RABAT - King Mohammed VI of Morocco warned Islamists among his subjects Wednesday not to seek to establish faith-based political parties and not to try to introduce imported versions of Islam.
"Morocco will never accept that Islam is used as a springboard for the satisfaction of ambitions of rule in the name of religion," he said in a nationwide address on television and radio.
Radicals would not be allowed to carry out acts of terrorism, or destroy the unity of national religious practice, or accuse people of apostasy, or even kill them, the king said in a reference to bombings in Casablanca in May that left 44 people dead.
Speaking on the occasion of a royal festival he called for the speeding up of legislation banning the setting up of political parties on the basis of religion, race, language or religion.
"There is no place for political parties that monopolise Islam," he said.
The king said he wanted to transcend the "cruel memory" of the May 16 "terrorist attacks" to draw the necessary lessons.
In the attacks five suicide bombers blew themselves up almost simultaneously at foreign and Jewish targets. Besides the 44 dead, 100 people were injured.
Scores of suspects linked to the attacks and suspected of membership of a banned radical group Salafia Jihadia are on trial in Casablanca.
The king also warned against "cultural practices foreign" to Morocco and underlined the attachment of his people to one of the four rites of Sunni Islam "characterised by its flexibility... and its openness to reality."
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