In a campaign rally in Laâyoune a week before Morocco’s September 23 legislative elections, Abdelilah Benkirane, leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), leveled sharp criticism at the government, singling out Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi over proposed changes to family law.
The former prime minister told supporters that reforms under discussion, including changes to the Moudawana, Morocco’s family code, inheritance rules, and the treatment of consensual relationships outside marriage, amount to an attempt to rewrite religious law. « They want to change God’s law and the precepts of religion, » Benkirane said, in remarks that quickly circulated among Moroccan media.
Much of his ire was directed at the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), which holds key positions in the outgoing government and has pushed several of the contested legal changes. Benkirane questioned the sincerity of arguments framed around women’s rights, suggesting they served as cover for a broader loosening of social norms he considers foreign to Moroccan values.
Speaking in the Sahara city that has become a symbolic stop for parties courting southern constituencies, Benkirane urged residents to back the PJD at the ballot box, framing his party as the last line of defense against what he described as a moral drift.
The remarks land in the middle of a heated campaign season, where questions of identity and social policy are competing for attention alongside more conventional economic concerns like the cost of living and employment. The ongoing overhaul of the family code, launched with royal backing months ago, has repeatedly exposed the fault line between conservative and progressive currents in Moroccan politics.
Neither the Justice Ministry nor the PAM had responded publicly to Benkirane’s accusations by the time of writing. The silence leaves the exchange as another skirmish in a campaign already marked by sharp rhetoric over values-based issues.
Analysts following the vote say Benkirane’s strategy reflects an effort to rally the PJD’s conservative base in the campaign’s final stretch, betting that cultural anxieties can still move votes even as bread-and-butter issues dominate most voters’ concerns.
