The Moroccan monarchy and the Boutchichiyya order : constructing ‘moderate Islam’ through discourse

Abstract

The following dissertation presents a critical discourse analysis of how the Moroccan monarchy constructs "moderate Islam" as a political project through its alliance with the Boutchichiyya Sufi Order. Following the 2003 Casablanca bombings, the monarchy promoted Sufi Islam as the foundation of an official moderate Islam, using the Boutchichiyya as its preferred partner. Existing scholarship has documented the institutions and policies this strategy produced, but has not examined how the relationship between the monarchy and the Order is constructed in official language. This dissertation addresses that gap. It asks two questions: how is the discourse of "moderate Islam" constructed in Moroccan state communications, and what role does the Boutchichiyya play within it; and what language strategies reinforce the authority of King Mohammed VI as Commander of the Faithful through the use of Sufi discourse. The study uses Critical Discourse Analysis, specifically Ruth Wodak's Discourse-Historical Approach. The corpus consists of five Arabic-language speeches produced between 2012 and 2016: three throne day addresses by King Mohammed VI and two speeches by Ahmed Toufiq, Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs and a senior Boutchichiyya member. The analysis works from the Arabic originals and traces the five DHA strategies of nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivation, and intensification across the corpus. Four patterns run through the speeches: legitimation of royal religious authority, the construction of obedience as both religious and national duty, Qur'anic reference as a form of argumentative warrant, and the construction of Morocco as a model of moderate Islam. The Commander of the Faithful title holds these patterns together. Toufiq's dual position as state minister and senior Order member is the clearest evidence in the corpus that the state and the Boutchichiyya are not separate actors in cooperation but a single arrangement held together in particular individuals. The Order's name never appears in the speeches, and that absence is itself analytically significant.