Morocco’s AKP vows liberal moral policy

RABAT

Abdelilah Benkirane. AFP photo

Morocco’s Justice and Development Party (PJD), the first Islamist party to head a government in Rabat, will not impose a strict moral code but instead champion arts, a leading party figure said.

A win in parliamentary elections last month for the liberal Islamic PJD, which inspired its name from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), came quickly on the heels of a similar win for an Islamist party in Tunisia following Arab Spring uprisings across the region.

“We are not interested in people’s private lives. We don’t care about their beliefs, or their behavior,” Mohamed Yatim, a member of PJD’s general secretariat, told Reuters in an interview. “We will never force women to wear the veil because our religion is about tolerance,” he said. Morocco has an Islamic-inspired penal code that bans Moroccans buying alcohol, but authorities favor a tolerant brand of Islam.