Many countries in the MENA region have experienced, from the late 1970s and early 1980s, a rise of religious conservatism coupled with a process of radicalization of a small but increasingly visible part of its (young) population. Such processes are embedded in a context marked by international events, as well as domestic economic, social and political developments.
Among the external events, the wars of Afghanistan (from the late 1970s to nowadays), the war in Bosnia of the 1990s, the ‘Intifidas’ of 1987 and 2000 in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as the more recent wars in Iraq (from 2003) and in Syria (from 2011) all played a role in shaping the Arab (and Muslim) public opinion.
These external events have been amplified, within MENA region and in several Arab-Muslim countries, by the conjunction of socio-economic and political factors, which have made the arguments in favour of ‘Political Islam’ more attractive for many, and especially for youth. Such arguments have offered a simple explanation for the suffering of Muslim populations, pointing at their distance from the ‘true values of Islam’ and to the hatred of Westerners towards them.
Among the domestic economic and social elements, the increase in poverty among the population, the deepening of wealth inequality, youth unemployment, high levels of illiteracy and weak health systems all contributed to widespread grievances. Such factors have all been made more visible and more serious by the coronavirus crisis that has hit in 2020. Other elements that are of qualitative, intangible, cultural and political nature, are the increasing weakness of ‘traditional’ political parties, including left-wing parties.
All this has led - since the 1980s - to the strengthening of Radical Islamist currents, under the influence of trends related to the activist / jihadist interpretations of Saudi ‘Wahhabism’ or of the Muslim Brothers’ ‘brotherhood’. In more recent years (since 2014-2016), small groups that claim an affinity to the ideology of Al Qaeda or the Islamic State have taken the lead.
In cooperation with many European and Asian research institutions, within the frame of the GREASE project, an European project within the framework of the H2020 program, the University Mohammed 5 - Rabat (UMVR) researched the rise of the phenomenon of religiously inspired radicalization in Morocco and Tunisia. The UMVR has carried out a critical review in these two countries of public policies aimed at managing the religious sphere and at strengthening certain forms of secularisation within society.
With this Webinar, which was originally to be a workshop organized physically in Morocco, we propose to:
- Assess, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, the extent of the religiously motivated violent radicalisation in MENA Region, especially in North Africa;
- Analyze the mechanisms that induced and maintained this radicalization as well as the forms it has taken;
- Discuss public policies, as well as the role of NGOs, in containing it, with the aim of pacifying society and reducing radical tensions within it.