Decentering the Human: Moroccan Islamism and Rights

This essay draws on the language of Moroccan islamiyūn to identify an existing rights discourse that does away with both the abstract human and the empathetic person, instead centering on God and God's injunctions. I analyze ordinary language interviews with over 100 islamiyūn from Morocco's two most popular groups to argue that, to my interlocutors, rights are both from and for God. This articulation of rights fundamentally transforms rights from a secular quest for justice to aspirations that always hold both worldly and extra-worldly significance. Finally, the language of rights employed by Moroccan islamiyūn broadens the Muslim tradition by bringing God and God's Prophet to bear on a distinctly modern discourse.