Islam is the religion of the Moroccan state, and more than 99% of Moroccans are Sunni Muslims, almost all following the Maliki school of law, according to US government estimates for 2022 and the Pew Research Center. The 2011 constitution makes Islam the state religion while its Article 3 "guarantees to all the free exercise of beliefs", and it gives King Mohammed VI, on the throne since 1999, the title Amir al-Mu'minin, Commander of the Faithful. The minorities are small: about 2,000 to 3,500 Jews, a few thousand Moroccan Christians alongside at least 40,000 foreign-resident Catholics and Protestants, tens of thousands of Shia citizens by their leaders' estimate, 350 to 400 Bahá'ís and some 700 Ahmadis. Only Islam and Judaism are recognised as native religions; all others are treated as foreign.
Islam and the 2011 Constitution: A State Religion With "Free Exercise of Beliefs"
Morocco adopted its first constitution in a referendum on 7 December 1962, six years after independence from France and Spain, and Islam has been the state religion in every version since. The current text was drafted after the protests of 20 February 2011 and approved in a referendum on 1 July 2011 by 98.49% of voters, on an official turnout of 72.65%. It describes Morocco as an Islamic constitutional monarchy, keeps Islam as the religion of the state and adds the guarantee of free exercise of beliefs. It also recognises the Jewish community as an integral part of Moroccan society.
The guarantee has limits written into ordinary law. Under Article 220 of the Penal Code, anyone who uses "incitements to shake the faith of a Muslim" or to convert him faces six months to three years in prison and a fine of 200 to 500 dirhams; foreigners may instead be expelled. Criticising Islam on public platforms can bring up to two years in prison and fines of up to 200,000 dirhams, and Muslims who eat in public during Ramadan fasting hours without a religious exemption can be arrested. Family law follows the same pattern: the personal status code, the Mudawana, was codified from Maliki jurisprudence after independence.
Amir al-Mu'minin: The King's Religious Title Since the Marinids
The king's religious authority is older than the constitution. Moroccan rulers have claimed the caliphal title Commander of the Faithful since the Marinid dynasty, and the Sa'di and the present Alawi dynasties added a claim of descent from the Prophet Muhammad. The constitution keeps Amir al-Mu'minin as the king's principal title, which places him at the head of religious life as well as the state.
Mohammed VI has used that role to shape how Islam is taught. In 2004 parliament passed his revision of the Mudawana, praised by rights groups for raising women's rights within an Islamic legal framework. The state has sent imams trained in Maliki doctrine to the country's mosques to counter Salafism, and in 2016 religious-education textbooks were cut from 50 lessons to 24, with passages judged to promote violence removed. In 2023 he also made Yennayer, the Amazigh New Year, now marked on 14 January, a national holiday alongside the Islamic holy days.
From Uqba ibn Nafi in 681 to the Almohads: How Maliki Islam Took Hold
Islam reached Morocco with the Umayyad general Uqba ibn Nafi around 681. Christians and Jews were tolerated as "people of the book" in return for the jizya tax, while Berbers who followed other religions were pressed to convert. In 788–789 Idris I, a descendant of the Prophet who had fled the Abbasids after the Battle of Fakhkh, reached the old Roman town of Volubilis, then held by the Awraba Berbers, and founded the Idrisid dynasty, the first Islamic state based in present-day Morocco. He also founded Fez, which became the Idrisid capital.
The Almoravids, a Berber movement from the western Sahara whose empire stretched over the western Maghreb and al-Andalus from the 1050s until 1147, set out to impose a rigorist Maliki Sunni Islam, and the Maliki school has been dominant ever since. The Almohads who overthrew them broke sharply with that policy: they favoured the Zahiri and Ash'ari schools, were hostile to the Maliki jurists, abolished the jizya and forced most Christians and Jews to convert on pain of death or flee. The Marinids who followed returned to Maliki practice and to tolerance of minorities. Indigenous Christianity, which had taken root among the Berbers of Roman Mauretania Tingitana, effectively continued after the Arab conquest until the early 15th century.
Fez and Moulay Idriss: The Qarawiyyin and the Tomb of Idris I
The religious map of Morocco is marked by a handful of sites. In Fez, the Qarawiyyin was founded as a mosque by Fatima al-Fihri in 857–859 and became a leading centre of Islamic learning; UNESCO and Guinness World Records cite it as the oldest continually operating institution of higher learning in the world, and it joined the state university system in 1963. On two hills above Volubilis, the town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun grew around the tomb of Idris I, who died in 791.
From the Koutoubia (1147) to the Hassan II Mosque (1993)
In Marrakesh, the Almohad caliph Abd al-Mu'min founded the Koutoubia Mosque in 1147 and rebuilt it around 1158; its 77-metre minaret, possibly finished around 1195, likely inspired the Giralda of Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat. The modern counterpart is the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, completed in 1993 on a promontory over the Atlantic. Its 210-metre minaret is the second tallest in the world, and up to 105,000 worshippers can pray there at once, 25,000 inside and 80,000 in the grounds. The four religious public holidays are Islamic New Year, the Prophet's birthday (Eid al-Mawlid), Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha.
Morocco's Jews: From 265,000 in 1948 to About 2,000 Today
Judaism was present in Morocco centuries before Islam. Hebrew epitaphs and a synagogue dating to the 3rd century CE have been found at Volubilis, and a second wave of Sephardic Jews arrived after Spain's Alhambra Decree expelled them in 1492, settling in cities such as Fez and Marrakesh. Jewish communities lived in their own quarters, the mellahs, and ran their own courts for personal law. During the Second World War, when Morocco was under the Vichy regime, Sultan Mohammed V blocked an attempt to deport the Jewish population, although other anti-Jewish laws were passed.
In 1948 there were about 265,000 Jews in Morocco, the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. Emigration began after the creation of Israel that year; riots in Oujda and Jerada in June 1948 killed 47 Jews, and the Cadima and Operation Yachin programmes took about 60,000 and 90,000 people to Israel. By 2019 community leaders estimated 3,000 to 3,500 Jews, about 2,500 of them in Casablanca, and roughly 2,100 in 2024.
The state has since invested in that heritage. By 2017 Morocco had restored 110 synagogues, and Casablanca's Museum of Moroccan Judaism, established in 1997, is the only museum devoted to Judaism in the Arab world. Casablanca has more than 30 synagogues, of which Temple Beth-El is often considered the centrepiece. On 10 December 2020 the United States announced that Israel and Morocco would normalise relations, a step confirmed in a joint declaration on 22 December, and in November 2022 the Arab world's first university synagogue opened at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Moroccan Jewish families still celebrate Mimouna on the night after the last day of Passover.
Christians in Morocco: 470,000 Settlers in 1956, a Few Thousand Citizens Now
Christianity returned with the French and Spanish protectorates of 1912 to 1956. On the eve of independence about 470,000 Catholics lived in Morocco, almost all of them European settlers, and more than three-quarters had left by 1959–60. The British were allowed their own Anglican churches, such as St Andrew's in Tangier. Today foreign-resident leaders estimate at least 30,000 Catholics and 10,000 Protestants, many of them migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, with small Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox communities in Rabat and Casablanca. Pope Francis visited Rabat and Casablanca on 30–31 March 2019 at the invitation of King Mohammed VI and the country's bishops.
Moroccan-born Christians are harder to count. Their leaders estimate 2,000 to 6,000 citizens, with some suggesting as many as 38,000, most of them converts from Islam. Citizens who practise a "foreign" religion face obstacles from the government as well as social pressure, and the Article 220 offence makes evangelising Muslims a crime; conversions by American Protestant missionaries in the mountainous south have nevertheless been reported.
Shia, Bahá'í and Non-Religious Moroccans: Tensions From the 1960s to 2021
The groups outside the recognised pair face the most friction. In the early 1960s, shortly after independence, Bahá'ís were arrested en masse and leading believers were sentenced to death, provoking international protest; the community now numbers about 350 to 400. Shia leaders estimate tens of thousands of Shia citizens, mainly in the north, but in 2022 there were no Shia mosques, and the state has cracked down on material linked to Iran and Hezbollah. Ahmadis number about 700. Quranist critics who reject the hadith, such as Ahmed Assid, Mohamed Lamsiah and Rachid Aylal, have become a vocal current, and in 2017 the Bahá'ís were prevented from publicly celebrating the bicentenary of their faith's founder.
Belief itself is shifting among the young. In the Arab Barometer survey of 2019, 38% of Moroccans called themselves religious, 44% somewhat religious and 13% not religious, but only 24% of those aged 18 to 29 said they were religious, against 68% of those over 60. A 2021 Arab Barometer survey put the non-religious share at 3.1%, a reminder that such figures move with question wording. The institutions that hold this system together are described in our guide to the government of Morocco, the Arabic, Amazigh and French that its believers speak in the languages of Morocco, and the mosques of Fez and Marrakesh in their wider setting in our survey of Islamic architecture around the world.