Indonesian Religious Cooperation with Morocco

The bilateral relationship between Indonesia and Morocco is a result of the complex structure and process of foreign policymaking. Indonesia, while considered a Muslim-majority country because 87 percent of the population is Muslim, has never acknowledged itself as a theocratic state nor a secular state. According to scholar Ramlan Surbakti, Indonesia can be categorized as a “religiously accommodating state in which the nation-state is regulated and managed according to national-state ideology.”1 In contrast, Morocco, also a Muslim-majority country, identifies the king as amir al-mu’minin (the Commander of the Faithful). Thus religion, especially Islam, plays a more explicitly significant role in Moroccan domestic and foreign policy. For example, many scholars note how, after a 2003 bombing attack in Casablanca, Morocco actively sought “to limit the influence of opposing religious doctrines to the Moroccan official Islam.”2 And, in the realm of foreign policy, religion especially influences Morocco’s interactions with West African countries in the War on Terror.3

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