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Morocco's King Aims To Build a Modern Islamic Democracy: Moroccan King Mohammed VI is using a tolerant interpretation of the Koran in an attempt to modernize his country. Will it become a model state for a democratic version of Islam? (Helene Zuber, 1/12/06, Der Spiegel)

Morocco's 42-year-old King Mohammed VI has discovered religion as a means of modernizing his society -- and progress through piety seems to be the order of the day. By granting new rights to women and strengthening civil liberties, the ruler of this country of 30 million on Africa's northern edge, which is 99 percent Muslim, plans to democratize Morocco through a tolerant interpretation of the Koran.

Morocco's 350-year-old dynasty, the world's oldest next to the Japanese imperial dynasty, claims to be directly descended from the prophet Mohammed. And as "Amir al-Muminin," or leader of the faithful, the country's ruler enjoys absolute authority.

The Conseil Supérieur des Oulémas, or council of religious scholars, which the king installed a year and a half ago, has been issuing fatwas on the most pressing questions of the 21st century -- and, surprisingly, they've been well-received by both young people and hardened Islamists. If the king's reform plan succeeds, Morocco could become a model of democratic Islam.

Five decades after his country declared its independence from its French and Spanish colonial rulers and six years after the death of his father, Hassan II, Mohammed VI is trying to achieve a delicate balance between thousands of years of Islamic tradition and the demands of a globalized world.

Eight weeks ago Mohammed VI, as Morocco's "citizen king" and "first servant," addressed his "dear people" during festivities to celebrate the anniversary of his grandfather's return from exile. "The path we have irrevocably chosen," said Mohammed, "is to strengthen civil rights for the benefit of all Moroccans - whom I view as equals, regardless of their status." The foreign dignitaries in attendance, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, praised the course that the government of Prime Minister Driss Jetou has taken under the king's leadership.

Soumia Benkhaldoun, 42, is also enthusiastic about her king. An engineer with a doctorate in computer systems, Benkhaldoun is one of the six women representing the Islamist "Justice and Development Party" at the country's opulent parliament building in Rabat. Although her party's true objective is to preserve a devout and god-fearing lifestyle in Morocco, the Islamists are also very pleased with the reforms of family law that began in the fall of 2003.

The public debate in Morocco currently revolves around ways to reconcile the demands of feminists with the Islamists' concept of family. Should women be permitted to go to the beach in a bikini? Should they be able to hold high-ranking public office? Do illegitimate children receive the mother's citizenship? The answers to these and other questions, in Morocco and in other Arab countries, will likely reveal whether the Islamic world is even capable of reform.

"The king has taken our concerns into account," says Professor Benkhaldoun, and a proud smile darts across her girlish face under her white headscarf. Indeed, Mohammed VI has managed to incorporate Morocco's only Islamist party into his reform agenda. The progressive king and the pious member of parliament from Kenitra, a woman so devout that she even fasts once a week when it isn't Ramadan, both base their reasoning on the same source: Sharia, or Islamic law.