Allal al-Fassi

Allal Al Fassi
Allal Al Fassi in 1949
Born	10 January 1910 Fes, Morocco
Died	May 19, 1974(1974-05-19) (aged 64) Bucarest, Romania
Political party	Istiqlal

Muhammad Allal al-Fassi (January 10, 1910 – May 19, 1974), was a Moroccan politician, writer, poet and Islamic scholar.

He was born in Fes, Morocco. He studied at the University of Al-Qarawiyyin. For many years, his professor and mentor was Abdeslam Serghini. He founded the nationalist Istiqlal party which was a driving force after the army of liberation (eljaish tahreer), with many Berbers, in the Moroccan struggle for independence from French colonial rule. He broke with the party in the mid-1950s, siding with armed revolutionaries and urban guerrillas who waged a violent campaign against French rule, whereas most the nationalist mainstream preferred a diplomatic solution. In 1956, as Morocco gained independence, he reentered the party, and famously presented his case for reclaiming territories that have once been Moroccan in the newspaper al-Alam. In 1959, after the left-wing UNFP split off from Istiqlal, he became head of the party.

In 1962, he briefly served as Morocco's Minister of Islamic Affairs. He was elected to the Parliament of Morocco in 1963, and served there as an Istiqlal deputy. He then went on to become a main leader within the opposition during the 1960s and the start of the 1970s. He died in 1974, on a visit to Romania where he was scheduled to meet with Nicolae Ceauşescu.

In 1925 Al-Fassi published his first book of poems. In 1954 his The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa was published, a translation of a book he wrote in Arabic in 1948.