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| Short Biography of Imam Abdessalam Yassine |
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Interdisciplinary Education
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A speech to an Eid celebration in Germany, Nov. 18, 06 |
Birth and Origin
Imam Abdessalam Yassine was born on Monday morning, Rabi’ II 4, 1347 of the Muslim calendar (corresponding approximately to September 20, 1928) in Marrakech. His father was a poor farmer, but he belonged to the Ait Bihi family—a family of noble lineage as they descend from Mulay Idris I, one of the grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad (God bless him and grant him peace). The Ait Bihi family originates from the village of Ulūz, region of Sūs (southwest of Morocco ).
Career Path
Imam Abdessalam Yassine pursued his first studies in Marrakech in a traditional school founded by the great Muslim scholar and mujahid, Sheikh al-Mukhtār as-Sūsi (God have mercy upon him). He graduated from Ibn Yūssuf Institute, where he had been learning for four years under a distinguished host of Morocco ’s most eminent scholars. He also memorized the whole Qur’ān at an early age. ®
October 1955
After passing the school inspectors’ competitive exam in Casablanca, he was named to the post of Inspector of Arabic Language. ®
May 1959
He was appointed Principal of the Teachers’ Training School in Marrakesh. ®
Summer of 1959
Among a Moroccan delegation of school inspectors, he took part in a 45-day educational training at the International Institute of Education in Sèvres, France . In the same year, he took part in another 45-day educational training in the United States . ®
January 1961
He had a 45-day training course at the Childhood Institute in Bologne, Paris suburbs. ®
October 1961
He was sent in a delegation to UNESCO Beirut-based Regional Center for Educational Planning. Seven months later, he obtained a Diploma of Educational Planning with distinction. He was among the first Moroccan four-member group to earn that degree. ®
October 1965
He was appointed Principal of School Inspectors’ Training Center. ®
1968
He took part, among a Moroccan delegation, in a 7-day Seminar on Education in Tunisia . Then he took part in an educational training in Algeria , where he represented The Ministry of Education. ®
1968
He was dismissed from his work with no administrative decision for having lambasted his superiors’ corruption. ®
1987
He was pensioned off.
Interdisciplinary Education
Besides erudition in the Islamic sciences, Imam Yassine opened onto global cultures and civilizations as autodidact. He acquired a great deal of knowledge that enabled him to write on various disciplines comprising, among others, politics, economy, law, international relations, psychology, sociology, linguistics, philosophy. That explains why his writings are distinguished by a multidisciplinary approach of the subjects broached.
Sufi Experience
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1965
Imam Abdessalam Yassine had a serious spiritual crisis through which he had a painful feeling of despair. He had an ardent desire and aspiration to know about the meaning of his transient passage across this fleeting world, the truth about his Creator, and his destiny after death. He was an observant Muslim. Still, his thirst for knowing Islam’s quintessence could not be quenched. The spiritual crisis was a decisive turning point in the Imam’s spiritual and activist course. Relatively speaking, such spiritual crisis could be compared to that described by illustrious scholars such as Imam Abu Hāmid al-Ghazāli. He joined the Butshishi Sufi Order, where he drew spiritually from the enlightened heart of his Sufi master, Sheikh al-Haj al-‘Abbās son of al-Mukhtār al-Qādiri (God have mercy upon him). He tasted the sweetness of dhikr circles (sessions of God’s remembrance) in the company of few murids [followers of the order] who ran away from worldly pleasures and temptations. ®
1972
After the death of Sheikh al-Hāj al-‘Abbās, Imam Abdessalam Yassine noticed that the Sufi order was moving away from the sunna (the Prophet’s model practice), tending more towards the material aspects, superficial, and outward appearances of Sufism to the detriment of its essence: spirituality. On the other hand, a turning point in his thinking took place when he came to the conclusion, after years of intense academic and spiritual research, that the Muslim’s individual aspiration for God should be raised from the degree of islam (performing the five pillars of Islam) to imān (believing in the six fundamentals of faith, assimilating shu’ab al-Imān [the Affluents of imān] and observing moral rectitude), and then to attain the degree of ihsān (the highest spiritual station of Islam). He believed that such spiritual aspiration should be accompanied by the believing men and women—the elite of change—exerting every effort to serve God’s Cause through establishing a society permeated by Islamic values, and working with their fellow brothers and sisters in the other nominally Muslim countries to establish the promised Second Caliphate and transmit God’s ultimate Message of Mercy to mankind. Justice and Spirituality are thus for him interdependent objectives. In this regard, he wrote “Islam between the Call and the State” (1972) and “Tomorrow, Islam” (1973). As the Sufi Order chose to remain isolated from society’s concerns (political, economic, and social), Imam Yassine decided to leave it to start a new period of his life after he had contributed a great deal in its expansion.
Individual Activism
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1974
Imam Yassine addressed a one-hundred-and-fourteen-page open letter titled “Islam, or the Flood” to Morocco ’s late King Hassan II. The letter invited the late king to the Islamic method of shūra [Islamic-born democracy], justice, and redemption by restoring to the Moroccan people the wealth he had amassed through plundering the country’s rich resources. To urge him to make the requisite change, the Imam invited the late king to follow the model of ‘Umar ibn ‘Abdelaziz (God be pleased with him) while of course taking into account the variables of time and place. He equally warned him against the bad consequences of injustice, despotism, and oppression practiced in the name of Islam. As a response to Imam Yassine’s letter of advice, the king ordered that the Imam be placed in a mental asylum wherein he was detained without trial for 3 years and 6 months. ®
1978
He was denied the right to give talks or lessons in mosques. ®
1978 – 1979
He went around the country in an attempt to rally the Muslim scholars, Islamic organizations, and movements in order to form a united front that may marshal their efforts and undertakings. Unfortunately, his call was met with a chilly reception, indifference, and sometimes even total refusal.
Organized Activism
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1981 – 1983
Al-Murshid [Imam Yassine is also called al-Murshid, that is, the Guide] founded the Islamic movement Usrat al-Jamā’a [the Association’s Founding Body]. He was compelled by the authorities to change its name later into Jam’iyat al-Jamā’a [the Association], and then to al-Jamā’a al-Khayriya [Charity Association]. Still, Imam Yassine’s above associations never received any formal recognition from the State even though all the Moroccan courts ruled that they were established according to the applicable laws. ®
July 1982
He wrote an article in al-Jamā’a [the Association] magazine under the title “Words should be followed by deeds” in reply to the letter written by the late King Hassan II. Addressing the Moroccan people on the occasion of the advent of the Fifteenth Century A.H., the king claimed in the letter to be the Reformer [al-Mujaddid] of the Fiftieth Century. The article will later be one of the causes for which Imam Yassine will be sentenced to two years in prison on December 27, 1983. ®
November 1983
He published a newspaper under the name of as-Sobh [the Dawn]. The newspaper was banned by the authorities after its second issue had been published. ®
December 27, 1983
He was jailed once more on account of an article published in the first issue of as-Sobh. Held in custody for three months, he was then brought before court and sentenced to two years in prison. ®
January 1984
He published the first issue of the journal al-Khitāb [the Address]. The journal’s volunteering distributors suffered intimidation, harassment, and prosecution by the authorities. ®
September 1987
Jam’iyat al-Jamā’a [the Association] changed its name into Jamā’at al-‘Adl wal Ihsān [the Justice and Spirituality Movement] under the leadership of Imam Abdessalam Yassine. ®
December 30, 1989
The Imam was put under house arrest on no legal grounds, denied the right to quit his domicile, to speak to the public, and to receive the visiting members of his family and the public at large. ®
August 3, 1990
He challenged the authorities and went to the local mosque to perform the Friday Prayer. After the Friday Prayer he addressed his members and the public, and called upon them to devote the whole month of Safar [second month of Muslim calendar] in performing the Qunūt invocation against their oppressors. Qunūt is a ritual prayer which the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) used to perform against his enemies. He thereby announced the opening of a new front against his oppressors which they had no means to confront. ®
December 15, 1995
On the basis of a statement delivered by a senior official and broadcasted by the national media, indicating that Imam Abdessalam Yassine’s house arrest was ended, al-Murshid left his home again to perform the Friday Prayer at the local mosque. However, while he was greeting his followers and sympathizers, the Imam was informed by an official that his house arrest was still in effect. ®
January 28, 2000
Al-Murshid addressed an open letter “Memorandum To Whom It May Concern” to the country’s new king, Mohamed VI, renewing his advice to his late father that he should follow the example of Umar Ibn Abdelaziz (God be pleased with him) and restore to the Moroccan people the rights and wealth that his father’s regime had respectively confiscated and plundered. His website www.yassine.net was launched for the purpose of publishing this letter. ®
February 2000
Al-Murshid’s wife Khadija, his son Kāmil, and two of his sons-in-law were prevented by the authorities from traveling to perform Hajj (Pilgrimage). ®
May 10, 2000
In the parliamentary session reserved for oral questions, the Secretary of the Interior—following the model of his predecessor (the notorious Driss Basri) in the practice of falsehood, the statement of fallacies, circumvention, and holding public opinion in contempt—declared that Imam Yassine was not under any house arrest, that he was free like all the other citizens, and that if he alleged to have been subject to injustice, he only had to institute legal proceedings against his oppressors. ®
May 15, 2000
Seizing the occasion of such official declaration made before such official institution by such official minister, al-Murshid wrote a communiqué in which he announced his intention to come out of his house the following Friday to perform the Friday Prayer, and informed the public that his house would be open, as of 15:00 GMT of the same day, to whoever wished to visit him. Such announcement placed the regime in a serious predicament. In fact, al-Murshid forced them to announce officially the end of the house arrest. On the other hand, the official media coverage exerted every effort to present the event to the public as ordinary, perhaps even as trivial. ®
May 16, 2000
In response to the communiqué, “hasty and forced” instructions ordered the policemen stationing round-the-clock before the Imam’s house not to prevent al-Murshid from coming out of his home. He thus broke the siege he was under, leaving his home for the Friday Prayer and impelling the authorities to face the fait accompli. As they were announcing in the media that no restrictions were put on his freedom, they were forced to accept the new situation and concentrate more on how to use this “forced” freedom to adorn the already sullied image of their human rights’ record internationally. ®
May 19, 2000
Soon as he performed the Friday Prayer after the house arrest had been unwillingly ended by the authorities, Imam Abdessalam Yassine headed for Kénitra Prison, where the JSM’s twelve university students are held prisoners after they had been sentenced in 1992 for twenty years’ imprisonment in a fabricated story of murder. The Imam was not authorized to visit the prisoners, which was a clear indication that the JSM was still under house arrest even though its leader, the Imam, was relatively allowed to move “freely.” On the occasion of the end of the house arrest, Imam Yassine received letters of congratulations from national and international personalities. The following day, Imam Yassine organized a press conference in the JSM’s head offices in Salé during which he confirmed to the public at large that the JSM was still under house arrest even though the authorities begrudgingly allowed him to quit his domicile. Even though he enjoys relative freedom of movement, Imam Yassine is still subject to tight surveillance by the police and the Intelligence who round off his place of residence twenty-four hours a day, hound and tail all his family and visitors’ movements. ®
May 26, 2000
Imam Abdessalam Yassine started his nationwide tour to meet with the JSM’s members and sympathizers, as well as with the Moroccan public at large. The tour was an occasion for the Imam’s disciples and sympathizers, who had an ardent desire to see him after ten years of physical separation, to draw spiritually from his abundant source of love, wisdom, compassion, courage, knowledge, and unshakeable determination to serve Islam by all peaceful means. The tour was tightly monitored by the Moroccan Intelligence. ®
August 2000
Justice and Spirituality Publishing, a non-profit corporation based in the US , published the book Winning the Modern World for Islam, the English translation of Imam Yassine’s islamiser la modernité. The primary concern of the book is “to make known the message of the Qur’ān: a message of peace for a violent world, a message of sanity for a directionless world, a spiritual message for an ailing modern humanity (Foreword).” The Imam seeks to “clarify the ideas and the ideals that Muslims can share among themselves and with people of good will and sketch the framework within which harmony can be attained, and the causes of discord between Islam and modernity can be undone (Introduction).” ®
December 10, 2000
On the occasion of the Human Rights Day, the JSM organized peaceful demonstrations in the country’s major cities to protest against human rights’ abuses, especially the abuses that victimized the movement, its student members at universities, and its media. The peaceful demonstrations were savagely repressed even in the sacred month of Ramadan. The mosques wherein some of the JSM’s members took refuge were desecrated by the authorities. Imam Yassine’s wife, his three daughters, two sons, and one of his sons-in-law were arrested along with thousands of the movement’s members, men and women, brought before court and received various sentences. ®
February 2001
In order to break the illegal media siege laid to its activities by the Moroccan authorities, the JSM created its official website: www.aljamaa.org. Hacked by the Moroccan Intelligence, the website was recreated as www.aljamaa.com. Other websites were created later: ¨ Nadia Yassine’s website: www.nadiayassine.net following her trial for favoring the Republic to the Monarchy. ¨ The Women Section’s website: www.mouminate.net ®
March 31, 2001
Imam Abdessalam Yassine addressed the 1st Iowa Muslims Convention where he spoke of the divine Great News that the Day of Resurrection has a fixed time already set by God, the Creator of man. Therefore, “believing in the Hereafter and thinking about one’s post mortem destiny are the most important things over which should ponder the sensible people in civilized countries.” Then the Imam alerted man whom he defined as “a creature that was created by a Creator: God—Glorified be He” that he “has been hit in one of his most precious assets: the ability to wonder and feel amazed at his miraculous origin and ultimate destiny.” He gave a specific definition to “potentially misleading concepts that obstruct mutual understanding between Muslims and their interlocutors.” He stressed that Islam is not a “religion” in the secular or historical Christian sense of the word, but a “liberating Message from God to man so that he can overcome those tyrants who keep him—and the whole mankind—from enjoying justice and peace on earth.” Finally, the Imam urged man to read the Qur’an and exert every effort to learn Arabic in order to understand it. ®
July 2001
Because the Moroccan authorities banned the successful summer camps organized by the JSM that attracted over a hundred thousand summer visitors and prevented the JSM’s members from having contact with Moroccan citizens in public beaches, the JSM, following the proposal of Imam Yassine, started the forty-day spiritual training sessions [ribātāt al-Arba’īn] in which the JSM’s members learn chapters from the Holy Qur’ān by heart, read the whole Qur’ān several times [khatamāt], and perform the Night and Day Schedule of the Believer [yawm al-Mu’min wa laylatuhu]—a series of acts of worship (obligatory and supererogatory) that the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) used to perform in his night and day. ®
October 2002
Imam Abdessalam Yassine started the Sunday Meeting [ziyarat al-ahad] during which he meets with the JSM’s members, the national and international public through the Internet. Along with Imam Yassine, or when he is absent, the Sunday Meeting is led by members of the Board of Guidance [Majlis al-Irshād]. ®
November 2002
Imam Abdessalam Yassine founded the Association of Writers [Rābitat al-Kataba], an internal association that trains potential writers and interpreters of Imam Yassine’s School of the Method [Madrasat al-Minhāj an-Nabawi]. ®
January 2003
Justice and Spirituality Publishing published its 2nd book The Muslim Mind on Trial, the English translation of Imam Yassine’s mihnat al-‘Aql al-Muslim. The book addresses the critical question: “what has Revelation to do with the mind and the liberation of the mind?” The Imam’s intention is to "focus on one of the essential realities that Revelation sets forth clearly and repeatedly, and for which it coins parables, but which readers of the Qur’ān pass by and fail to notice.” ®
June 2003
Imam Abdessalam Yassine started a series of meetings with the JSM’s members and sympathizers among the Muslim community residing abroad: North America, Europe, and Asia. ®
March 2004
Imam Abdessalam Yassine launched an official campaign among the JSM’s members to memorize the Holy Qur’ān. Ever since, an increasing number of the JSM’s members (men and women, young and old) have learned the Holy Qur’ān by heart. ®
April 16, 2005
Imam Abdessalam Yassine addressed the 1st North Dakota Islamic Conference, where he reminded the conference attendees that “the true worth of a civilization lies not in possessing weapons and amassing wealth. It resides in providing security, dignity, prosperity and well being for all mankind.” He took advantage of the historical conference to unequivocally condemn the tragic 9/11 attacks describing them as “an atrocious massacre we sincerely deplore, vehemently censure and adamantly stigmatize as a way to deal with people.” The Imam’s keynote address focused on the eternal well being of the human being inviting him to “find someone who’d grasp your hand gently yet firmly, and tell you: O Man you’re heedless! O Man you’re bound to meet your Lord! O Man there exists a Prophet by the name of Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets (God bless him and grant him peace), who came not to deny the earlier missions of his fellow brothers as of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ismā’īl, Moses, and Jesus, but rather to certify them and to complete the noble virtues they had instructed.” ®
2006
Although the JSM’s members continue to suffer serious human rights’ abuses (abductions, arbitrary arrests, tortures, humiliations, raiding and sealing of houses, robbing of house furniture and personal effects, harassment in liberal professions, dismissal from government occupations, deprivation from the right of opinion, the right of founding associations, denial of all civic rights, fabrication of charges and trials, privation of even the right to spend days of worship in mosques during the sacred month of Ramadan, of the right to visit the sick, to pay the dead the last honors, to hold ceremonies for the newborn, etc) by the Moroccan regime, the Guide-General, Imam Abdessalam Yassine, continues to lead the movement to work for Islam diligently, peacefully, and progressively, and carry out his long-term project of justice and spirituality for God’s creation. |