Allal al-Fassi

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Muhammad Allal al-Fassi (January 10, 1910May 19, 1974), was a Moroccan politician, writer, poet and Islamic scholar.

He was born in Fes, Morocco, and founded the nationalist Istiqlal party which was a driving force in the Moroccan struggle for independence from French colonial rule. He broke with the party in the mid-1950s, siding with armed revolutionaries and urban guerrillas who waged a violent campaign against French rule, whereas most the nationalist mainstream preferred a diplomatic solution. In 1956, as Morocco gained independence, he reentered the party, and famously presented his case for reclaiming territories that have once been Moroccan in the newspaper al-Alam. In 1959, after the left-wing UNFP split off from Istiqlal, he became head of the party. He advocated the Arabisation of Berbers and Islamisation of the school system through madrasahs.

In 1962, he briefly served as Morocco's Minister of Islamic Affairs. He was elected to the Parliament of Morocco in 1963, and served there as an Istiqlal deputy. He then went on to become a main leader within the " opposition" during the 1960s and the start of the 1970s. He died in 1974, on a visit to Romania where he was scheduled to meet with Nicolae Ceauşescu.

  • In 1925 Al-Fassi published his first book of poems.
  • One of Allal al-Fassi's books (published in Arabic in 1948) was translated as The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa (1954).

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