How have constitutional reforms in Morocco and Tunisia reshaped the role of sharia in recent decades?
Executive summary
Morocco and Tunisia have both reworked constitutions and family laws in recent decades in ways that recast but did not erase sharia’s public role: Morocco’s 2011 constitution reasserted Islam as state religion while channeling religious authority through state institutions and allowing a moderated, codified place for sharia in family and public law Shariabycountry" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[1] [2], whereas Tunisia’s post‑independence secularizing trajectory and successive Code of Personal Status reforms largely displaced classical sharia from family law even as recent constitutional debates have reintroduced Islamic language and contested concepts like maqasid ash‑shariah [3] [4].
1. Morocco: constitutionally Islamic, administratively regulated
The 2011 Moroccan constitution reaffirmed Islam as the state religion but simultaneously institutionalized religious oversight in a way that channels, constrains, and modernizes sharia’s application — for example by granting the Supreme Council of Ulemas a formal advisory role on religious matters and by preserving Islamic reference in family and inheritance law while enabling codified reforms like the 2004 Moudawana that expanded women’s rights within a Sharia‑framed vocabulary [1] [2] [5].
2. Morocco’s family law reforms: negotiated, incremental, and political
The 2004 Moudawana rewrote family law to limit traditional sharia practices (such as unilateral repudiation) and to raise protections for women — reforms sold as compatible with Islam but implemented by the state and debated in public politics, provoking both conservative backlash and feminist advocacy and leaving the door open for further revisions under the 2011 constitutional framework [5] [6] [7].
3. Tunisia: a secularizing legal revolution that sidelined sharia in personal status law
Tunisia’s post‑independence Code of Personal Status (CPS, 1956–57) deliberately departed from core sharia prescriptions — banning polygamy, curtailing extrajudicial divorce, and abolishing sharia courts — embedding a civil, gender‑egalitarian family code that survived through decades and subsequent waves of reform in the 1990s and 2010s [3] [8] [9].
4. Post‑Arab Spring upheaval: constitutional contests over sharia’s place in Tunisia
After 2011 Tunisia faced intense debates over whether and how to reference Islam and sharia in a new constitutional text; while political Islamists at times pushed for a greater constitutional role for sharia, dominant compromises kept religion framed as part of identity without making sharia the primary legal source — even as later moves by President Saied and analysts point to newer drafts elevating maqasid ash‑shariah as positive law, a development scholars warn could recodify Islamic aims into constitutional form [10] [4].
5. Outcomes: codification, selective displacement, and state mediation
Both countries illustrate a common modern pattern: sharia has been selectively codified, mediated by the state, and repurposed politically. Morocco kept sharia as a structural reference while using constitutional reform and state religious organs to manage change and protect monarchy legitimacy [11] [2], whereas Tunisia largely displaced sharia from family law through secular codes but continues to wrestle with constitutional language and political pressures that could alter that balance [3] [8].
6. Political motives, competing agendas, and implementation gaps
These constitutional shifts are as much about politics and legitimacy as legal philosophy: Morocco’s reforms were top‑down, designed to deflect protest and legitimize royal authority while allowing limited liberalization [11], and Tunisian reformers pursued secular modernity and women’s rights but faced pushback from Islamist factions and later constitutional retrenchment tendencies — scholars caution that some reforms remain “on paper” and subject to political reversal [10] [11].
Conclusion: reshaped but unresolved
Constitutional reforms in Morocco and Tunisia have reshaped sharia from an autonomous juridical system into either a state‑mediated reference (Morocco) or a residual cultural source below a secular legal order (Tunisia), yet both trajectories are dynamic: codification, institutional design, and political contestation mean sharia’s legal role remains negotiated, unevenly implemented, and vulnerable to future political shifts — a reality captured across academic and policy sources [1] [3] [4].