Abdel-Bari Zamzami

Abdel Bari Zamzami Ben Seddik (Arabic: عبد الباري الزمزمي بن الصديق, also spelled Abdelbari Zemzami; 1943 – 10 February 2016) was a Moroccan cleric of the moderate way and was among the most controversial religious figures in the Maghreb. He was the president of the Moroccan association of contemporary cataclysmic jurisprudence research and studies and a member of the Moroccan Religious Scholars. Zamzami was also one of the founders of the International Union of Muslim Scholars and a member of the Moroccan Parliament. Zamzami was the sole Member of Parliament affiliated with the party of reform and virtue and was seen as an enemy to secularists and communists in Morocco. Zamzami was shunned and criticized by members of his party after he issued a series of controversial fatwas.

Abdul-Bari Zamzami was born in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1943 and started his career under the wing of his late father, Sheikh Mohamed Zamzami at the Big Mosque of Tangiers; the late Mohamed Zamzami called for a return to the sunna and fought against the Sufi ways present in Morocco. Abdul-Bari Zamzami moved to Casablanca in 1975 or 1976 where he started delivering Friday sermons at the Yusufi Mosque, the Muhammadi Mosque, and “Ould Lhamra” in the old medina. During the 1980s, Zamzami became popular thanks to his religious speeches for which he used the Moroccan Darija dialect. He also created a newspaper, Al-Sunna, which publication stopped a few months after its first edition. Zamzami's sermons caused him to be suspended from preaching in 1978, 1979, 2000, and 2001 allegedly due to his mixing of the political and the religious. In 2001, Zamzami was one of the founders of the Moroccan association of contemporary jurisprudence research and studies, of which he was the president. The association aims at fighting "currents" that try to eradicate sharia law from the constitution. He died of cancer on 10 February 2016 at the age of 73.

In 2007, Zamzami won a seat in parliament thanks to his popularity in the neighborhood where he preaches in Casablanca. He later lost his seat in the 2011 elections although he is still listed as a parliament member on the government's website. Following his retirement in 2011, Zamzami decided to dedicate himself to issuing Fatwas and obtained a public transportation permit to operate a for-profit vehicle Zamzami advocated against the creation of religious-based political parties, despite belonging to one himself; his reasoning was that Islam-based parties would be an insult to the populations of predominantly Muslim countries, as it would denote that only their adherents follow the Muslim creed. Further, Zamzami announced his support for the government's monitoring of mosques and religious sermons as a tool to protect countries from extremism.