(Traduction : Fiona Simpkins, MCF Civilisation britannique,
UMR 5206)

Speaker : Haoues Seniguer, UMR CNRS 5195 GREMMO, University Lumière of Lyon 2

haouesseniguer@yahoo.fr

Summary :

The Parti de la Justice et du Développement (PJD) is a formation that officially entered the House of Representatives in Morocco in 1998. It belongs to the constellation of movements and/or parties of a so-called legalist Islamism. Being very much influenced and impregnated by the teachings and ideology of the Muslim Brothers of Egypt as well as their main theorists (Hassan Al Banna, Sayid Qotb, Maududi), the current leaders of the PJD have switched from clandestine action to a legitimist activism that takes into account the political order and the institutions represented by the King, both chief of the Executive and Commander of the Faith. The PJD is the product of the fusion of the MPDC (Mouvement Populaire Démocratique Constitutionnel) created in 1967 by a relative of the Royal Family, various Islamist associations, including Jeunesse Islamique where Abdelillah Benkirane and Saadine Al Othmani, respectively First Secretary and President of the National Council of the PJD, first started. The latter organisation was founded in 1969 before being dissolved by the government in 1975, its founder having been found legally responsible for the assassination of a left-wing unionist.

Recourse to lexical and semeiological analyses brings light to the changes of strategies and agenda that were conceded. If a semeiological study is an indication of what is left unsaid in the Islamic party, a lexical analysis (in Arabic and French) makes it possible to either confirm or nuance this. It also allows a deconstruction of certain aspects of party leaders’ public communication and a better definition of the exact contours of these either real or alleged ideological revisions. The attention brought to the successive names of the different associations that gave birth to the PJD makes it possible to put the actors’ discourse at a distance.

Keywords :

Muslim Brothers, Jeunesse Islamique, Morocco, Parti de la Justice et du Développement, political onomastics