Dear friend Said,

We hope you will give us the pleasure to come this evening to the residence of Mohammed Mekki Naciri to discuss an important matter.

Yesterday our friend Abdeslam Ahmed Benjelloun went to the headquarters of Jerusalem's magazine, "Al Arab" where he met with its director, Ojaj Nuwayhid. He asked him about the letters you wrote to him and he responded by saying that he had found them difficult to understand seeing that he was not familiar with our way of writing, Furthermore in each case he would be obliged to rewrite your letters so that the typesetter could read them. We therefore ask you to use a method of writing more readily understood in this area or to engage one of your Syrian friends to transcribe your articles into a classic Eastern style of writing that is easy to read.

Over here we are doing our best to convince the Superior Islamic Council to distribute on the Friday which precedes the May 16 anniversary of the 1930 Berber Decree a speech to all the Palestinian imams that denounces the French colonial policies in Morocco. We hope that you are undertaking the same initiatives in your area so that the Syrian imams do likewise. We do not believe that such an initiative is forbidden in Syria as we have witnessed with our own eyes an imam of the Omayyad Mosque address the faithful on the same topic when we were in Damascus three years ago. Perhaps you may find it possible to contact your friends in Turkey, Iraq and in other parts of Syria. On our side we shall get in touch with our student contingent in Cairo.

February 13, 1934

... I would like to draw your attention to the opportunity to send news bulletins to Hejaz to take advantage of the thousands of pilgrims which we seek to win over to our cause and to create a sense of solidarity with Morocco during their gathering at sacred sites. We have no doubt that they will feel much sympathy for the struggle we wage against colonialism. If you can engage in this mission, we will on our part distribute other news bulletins throughout the rest of the Middle East. Our comrades in Egypt in turn are sending a number of copies of these bulletins to Morocco. In this way the effort will be divided neatly.

Photograph taken in 1929 at the Islamic University of Nablus. On the upper left, Abdelmajid Hajji, and the last two on that row are his Moroccan colleagues Mohammed El Khatib and Abdeslam Ahmed Benjelloun.

From the right: Abdeslam Ahmed Benjelloun, Mohammed El Khatib, Moroccan students at the Islamic University of Nablus - 1929