The period immediately before and after Morocco's independence in 1956 witnessed a crucial debate about secularism. A consequence of WWII, the future of the significant Moroccan Jewry imposed itself on Moroccan leaders, who had to devise solutions that would reconcile the Moroccan nation state's political, linguistic, and cultural future with the pull factors that were increasingly drawing Moroccan Jews toward emigration. Secularism emerged as an important solution to the postcolonial situation. Extending from reimagining citizenship to rethinking languages and inventing a diversity-friendly political system in which religion would become an individual matter without much influence on politics. Drawing on sources from the 1930s to the early 1960s, this talk will reveal different stakeholders tried to center secularism as a path toward an all-inclusive, post-independence Morocco.
About the Speaker
Brahim El Guabli is Associate Professor of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests and publications encompass Amazigh Studies, Arabic Studies, and French and Francophone Studies as well as Indigenous Studies and Jewish Studies, among others. He is the author of the award-winning book Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence (Fordham University Press, 2023) and Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences (University of California Press, 2025). His forthoming book is entitled Amazighitude: Living Amazigh Indigeneity in the World (University of Regine Press). El Guabli is co-founder and co-editor of Tamazgha Studies Journal and the Amazigh Studies series (Georgetown University Press).
Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies