The Neoliberal Cul-De-Sac of Moroccan Atheist Activism: Striving for Cultural Catch-up, Not for Social Justice

This paper argues that Moroccan atheist activism is rooted in a discourse of cultural catch-up, modeled on European enlightenment ideals of reason, rationalism and secularism. For enlightenment and freedom of belief to take place in Muslim soil, Muslims need to “kill their own God,” too. A key activist frames his project thus: “I’ll do with the Quran what Martin Luther did with the bible.” This cultural project falls prey to ethnocentrism, language determinism and the modernity/coloniality matrix of enlightenment. As such, it remains reticent to issues of social justice, increasing authoritarian politics, and racial and epistemic injustice in the age of genocide. This paper explores the potential of a double critique to reframe atheist activism as a radical positionality, capable of addressing social, political, and epistemic injustices in both semi-authoritarian ecologies and colonial/ genocidal contexts.