The article discusses the sociology of religion in Morocco. Under the French Protectorate of Morocco (1912-1956), colonial anthropology was above all interested in tribal confraternal Islam, and historical Islam incorporating many local rites. Anthropology studied principally the cult of saints and the various initiation and prophylactic rites: they ended up regarding the feast of sheep and circumcision as the true social pillars of Islam and the sole religious manifestations allowing consensus. Those studies of Islam were more or less accused of deviance by traditional university jurists and the universalists making up the ulema. And in tandem with the scriptural ulema, certain nationalist reformers accused that anthropology of having wanted to folklorize and transform Islam into a divisive and separating factor. In relation to the political and social evolution of religion, Moroccan sociology has lagged behind. It has not harnessed itself to the study of the evolution of the religious field empirically and finds itself unable to produce research or propose new theories.
