) in Morocco. Le Tourneau, ‘Derkāwa’.
3
Yassine, The Muslim Mind on Trial.

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examination of his major work, The Prophetic path (Al-Minhāj al-nabawī), I shall analyse
Yassine’s conception of prophetic heritage in order to show that his predication followed a
religious concept and cultural model of messianic mysticism that has been identifiable in
Morocco since the Middle Ages: in the eyes of his followers, the very existence of Al-Minhāj
al-nabawī demonstrates and proves that Yassine is the guide (imām) predestined to set in
motion a great social transformation that will restore the Islamic community to its original
purity by placing it under the direction of a Prophet’s Sunna that is re-actualised.

Morocco in the postcolonial era: consolidation for the monarchy and

fragmentation in the religious sphere

The growing importance of nationalist reformism during the colonial period (1912-1956)
brought with it a concomitant increase in power for the Moroccan monarchy, the sacred
aspects of which had been underlined by reformist movements. Nationalist groups
campaigned in the press for the colonising powers to show greater respect for the sacred
person of the King; in 1933 they instigated the Throne celebration, in which urban Moroccans
participated in large numbers. Thus the King became a symbol of national unity. 4 Once
Morocco had gained its independence, the monarchy consolidated its authoritarian power: in
the 1962 Constitution the King gave himself the title ‘Commander of the Faithful’ (Amīr al-
mu’minīn); he weakened the religious sphere by fragmenting it and, as early as 1956, began
co-opting the leaders of the nationalist movement into the administration of the State to
neutralise them.5 Unlike the republics of Algeria, Tunisia and Turkey, which engaged in a
political drive to secularise their societies, Morocco did not see attempts to purge Sufism, but
as it emerged from the colonial period the Sufi brotherhoods were nevertheless delegitimised
by nationalist reformists; for example, ‘Allāl al-Fāsī (d. 1974), who founded the Istiqlāl
(Independence) party in 1943, spoke very harshly of the brotherhoods.
At the time of independence, the construction of a national narrative that accused the Sufi
brotherhoods of collaboration with the colonial power and presented the Sharifian State as the
sole agent of modernisation and of struggle against colonialism meant that the historical role
played by Sufis was forgotten.6 Yet, the Darqāwiyya (to which ‘Allāl al-Fāsī belonged) was

4
Spadola, The Calls of Islam.
5
Zeghal, Les islamistes marocains, 50
6
Al-Fāsī, Hadīth al-Maghrib fī-l-Mashriq.

3
very active in the anti-colonial struggle in the north of the country, and its offshoot the
Kattāniyya was behind one of the first movements for anti-colonial resistance, led by a
religious figure with whom Yassine identified, Muḥammad al-Kattānī (1873-1910), who died
under torture in the royal gaols.7 In this unfavourable context the Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya,
whose groundwork had been laid during the colonial period, was founded during the 1960s in
the mountains inhabited by the Banī Iznassen Berber tribe in north-western Morocco, near the
Algerian border. The Qādirī Būdshīshīs present themselves as a Sufi and saintly linage,
descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad. According to the family’s genealogy, Qādirī
indicates kinship ties with the great saint of Baghdad, ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d.1166); as for
Būdshīsh, it is a nickname (laqab) given to an ancestor who fed the people with a soup made
of cracked wheat (dashīsha or tashīsa) during a period of famine.8 To this reputation for
hospitality they soon added one for jihād: in 1845, when France and the Sultan of Morocco
Mūlay ‘Abd al-Rahmān signed the treaty of Maghniya, defining the border between Morocco
and Algeria, Sīdī Mukhtār al-Kabīr (d. circa 1852), the great-great-grandfather of Sīdī Hamza,
joined the emir ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jazā’irī’s resistance struggle against the French occupation.9
The defeat of the emir in 1847 brought a temporary halt to resistance in the north of Morocco;
it would be taken up again by the Habriyya branch of the Darqāwiyya at the turn of the
nineteenth century.10 French colonial archives mention the arrest in 1907 of Sīdī Mukhtār’s
grandson, also called Sīdī Mukhtār (d. 1914) and nicknamed al-Mujāhid, ‘the one who carries
out the jihād’ because he led a long insurrection against the French army, which had entered
the country from Oujda on the northen border.11 After his release in 1910, Sīdī Mukhtār al-
Mujāhid left his mountain village, Bū Yahyā, and settled on the Berkane Plains in Madāgh ;
his descendents still live there.
Thus the Būdshīshiyya follows the model of Morrocco’s great historic zāwiyas, places of
hospitality and outposts on the frontier of Christian invasion. In 1942, the arrival in the
zāwiya of a cousin of Sīdī Bel-‘Abbās, Sīdī Bū Madyan Munawwar Būdshīsh (d. 1955), a
Sufi who was initiated into both the Tijāniyya and the Darqāwiyya, was a turning point in the
family’s history: Sīdī Bū Madyan transformed this local lineage of shurafā’ into a Sufi path to
spiritual education (tarīqa al-tarbiya), describing its teaching as a synthesis of the great
Moroccan spiritual traditions, of the Qādiriyya by blood (nasab), and of the Darqāwiyya (a

7
Bazzaz, Forgotten Saints.
8
Qustās, Nibrās al-murīd, 36-37; al-Ghazālī, Musāhama fī-l-bahth ‘an zawāyā Banī Iznāssen,68.
9
Qustâs, Nibrâz al-murîd, 35.
10
Founded by Muhammad al-Habrî (d. 1898), the Darqâwiyya Habriyya spread mainly in Algeria. Le Tourneau
‘Derkâwâ’; Drague, Esquisse d’histoire religieuse du Maroc.
11
Berahab, Zâwiya Bûdshîshiyya, textes et documents à l’appui.

4
branch of the Shādhiliyya) and the Tijāniyya by virtue of the initiatic transmission (mashrab)
that it encompasses, completes and revivifies.12 From a remote and isolated spot in the north
of the country, this brotherhood would progressively spread across all of Morocco’s educated
and urbanised classes. Among its first disciples were two school teachers who were to
become high-profile public personalities, Shaykh Yassine and today’s Minister of
Endowments and Islamic Affairs, Ahmad Tawfiq.

The Islamic Revival in the 1970s and 1980s

The defeat during the 1960s of ideologies with a socialist orientation, and the struggle
against leftist parties, prepared the ground for the Islamisation of society across the Muslim
world, with the financial support of Saudi Arabia. During the 1970s, Shaykh Yassine left the
Būdshīshiyya and established his fame by defying King Ḥasan II in a letter entitled ‘Islam or
the flood’ (1973). This was an impudent missive, accusing the King of squandering the
people’s wealth and calling on him to return to the path of God. 13 Yassine was then
imprisoned in a psychiatric ward; it was alleged that King Ḥasan II could not conceive that
any sane man would challenge his authority so brazenly. Shaykh Yassine was laying the
foundations of his movement, which would be registered as an association during the 1980s
under the name Justice and Spirituality (this association is tolerated but not recognised).
In 1981 Shaykh Yassine provided his companions with a practical guide to spiritual
improvement and socio-political militancy, The Prophetic Path, his most important work
(mentioned above). Yassine was in and out of prison, with his original Būdshīshiyya
brotherhood under suspicion, and Sīdī Ḥamza under house arrest in his zāwiya in Madāgh.
Meanwhile, the manipulation of public opinion by the monarchy had reached its peak: Ḥasan
II organised a vast spectacular call for unity around his sacred person, the Green March of
1975, when thousands of Moroccans from all regions of the Kingdom marched peacefully to
recover the Moroccan Sahara from Spanish occupation. An extensive media campaign was
organised by the King, using the State monopoly on television and radio (which lasted until
the 1980s). This allowed him to capture public opinion and manipulate it by disseminating
notions of of solidarity with an imaginary community that was protected and perpetuated by
its King. The monarch reproduced the ritual of allegiance (bay‘a) to his person on the scale of
an entire country, thanks to new communication technologies that allowed him to erase

12
Chih, ‘Shurafā’ and Sufis’, 212.
13
Yassine, Al-Islam aw al-Tūfān, consultable online http://siraj.net

5
distance and establish a close and direct relationship with his unique and united people.
According to research undertaken by the anthropologist Emilio Spadola among participants in
the march, they often felt that to reply to the King’s call was to demonstrate their belonging
in the nation, but also to give to the King in the hope of receiving a gift in return; these hopes
were never realised.14
From the beginning of the 1980s the two competing religious groups – the Qādiriyya
Būdshīshiyya and Justice and Spirituality – had begun to implant themselves in the new
departments of Islamic Studies that had been created in State universities from 1979 to
compete with the traditional institutions of religious learning (the Qarawiyyine and Dār al-
Ḥadīth al-Ḥasaniyya).15 The political relaxation of the 1990s, and the introduction of new forms
of communications media that remained outside of State control, also changed the situation in
the religious sphere, allowing for new calls to Islam to appear and compete with the call of the
Sharifian State. Across Morocco there followed an unprecedented expansion for the
movements of Shaykh Yassine and of Sidi Ḥamza, who, no longer under house arrest, was
able to travel and to meet freely with his disciples. The Būdshīshiyya became embedded
among the Moroccan middle and upper middle classes, and, thanks to networks of Moroccan
emigrants, expanded to Europe. The house arrest of Shaykh Yassine came to an end with the
coronation of Mohammed VI in 1999, and he, too, could at last travel around the country. His
Justice and Spirituality movement also spread transnationally, through Moroccan emigration
to Europe.

Genealogy and Politics

Competition around Sharifian genealogy is part of a long politico-religious tradition in

Morocco. However, claiming authority or political legitimacy because of descent from the
Prophet is a modern phenomenon: during the Medieval Period only personal charisma and
virtues were emphasised. Genealogical literature began to flourish from the fifteenth century,
with Ibn Sakkāk’s celebrated work Nuṣḥ mulūk al-Islām (Advice to Muslim Kings), which
reminds kings of their duties towards ashrāf: the Moroccan historian Halima Ferhat describes
this sort of text as making up a ‘literature of combat’, influenced by a militant and often
political outlook. 16 The accession to power of the Saadian dynasty (1549-1659), which

14
Spadola, Calls for Islam.
15
Tozy, ‘Le prince, le clerc et l’État’, 81-82.
16
Ferhat, ‘Chérifisme et enjeux du pouvoir’.

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instituted a compromise between political and religious authority, was a turning point that
historian M. Garcia Arenal calls ‘a joining of Sufism with Sharifism’ in the symbolic
elaboration of power in Morocco.17 The Saadīs constantly evoke concepts of sharīf and of
jihād to define their movement, to explain its success and to establish its legitimacy.18 The
rise of the Saadīs was closely linked with that of jazulism, the most important mystical
movement in Morocco in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.19 The writings of Muhammad
al-Jazūlī (d. 1465), with their eschatological bent based on the notion of sa‘da (the promise of
happiness here below and in the after-life), provided the ideological foundation for the
legitimisation of the Saadīs, and were exploited to this end by the sultans. The expression
aqtab al-dawla (the poles of the State) arose in milieux linked to Jazūlī, meaning that on earth
the Sufi acts for the Prophet and, in His absence, becomes His legitimate substitute (badil).
Qutbiyya signifies concrete power over the world, along with the feeling among men that it is
because of the permanent presence and intercession of the saints that the world continues to
exist: saints are effectively guarantors of stability in a society that is prey to constant and
often violent political change. It was during this period that the great zāwiyas that would mark
the history of Morocco were born: the zāwiya of Ilīgh, the zāwiya Nāsiriyya, the zāwiya
Sharqāwiyya and the Wazzāniyya.20 Almost all of them were in some respects messianic, and
they also refered constantly to the closely-related concept of tajdīd, renewal of Islam. What’s
more, this renewal was never distinct from material – or even political – claims, often made at
times of crisis during which the stability or integrity of the country was threatened from
within or without.21
During the same period the concept of a Muhammadan Path (tarīqa muhammadiyya)
emerges among Sufi and non-Sufi scholars, defined either as a return to the model of the
Prophet or as a direct attachment to His person as a way of reaching sainthood. Vincent
Cornell attributes to Jazūlī and his disciples a decisive role both in the conceptualisation of
the Muhammadan Path and in its propagation to the rest of the Muslim world via the
22
scholarly and Sufi milieus of Medina, thanks to the new Ottoman context. The
Muhammadan Path was not an organised Sufi path, but a way of accessing religious
knowledge that was specific to Sufis who were initiated by the Prophet through assiduous
prayer on Him (tasliya) ‘until it invades the consciousness to the extent that when he hears his

17
Garcia-Arenal, ‘La conjonction du soufisme et du sharifisme’.
18
Garcia-Arenal, ‘Mahdī, Murabīt, Sharīf’, 81.
19
Cornell, Realm of the Saint.
20
Laroui, Les Origines Sociales et Culturelles du Nationalisme Marocain, 137.
21
Hammoudi, ‘Aspects de la mobilisation populaire à la campagne’, 47.
22
Chih, Sufism in Ottoman Egypt, chap. 3.

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name he trembles, his heart is overwhelmed beholding him, and the visible appearance of the
Prophet appears present to the eyes of inner vision (basīra) during his sleep (manāman) or
when he is awake (yaqazatan). He can then ask him whatever he wants.’ 23 During the
seventeenth century there was a mention in the Kitāb al-Ibrīz, which relates the words of the
Moroccan Sufi ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Dabbāgh (d. 1720), of the omniscience and infallibility
(ma‘sūm) of the believer who has conformed in his outward behaviour and his inner life
(ma‘nawī) to the Prophetic model; this places him above theologians and jurists for his
knowledge of God and for his continuous interpretation of the law through fath, spiritual
opening.24 The Sufis’ claim to a prophetic inheritance through the Muḥammadan path worked
to legitimise the (probably unprecedented) authority they exercised in society.. The concept
itself was not new, but its amplification in the Modern period corresponds to a new
geographical expansion of Sufism, and to what was probably the apogee of its implantation in
society, encouraged as it was by sultans and emperors.25 The Sufi masters who were at the
origin during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries of what historians would later call
the Sufi revival claimed this path for themselves. In the Maghreb from the end of the
eighteenth century it was powerfully expressed in the teachings of Ahmad al-Tijānī (d. 1815);
of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Rahmān (d. 1793), the founder of the Rahmaniyya in Algeria; of
the Moroccan Sufi Ahmad Ibn Idrīs (d. 1837), and of his successors who were to make union
with the Prophet the aim of their Sufi path. In Jawāhir al-ma‘ānī, (The Jewels of Meaning)
Ahmad al-Tijānī informs his disciple ‘Alī Ḥarazim that although the legislative prophecy is
sealed, the Prophet nevertheless continues to guide his community and to send messages
through his spiritual heirs. As for Shaykh al-‘Arbī al-Darqāwī (d. 1823), he was considered by
his disciples to be a mujaddid, reviver of religion in the Maghreb, and the pole of the
circumference (qutb al-dā’ira), because of the tens of thousands of disciples who were
affiliated to his Sufi path.26 Below we shall see how Yassine’s predication continued in the
tradition of this Muhammadan path, without naming it.
The overlap between Sharifism, religious renewal and Sufism has left an indelible
mark on the political and religious history of Morocco, where the resulting outlook is very
evident even to the present day. The centre of gravity of the triangle formed by these three
religious poles (Monarchy – Būdshīshīyya – Jamāʿat al-‘Adl wa-l-iḥsān) is the issue of the
Prophet’s earthly heritage (which means that of the imamat), and the legitimate leadership of

23
Sanûsî, al-Salsabîl al-mu‘în, 7.
24
Radtke, ‘Ibriziana’, 113-158.
25
Chih, ‘The Apogee and Consolidation of Sufi Teachings and Organizational Forms (1453-1683)’
26
Meftah, ‘L’initiation dans la Shâdhiliyya-Darqâwiyya’,

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the community. Sīdī Ḥamza claimed to be the holder of the Prophet’s secret, or sirr, which is
the inner knowledge accessible only to God’s elect: the decline of Islam with the passage of
time (fasād al-zamān) is interpreted by the Būdshīshīs as a decline of the spiritual influx of
God’s Messenger; this influx had permeated his community while he was alive and was
preserved after his death only by a small circle of pious men elected by God, to whom fell the
task of reviving this legacy (amāna).27 In his struggle against the Salafis since the attacks of
May 2013, ‘Commander of the faithful’ King Muḥammad VI has supported the Sufi
brotherhoods and in particular the Būdshīshiyya, several of whose most eminent members are
in the government, including Ahmad Tawfiq (mentioned above), and his cabinet head Ahmad
Qustās. The aim of the Būdshīshiyya is to support the monarchy’s claim on the sacred realm
while strengthening and legitimising its own. Yassine has his own concept of prophetic
heritage (wirātha), refusing the king the title of ‘Commander of the faithful’ and rejecting his
claim to religious legitimacy, believing that the king has left the path of God. Yassine ascribes
to himself the role of renewer and admonisher, as the Prophet was described in the Quranic
verse: ‘Indeed, We have sent you with the truth as a bringer of good tidings and a warner’
(Quran 35:24).
I will not present the life and career of Shaykh Yassine here, because Mohamed Tozy
and, later, Malika Zeghal have between them created a fine and carefully-researched portrait
of the man, touching notably on the moments that contributed to his charisma, his role as
censor of the monarchy, and the historical models among Moroccan insurgent Sufis with
whom the shaykh identified, such as al-Yūsī (d. 1691) and Muḥammad al-Kattānī (d. 1910).28
Yassine’s social activism and political opposition to the monarchy have also been the object
of numerous studies among Moroccan and western scholars, in whose works may be found
descriptions of the organisation of the jamā’a and of its activities, often similar to those of the
Būdshīshiyya to which Yassine initially belonged: the visit (ziyāra) to the guide (murshid) in
his house in Salé corresponds to the ziyāra to Sīdī Ḥamza in Madāgh; the structure of the
jamā’a is based on companionship (ṣuḥba), and the ritual is centred on the permanent
mention of God’s Names (dhikr) and the recitation of daily prayers and litanies. As in the
Būdshīshiyya, lessons (majālis), camps and spiritual retreats are organised. Yassine’s book,
The Prophetic path, is taught to the members of the jamā’a as a religious discipline (al-fikr
al-minhājī), like the Quran, the hadīth or the fiqh.29

27
Qustās, Nibrās al-murīd, 36-38; Chih, ‘Shurafā’ and Sufis.
28
Tozy, Monarchie et islam politique au Maroc, 185-226; Zeghal, Les islamistes marocains, Chapter II.
29
Bellal, ‘Mystique et politique chez Abdessalam Yassine et ses adeptes’ 175.

9
 The Prophetic path as self-empowerment for Muslim individuals and communities

The 10 principles of the Prophetic path

The Prophetic Path is Yassine’s most important work because it brings together and
synthesises all of the ideas presented in his forty-odd published texts.30 It has been studied by
many researchers, who have described its structure and principal themes along with their own
readings of its contents. Outside of Morocco, the Minhāj al-Nabawī and the shaykh’s other
writings have been examined at several international conferences organised by the European
Institute for Islamic Sciences and other international Islamic foundations: Istanbul (2012);
Brussels (2013); Ukraine (The National University of Ostroh Academy, 2014); University of
London (British Association for Islamic Studies Annual Conference, 2015).31 After two days
of debates and discussion at the Istanbul conference, on The Centrality of the Holy Koran in
Abdessalam Yassine’s Theory of The Prophetic Method (Al-Minhāj al-Nabawī), the
academics and religious scholars present concluded that Shaykh Yassine was the renewer in
his own time; his Minhāj was described as ‘one of the most prominent and influential
revivalist projects in current intellectual Islamic thought’. Ten days later, the death of Shaykh
Yassine at the age of 84 was announced..
Yassine reminds his readers that minhāj is a Quranic term (sura al-Mā’ida, verse 48),
and that ‘the Islamic law, the sharī‘a, comes from the Quran and the minhāj from the
Prophet’s Sunna.’32 He writes that the minhāj is the path (tarīq) of faith (īmān) – and of the
spiritual struggle against oneself’s ego (jihād) in one’s relationship with God – a path along
which the believer travels (salaka) in order to reach spiritual perfection (ghāyat al-ihsāniyya);
for Yassine the minhāj perfectly expresses the objectives of his text: to translate the Quran
and the Sunna into concrete action (barnamijan ‘amaliyyan) in order to overcome the
obstacles (‘aqabāt) of the times.33 However, the term minhāj is traditionally found in the
Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) texts that currently flood the market for religious books; it was
used by Muslim reformists of the twentieth century, in particular by Ḥasan al-Bannā (d. 1949)

30
https://yassine.net/en/2013/05/14/list-of-books/
31
https://Yassineconferences.net/quran-conf/en/index/
32
Al-Minhāj al-nabāwī, Introduction.
33
Al-Minhāj al-nabāwī, 9.

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who inspired and influenced Shaykh Yassine; the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood spoke
of an Islamic method (al-minhāj al-islāmī) containing all aspects of everyday life – spiritual,
but also social and political. We believe that the use of this term by Yassine and also by the
Būdshīshiyya Sufi brotherhood (whose teaching is described as a path of education, minhāj
tarbiya) reflects the impregnation of Sufism with the influence of a literalist and
fundamentalist reformist Islam, which has obliged Sufism to adapt its vocabulary to match the
evolution of contemporary Muslim thought. Although Yassine’s al-Minhāj al-nabawī has
ambitions to be a practical work (hence the translation by some of minhāj as ‘method’), it
nevertheless contains a great deal of theory, which is expressed in a style and language
accessible only to the educated élite – the élite addressed by Yassine in the hope that they
might make up his jamā’a, his group, which, following the example of the Prophet and his
companions, would support Yassine in his mission and propagate his message. During the
same period, the master of the Būdshīshiyya, Sīdī Ḥamza, also aimed his predication at the
educated élite of the nation, succeeding, with the support of his many close disciples who
were teachers or university students, in recruiting numerous followers among the Moroccan
bourgeoisie.34
The Moroccan political scientist Mohamed Tozy describes al-Minhāj as an original
synthesis of Sufi teachings with the political and religious ideas of the Egyptians Ḥasan al-
Bannā and Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), the former being the founder and the latter a prominent
theorist of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Prophetic Path began to appear in the journal al-
Jamā‘a (16 issues between 1979-1983), during a period marked by two events that shook the
Muslim world: the Iranian revolution in 1978-79 and the 1981 assassination of the President
of Egypt, Anwar al-Sadat, by a member of the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihād. As a result, its
first chapters are marked by a militant, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist tone, and by
reminders of the struggle to be undertaken against all the enemies of Islam: Yassine speaks
here of invasion (ghazw), of a difficult and obstacle-strewn path (ihtiqām al-‘aqaba), of
uprising (qawma). In the second part of the book, he explains his concept of a prophetic path
or method that is entirely contained within the Prophet’s saying (hadīth) on
faith (īmān): ‘Īmān consists of seventy branches, the best of which is the declaration that there
is no god but God and the least of which is the removal of harmful objects from the road, and
modesty is a branch of īmān.’ However, of these seventy branches, only three are cited, which
has led religious scholars to seek the others in the vast hadīth corpus; the best-known work on

34
Chih, ‘Sufism, Education and Politics in Contemporary Morocco’.

11
this subject is by al-Bayhaqī (d. 1066), Shu‘ab al-imān. Yassine rearranged the seventy
branches into ten principles (al-khisal al-‘ashar wa shu‘ab al-īmān) and from these he
derived his model of education (tarbiya) to revive the faith. The first three of these ten
principles are the most important, and adherence to them determines the success of the
method: 1. Companionship and community (al-suḥba wa-l-jamā‘a); 2. Remembrance of God
(dhikr); 3. Sincerity of faith (sidq) towards one’s master and brothers (sincerity of faith has
other aspects, of course, among which are faith in God and His mystery, belief in the Last
Judgement, and belief in pious visions). The other principles are: 4. Offering and sacrifice
(badhl), giving alms, charity towards the poor and orphans; 5. Knowledge (‘ilm); 6. Good
works (‘amal); 7. Religious devotion (al-samt al-hasan); 8. Moderation and discipline (al-
tu’ada, rejecting violence as the means of achieving any legitimate claims); 9. Economy (al-
iqtiṣād); 10. Dominating the ego (al-jihād). This ordering means that it is after the acquisition
of good behaviour and deeds and the transformation of one’s character that one may then
attempt to achieve the continuous striving involved in dominating one’s ego. Thus an Islamic
order cannot be reached unless the individual is educated and trained according to a model,
minhāj, into which all branches of faith are integrated.35

A handbook of ethics

The Prophetic way is essentially a handbook of religious ethics, profoundly inspired by

Sufism. Even the name of the movement founded by Yassine, Jamāʿat al-‘Adl wa-l-iḥsān,
expresses the two distinct registers of his teaching and the intrinsic link that he establishes
between spiritual and moral perfection and social justice. This approach is not particularly
original, especially in the history of Morocco where religious exhortation and social critique
featured side by side in the lives of many of the saints who founded Sufi lineages. Yassine
situates himself in the domain of tarbiya, education, which is not received from books but
acquired through ādāb (refinement, good manners, morals), although he does not employ this
Sufi term. His approach can be summed up as demanding proper behaviour towards God and
His Prophet, oneself, and others. The word iḥsān, built on the Arabic verb aḥsana, means to
act with benevolence, kindness and charity towards others. These qualities are engendered
through the refinement and embellishment of one’s moral character (ḥusn al-khuluq) via the
battle with one’s ego (nafs). An untamed nafs will pull a man towards evil inclinations and

35
Al-Minhāj al-nabāwī, 113.

12
actions (sū’ al-khuluq). The believer who acts and does good for God’s sake alone and not in
the expectation of earthly approbation that would flatter his pride, or even in hope of a reward
in the afterlife, also does genuine good to those around him.
The Prophetic path is meant to be practical and progressive; the one who follows it must
pass from Islam to īmān and then to iḥsān, which, according to the celebrated hadīth of the
angel Jibrīl is the highest degree of faith: ‘that you worship God as if you see Him, for even if
you do not see Him, He sees you’. This method puts divine revelation into practice, rather
than relying on argumentation. Yassine’s thinking is often very metaphysical, entirely
focussed on intuition, inspiration (ilhām) and revelation (waḥy). He believes in the invisible
world (ghayb) and rejects all intellectualism or speculative thinking.36 The Prophetic path is
man’s quest within himself for his primordial nature (fitra) before it was corrupted by the
search for rewards in this lowly world, by stubborn, arrogant and impious reason. Some
passages of the Minhāj in which he rails against the dogmatism of theologians and the
formalism of jurists are reminiscent of the writings of Ghazālī, who established the
superiority of spiritual intuition over reason, and to whom Yassine compares himself37, but
also of the works of the Moroccan Sufi Ibn Idrīs (mentioned above), among them the Risālat
al-radd ‘alā ahl al-ra’y (An epistle in reply to the authorities of the legal schools), as studied
by Bernd Radtke: ‘In his treatise, the main points Ibn Idrīs expounds are these: a Muslim has
only been commanded to obey God and the Prophet. God is the Koran and the Prophet is the
Sunna (...) In order to understand both categories of scripture the techniques of the schools of
jurisprudence are not necessary. What is required is fear of God (taqwā), which each Muslim
can develop individually.’38
Yassine defends himself against accusations that he is a political ideologue of the
Salafi type: ‘Which of us is nearer to his prophetic guidance and method, the jurists of ritual
cleanliness, its pious observance and general application, or the adherents of political Islam,
who meet in session after the call to the afternoon prayer, in order to plan for the Islamic
Caliphate, until the sunset prayer is announced while they are heedless of their prayer?
Making a mockery of Islam, they would allege that the prayer is an act of worship and that
what they are doing is also an act of worship… [such a man’s] deeds will not be sanctioned

36
Al-Minhāj al-nabāwī, 115, The Muslim Mind on Trial.
37
‘Like al-Ghazālī I have found the truth among Sufis, where I realised the limits of Islam as transmitted by the
texts. God allowed me to free myself of ignorance, of an inherited Islam that was badly understood, and to put
me on the path of truth – He pushed me to seek to know Him.’ L’islam ou le déluge, 8; cited by Zeghal, Les
islamistes marocains, 129.
38
Radtke, ‘The Question of Authority’, 252.

13
even if he strives with all his wealth and strength to establish an alleged Islamic Caliphate.’39
For Yassine, true jihād consists of changing one’s way of life and acquiring the habit
of devoting oneself to work during the day and to the recitation of the Quran and
supererogatory prayers at night – but only during the earlier part of the night, for the believer
must get some sleep in order to be able to concentrate on his professional activities during the
day, that he may see to his own needs and those of his family. Yassine uses the Sufi concepts
of wayfaring and progression, of discipline and the training of the soul, of stages (maqām, the
highest of which is that of iḥsān, described as the stage of divine proximity). Yassine calls on
the faithful to follow the same path to spiritual improvement as himself, until they reach its
perfect realisation. He is therefore himself a model to be imitated, and love for the Prophet is
passed on via love for the Shaykh. He reminds the faithful that the Prophet was not only a
messenger but also a guide and a teacher (Quran 62:2), which Yassine means in the sense of a
spiritual father: the Prophet felt both the love of a father for his son and the patience of the
master towards his disciple. Yassine himself established this kind of paternal relationship with
his disciples.40 Companionship (al-ṣuḥba wa-l-jamā‘a) is the first and most important of the
ten principles of the Prophetic path (and the keystone of any mystical organisation), so he
called his group al-Jamā‘a. Yassine sets up a rapport of companionship (ṣuḥba) between the
guide and his disciples, based on the relationship between the Prophet and his companions
(sahāba). He writes that the guide must be the object of respectful or reverential fear (hayba),
as was the Prophet, for the guide is a reminder of God, and God’s Messenger on earth –
submission to a holy (walī) and pious (ṣāliḥ) guide (murshid) is submission to God.41 This
relationship is sealed by a pact (bay’a). Yassine had a very strong feeling for the group, the
community, believing in the solidarity essential to its members as social ties began to
disintegrate.
Yassine has been labelled an Islamist, a term popularised during the 1980s by French
scholars and used to refer to modern movements that politicise the religious realm: Wahhābīs,
Salafis, jihādīs, the Muslim brotherhood... This catch-all term masks the complexity of the
different configurations involved. For example Yassine’s position on the status of the Prophet
is very distant from what one finds in the writings of the Wahhābī or Salafi tendency.
Although Sunni Islamist groups assume many different forms, they generally have a
theoretical link with Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) in common: this Ḥanbalī theologian’s ideas,

39
Yassine, The Muslim Mind on Trial, 29.
40
Yassine, The Muslim Mind on Trial, 18.
41
Al-Minhāj al-nabāwī, 123.

14
rejecting the sacralisation of the figure of the Prophet and all forms of devotion to his person
in accordance with his concept of divine unity (al-tawhīd), were initially recuperated and
simplified by Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (d. 1791) and the followers of the
fundamentalist religious movement he created. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb’s essential doctrine is
contained in his ‘Book of Divine Unity’ (Kitāb al-tawḥīd); as the title indicates, he develops
therein his own concept of the dogma of unity and of the absolute uniqueness of God as
Creator and Sustainer of the universe, with its different components (tawhīd al-rubūbiyya, the
affirmation of God’s omnipotence, tawḥīd al-ulūhiyya, the reservation of worship only to
God).42 He exhorts the reader to return to a pure monotheism and to ‘devote [himself] to an
exclusive worship of God alone without any associate’. This therefore excludes the veneration
of any being or thing other than God. He considers the veneration of the Prophet and the
belief in his intercession as a form of idolatry (shirk) and of impiety (kufr). In his biography
of the Prophet Muḥammad (his own abridged version of the life of the Prophet), entitled
Mukhtasar sīrat al-rasūl Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhāb erases from the most commonly
accepted version of the Prophet’s life, the Sīra by Ibn Hishām, all the episodes that
demonstrate the suprahuman nature of the Prophet. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb retains only the parts
of the biography that show the Prophet as an ordinary, sometimes fallible, human being, like
all men (mentioning the notorious story of the Satanic Verses as being based on fact),
asserting that it is only in this sense that the Prophet may be, and must be, imitated.43

The continuer of the Prophet’s mission on earth and the renewer of his Sunna

Yassine depicts a Prophet who is close to mankind – because he is human – and

simultaneously unlike other people (basharan lā ka-bashar) because of his divine election.
Those who lowered the status of the Prophet, making of him a simple transmitter whose
mission on earth ended once his message was delivered, are called blind and idiotic. In order
to enlighten the faithful on the status of the Prophet, sent to bring mercy to the worlds, and on
the extraordinary nature of his mission (as Yassine expresses himself in one of his lessons
posted on Youtube), he recommends that they read the poem al-Burda (The Mantle), the best-
known poem in praise of the Prophet by the Egyptian Muḥammad al-Busīrī (d. 1298). This
poem about love for the Prophet combines a description of his physical and moral beauty with
an account of his birth, his miracles, his celestial ascension and the quest for his intercession.

42
Peskes and Ende, “Wahhābiyya”; Mouline, The Clerics of Islam.
43
Riexinger, ‘Rendering Muḥammad Human Again’. See his contribution in this volume

15
Yassine thus supports the idea that between his death and his resurrection the Prophet is still
alive and communicating with mankind, especially with those who have been directly
initiated by him.
In Yassine’s conception, the Sunna may be represented differently according to its varied
historical contexts. The Prophetic path is the Sunna of the Prophet as re-activated by its
inheritor, who is able to take into account his own historical time and the necessity of
adapting the Sunna to his time: ‘Ulama of the past have debated about the concept of tajdīd,
and how to recognise the renewer of his time. It is important for us to know the meaning of
tajdīd: who can renew the religion and how. Renewal receives strength (mustamiddan) from
the Prophetic guidance, the Prophetic Sunna and the Prophetic method (hudā, sunna,
minhāj).’44 Then Yassine quotes the most famous hadīth on tajdīd, transmitted by Abū Dā’ūd:
‘At the turn of each century God will send to this community someone who will renew its
religion.’45
Here we are faced with the figure of the renewer in its Sufi conception, the tajdīd being
the re-actualisation of the Prophetic model – that is, the Sunna – in a post-Prophetic context.46
Yassine believes in a continual re-interpretation of the divine message (and thus of God’s
law) by a person who has conformed to the Prophetic model; thus he expresses the possibility
of innovation in Islam in its changing historical contexts. God and His will cannot be known
by common mortals; only those who have approached Him through combatting their egos and
purifying their souls until they obtain spiritual openness can receive messages from the
Prophet enabling them to continue guiding their communities until the end of time. In the
second chapter of Al-Minhāj al-nabawī, called tajdīd al-dīn, Yassine presents himself as the
renewer of the religion of the fifteenth Hegiran century, attributing this title for the fourteenth
century to Ḥasan al-Bannā who also came from a Sufi background.
The degree of tajdīd is defined by Yassine as that of the walāya al-kubrā. There is a
hierarchy among the ‘friends of God’ (awliyā’ Allāh), and the walāya al-kubrā corresponds to
the highest stage, that of spiritual openness (fatḥ) and interior vision (baṣā’ir): ‘This is an
elevated degree that God through His grace grants to his elect’. The perfection inherited from
God (kamāl al-wirātha), is not acquired through exoteric science (‘ilm), and it is not sought
out by the believer: this is a gift of divine grace. The character (khuluq) of the person who has

44
Al-Minhāj al-nabāwī, Chapter II: Tajdīd an dīn wa-l-imān.
45
Abū Dā’ūd (d. 889) was a Persian scholar of prophetic hadīth who compiled the third of the six ‘canonical’
hadīth collections recognised by Sunni Muslims, the Sunan Abū Dā’ūd Al-Ṣaʿīdī, Al-Mujaddidūn fī-l-islām.
Voll, ‘Renewal and Reform in Islamic History’; Lapidus, ‘Islamic Revival and Modernity’.
46
Pagani, ‘Renewal before Reformism’.

16
the most elevated experience of faith becomes the Quran (as Aisha described the Prophet).
The one who is chosen in this way must work to raise up the community of believers (qawma
al-umma al islāmiyya): this is understood to be the meaning of the qiyām, ‘holding oneself
upright’ before God and in His hands, thanks to a permanent interior jihād undertaken in
order to allow the Prophetic path to triumph. The qawma is the objective and end of the
tarbiya.

The caliphate according to the Prophetic path (al-khilāfa ‘alā minhāj al-nubuwwa)

In the Maghreb, the rhetoric of renewal that is present among all founders of new Sufi
orders since the early Modern period refers not only to the question of the imamate, but also
to the notions of redemption and salvation. On the Jamā‘a website (and thus widely available)
are postings describing visions granted to disciples of Shaykh Yassine; these visions confirm
the Shaykh’s status as heir of the Prophet and renewer of his community. In some of them the
Prophet himself is seen to approve the contents of the Minhāj and to recommend that
believers read it, or to accept the orientation of the Guidance Council (majlis al-irshād)47 of
the Jamā’a, or to promise paradise to its followers. In other visions the Shaykh himself
appears, taking precedence over the four Caliphs and imposing himself as the elect of the
Prophet in a flash of bright light; the saint’s house in Salé becomes a sacred place. Most of
the disciples’ dreams show Shaykh Yassine in the presence of the Prophet and surrounded by
angels. In another vision, the Prophet arrives on a white horse, from which he dismounts,
asking Shaykh Yassine to mount in his place. The Prophet then strikes the horse’s rump and
enjoins him to continue on his course.48 Some researchers have detected a messianic promise
in Shaykh Yassine’s predication and the apocalyptic character of his writings (Islam or the
Flood), a promise of the Shaykh’s arrival and the restoration of the ideal community (his
jamā’a) on earth before the end of times. In this context, then, one should read Yassine’s
predication in the light of Morocco’s Mahdist tradition, which was begun by Ibn Tūmart
(1080-1130).49 This Berber from the south of Morocco proclaimed himself mahdī and, with
the support of the Atlas tribes, laid the foundations of the Almohad state (1130-1269), thus
successfully transforming his religious and prophetic authority into political sovereignty. The

47
Executive Council of the Jamâ‘a entrusted to supervise the activities of the movement. It was founded on the
model of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s maktab al-irshâd (leadership bureau).
48
Tozy has examined about sixty of these visions from the Jamā‘a website, analysing their political role: Tozy,
‘L'évolution du champ religieux marocain au défi de la mondialisation’.
49
Chekroun, ‘Islamisme, messianisme et utopie au Maghreb’.

17
messianic dimension of Almohad power is aligned with the Muḥammadan prophecy as far as
the origins and beginnings of Islam are concerned: at the end of times, after the Mahdī, the era
of the Caliphate will begin again. Thus the first four Almohad Caliphs received the title of
‘Rightly Guided’ (rāshidūn). The Almohad Caliphs were simultaneously imām (infallible
religious guides) and caliphs, God’s representative on earth (khalīfa); they demonstrated a
universal ambition to lead the entire Islamic umma.50 Does Yassine represent the messianic
figure of the khalīfa, who lays the groundwork for the coming of the ‘Master of the Hour’
(Mūl al-Sā‘a), in addition to being a renewer of religion? In the Sunni tradition the two
figures, mahdī and mujaddid, are often linked. During a lesson taught as part of a spiritual
retreat to Salé with his disciples (posted on Youtube), Yassine identifies his role with that of
the Prophet who brings a warning. He expresses the spiritual destitution and ignorance about
God in which his community finds itself and warns it of the ultimate end of times (al-Sā‘a)
and the necessity for good behaviour in this earthly life. The theme of death and the afterlife
is omnipresent in his lessons as in his writings: Yassine exhorts men to change their
behaviour so that they may arrive at a new order made of ‘justice and moral and spiritual
excellence’, in preparation for eternal life. For Yassine, history unfolds in successive stages or
reigns, each of which ends in fitna, disorder, but, thanks to the presence of a category of men
sent by God, Islam and the Caliphate are cyclically revivified in accordance with the
Prophetic path (al-khilāfa ‘alā minhāj al-nubuwwa), ending corruption and re-establishing
justice and the universal message of Islam before the end of times. This outlook can indeed be
compared to that of messianic Mahdism, which features the re-establishment of the
Caliphate. 51 On the Jamā‘a website, Yassine has the titles of guide and renewer (imām
mujaddid).

Conclusion
Drawing on his best-known work, Al-Minhāj al-Nabawī, this article has sought to cast
new light on Yassine’s Sufi itinerary, and on its impact on his thinking and his actions as a
man of religion. Within the framework of this collective volume on modern constructions of
the Prophet’s image, and the co-opting of this image for political ends, the aim was to analyse
Yassine’s way of representing the Prophet, and his own relationship with God’s messenger –
a relationship that was intended to serve as an example for every Muslim. The Prophetic

50
Buresi, Les Almohades; Garcia-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform.
51
Al-Minhāj al-nabāwī, 19-20.

18
Path, the publication of which started at the beginning of the 1980s, set out to express a
modern revival of Islamic faith and a re-actualisation of the Prophet’s Sunna, presented by
one who had achieved the prophetic model of perfection. Yassine is the heir of a long
religious tradition in Morocco, the dogmas and figures of which (especially the sharīf-mahdī,
here interpreted in the sense of mujaddid, renovator) are not frozen in time, but alive and
dynamic; they have always and continually been reappropriated and remodeled, according to
their evolving historical and cultural contexts. Yassine revisits the figure of the mujaddid in
Islam and introduces into its conception new ideas and forms of language in order to
encourage believers into their self transformation as Muslims, motivated by the notion of
ihsān, excellence in the adoration of God: in Sufism ihsān is the highest degree of religion
after submission to Quranic prescriptions (islām) and faith in God (īmān). Through Yassine’s
predication the believer discovers his own capacity to transform himself and act on society;
thus Yassine’s teaching is also a political project.
Scholars of political science tend to agree that the thinking of Shaykh Yassine is
original because he reconciled mysticism and social (or even political) activism. However, the
very term ‘mysticism’, borrowed from the Christian lexicon, is inappropriate because it
ignores the entire social dimension of Sufism, and its intrinsic political implications, along
with the eminently collective and public aspects of Sufism. Political scientists and
sociologists have presented the structure of the Jamā’a, existing in opposition to an
individualistic Islam, as a novelty, but even in its formative period Sufism was always a social
and collective phenomenon. Since its emergence in the writings of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d.
898), the figure of the saint (walī) is a political one; Tirmidhī developed his theory of sanctity
(walāya) and its relation to prophecy (nubuwwa) during a period of weakening of the Abbasid
caliphate, and granted the walī prerogatives similar to those of the Prophet from whom he
inherited, thus putting him in competition with other religious contenders on the issue (one
that is endlessly debated in Islam), of authority. With Tirmidhī the walī was brought into the
religious and historical conscience of Muslims: subsequently the notion of sainthood changed
in different historical periods, adapting to social contexts; this allowed the walī to adopt
socially recognised types of behaviour to respond to the hopes and expectations of his
community. Through time, the language of the saint may change, but his practice remains the
same: the figure of the saint who chastises a prince, or even competes with him on the issue of
the legitimacy of terrestrial powers, is a familiar theme in hagiographic literature. This figure
symbolises the tension that has always existed in Islam, between the realities of political

19
power and the powers to which men of religion have laid claim, alongside their aspirations or
pretensions to being above political power.52
M. Garcia-Arenal has published several pieces of research showing that millenarism
and eschatological discourse appear to be inherent to Maghrebi Sufism since at least the
twelfth century, and that no doctrine of sainthood can be complete if it doesn’t attempt to
define political legitimacy. Although Yassine demonstrates his in-depth knowledge of the
classics of contemporary Islamic thought (Bannā, Qutb and Mawdūdī), he also takes on
models of sainthood that are socially recognised in the Maghreb specifically, and sees himself
in the model offered by the Sufi Muhammad Kattānī, nicknamed The Martyr, who rebelled
against two successive Sultans. The role that Kattānī attributed to the Sufi shaykh is that of
faqih mujtahid, a jurist who exercise ijtihād (independent reasoning) in an external as well as
an esoteric way. Kattānī affirms that his knowledge of divine law is received either while
awake or in a dream state, directly from the Prophet – and that this qualifies him for the role
of mujtahid. This claim by the Sufis to a superior interpretation of the sacred scriptures
defines the tarīqa muhammadiyya. The Kattānīs emerged in Fez in the context of popular
discontent and revolts provoked by the profound economic changes taking place in the second
half of the nineteenth century. It didn’t take all that long for the local Sufi Kattāniyya to
transform itself into a political force capable of mobilising the masses, as it was to do during
the revolt of 1907.53 During his lifetime Yassine always refused to participate in the political
system as defined by the monarchy (although his successors may think differently);
nevertheless, Yassine did demonstrate his power to mobilise people in the streets, the
university campuses and in his own association. He also left behind an important body of
work and his guide, The Prophetic Path.
The term ‘Islamist’, broad and undefined as it may be, is not appropriate to describe
Shaykh Yassine. It’s true that he did not call himself a Sufi either – that term had been
delegitimised during the construction of Morocco’s national history. Yet his teachings fit well
into the spiritual traditions of his country and region. These traditions are plural, and have
brought forth masters with diverse profiles: some were in search of ascesis and retreat from
the world, while others engaged with the social and political events of their times, claiming
for themselves an earthly authority similar to that of the Prophet within his own community.
Observation of the success of Yassine’s foundation and that of the Sufi Sidi Ḥamza (whom
his disciples call Mūl al-waqt, Master of the present moment) provides a clear demonstration

52
Berque, Ulémas, fondateurs et insurgés du Maghreb.
53
Bazzaz, Forgotten Saints.

20
of the pervasiveness in contemporary Morocco of historical models of ‘insurgent saints’
(Berque).

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www.aljamaa.com

Dr. Rachida Chih is a Senior Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research
(CNRS) and a member of the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central Asian Studies
(CETOBAC), École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. Rachida Chih
has done extensive research on the history, literature and anthropology of Sufism and Sufi
orders in early modern and modern Egypt and Morocco. H e r m o s t r e c e n t
p u b l i s h e d w o r k s i n c l u d e : Sufism in Ottoman Egypt: Circulation, Renewal and
Authority in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (2019); ‘The Apogee and
Consolidation of Sufi Teachings and Organizational Forms (1453-1683)’, in The Wiley-
Blackwell History of Islam and Islamic Civilization (2018); Sufism, Literary Production and
Printing in the Nineteenth Century edited with C. Mayeur-Jaouen and R. Seesemann (2015).

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