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The National Popular Movement (French : Mouvement National Populaire) was a political party in Morocco.
The party was founded in 1991, as a split of the Popular Movement, under veteran Berber politician and former defense minister Mahjoubi Aherdane, and is known to have a very strong Berber element. [1] [2]
At the legislative elections on 27 September 2002, the party won 18 out of 325 seats.
The party was dissolved and merged back into the Popular Movement in 2006.
Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to the east, and the disputed territory of Western Sahara to the south. Morocco also claims the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta, Melilla and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, and several small Spanish-controlled islands off its coast. It has a population of approximately 37 million. Islam is both the official and predominant religion, while Arabic and Berber are the official languages. Additionally, French and the Moroccan dialect of Arabic are widely spoken. The culture of Morocco is a mix of Arab, Berber, African and European cultures. Its capital is Rabat, while its largest city is Casablanca.
The history of human habitation in Morocco spans since the Lower Paleolithic, with the earliest known being Jebel Irhoud. Much later Morocco was part of Iberomaurusian culture, including Taforalt. It dates from the establishment of Mauretania and other ancient Berber kingdoms, to the establishment of the Moroccan state by the Idrisid dynasty followed by other Islamic dynasties, through to the colonial and independence periods.
Tifinagh is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuareg people of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, northeastern Mali, northern Niger, and northern Burkina Faso for writing the Tuareg languages. Neo-Tifinagh is an alphabet developed by the Berber Academy by adopting Tuareg Tifinagh for use for Kabyle; it has been since modified for use across North Africa.
Berbers, or the Berber peoples, also called by their endonym Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Arab migrations to the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family. They are indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa, where they live in scattered communities across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and to a lesser extent Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger. Smaller Berber communities are also found in Burkina Faso and Egypt's Siwa Oasis.
The Popular Movement is a royalist and traditionalist rural-focused political party in Morocco. It is a member of Liberal International. The party has a history of cooperating with two other parties with a liberal orientation, the National Rally of Independents and the Constitutional Union, since 1993.
Berber music refers to the musical traditions of the Berbers, a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Arab migration to the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of the mostly mutually unintelligible Berber languages. Berber music varies widely across North Africa. It is stylistically diverse, with songs being predominantly African rhythms and a stock of oral literature.
Berberism is a Berber ethnonationalist movement, that started mainly in Kabylia (Algeria) and Morocco during the French colonial era with the Kabyle myth and was largely driven by colonial capitalism and France's divide and conquer policy. The Berberist movement originally manifested itself as anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, and Francophilia, that was sanctioned and sponsored by French colonial authorities. The movement later spread to other Berber communities in the Maghreb region of North Africa and was facilitated by colonial policies such as the Berber Dahir. The Berberist movement in Algeria and Morocco is in opposition to cultural Arabization, pan-Arabism and Islamism.
The culture of Morocco is a blend of Arab, Berber, Andalusi cultures, with Mediterranean, Hebraic and African influences. It represents and is shaped by a convergence of influences throughout history. This sphere may include, among others, the fields of personal or collective behaviors, language, customs, knowledge, beliefs, arts, legislation, gastronomy, music, poetry, architecture, etc. While Morocco started to be stably predominantly Sunni Muslim starting from 9th–10th century AD, during the Almoravid period, a very significant Andalusi culture was imported, contributing to the shaping of Moroccan culture. Another major influx of Andalusi culture was brought by Andalusis with them following their expulsion from Al-Andalus to North Africa after the Reconquista. In antiquity, starting from the second century A.D and up to the seventh, a rural Donatist Christianity was present, along an urban still-in-the-making Roman Catholicism. All of the cultural super strata tend to rely on a multi-millennial aboriginal Berber substratum still present and dating back to prehistoric times.
The Berber Spring was a period of political protest and civil activism in 1980, claiming recognition of the Berber identity and language in Algeria, with events mainly taking place in Kabylia and Algiers.
The Berber Dahir is a dhahir (decree) that was created by the French protectorate in Morocco on May 16, 1930. The document changed the legal system in the parts of Morocco in which Berber languages were primarily spoken, and the legal system in the rest of the country would remain the way it had been before the French invasion. Sultan Muhammad V signed the Dahir under no duress though he was only 20 years old at the time.
Riffians or Rifians are a Berber ethnic group originally from the Rif region of northeastern Morocco. Communities of Riffian immigrants are also found in southern Spain, Netherlands and Belgium as well as elsewhere in Western Europe. They are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims, but retain their pre-Islamic traditions such as high status for Riffian women.
In March 2000, women's groups organised demonstrations in Casablanca proposing reforms to the legal status of women in the country. 40,000 women attended, calling for a ban on polygamy and the introduction of civil divorce law. Although a counter-demonstration attracted half a million participants, the movement for change started in 2000 was influential on King Mohammed, and he enacted a new Mudawana, or family law, in early 2004, meeting some of the demands of women's rights activists.
Parti écologiste marocain - Izigzawen, is the new self-denomination of the Berberist Moroccan Parti démocrate amazigh marocain (PDA) or Moroccan Amazigh Democrat Party, launched in 2005, banned in November 2007 and judicially dissolved in April 2008. It has no connection with the Global Greens and has not been legally reestablished, even under its new denomination.
The Algerian Popular Movement is a social democratic Berber political party in Algeria. The party, which had been previously known since 2003 as the Union for Democracy and the Republic, was re-founded in February 2012. In the 17 May 2012 People's National Assembly elections, the party won 2.17% of the vote and 7 of the 389 seats.
The Hirak Rif Movement or the Rif Movement is a popular resistance movement that organised mass protests in the Berber Rif region in northern Morocco between October 2016 and June 2017. The movement was triggered by the death of Mouhcine Fikri, a fishmonger who was crushed to death after jumping in the back of a garbage truck attempting to retrieve his allegedly illegal fish merchandise confiscated by local authorities.
Harakat 23 Mars was a Marxist Leninist movement founded in Morocco on March 23, 1970.
Mohamed Bensaid Ait Idder was a Moroccan politician and activist. Ait Idder started his activism first against the French Protectorate in Morocco, and was one of the founders and leaders of the Moroccan Army of Liberation. After Morocco's independence, Ait Idder opposed the regime in place, particularly King Hassan II.
The Revolution of the King and the People was a Moroccan anti-colonial national liberation movement with the goal of ending the French and Spanish protectorates in Morocco in order to break free from colonial rule. The name refers to the coordination between the Moroccan monarch Sultan Mohammed V and the popular Moroccan Nationalist Movement in their efforts against colonialism and toward independence, particularly after the French authorities forced Sultan Mohammed V into exile on 20 August 1953. 20 August is considered a national holiday in Morocco, in remembrance of the Revolution of the King and the People. After Morocco had regained independence from the French, the movement effectively ceased to exist, as the Sultan managed to take control of the state. Meanwhile, the Moroccan Nationalist Movement was turned into an opposition party.
The Moroccan Nationalist Movement was an Arab nationalist and Pan-Arabist political movement in Morocco that opposed the French protectorate. It was nominally led by the Moroccan sultan Mohammed bin Youssef. Most of its leaders were from the Istiqlal Party.
The Riffian independence movement is an ongoing political movement aiming for international recognition of the Rif region in Northern Morocco, as a state independent from the Kingdom of Morocco. The movement is rooted in several instances of indigenous territory being colonized, ruled, and marginalized by different powers and the riots and civil disobedience resulting from it, including the 1958 Rif riots and the Hirak Rif movement. While Riffian independence has been a topic of protest and organization in the past, the formal and internationally noted independence movement could technically be considered to have begun in September 2023 with the formation of the Rif Nationalist Party (PNR).