Abdelkrim Al Khatib (2 March 1921 – 28 September 2008) was a Moroccan surgeon, politician and activist. He co-founded the National Popular Movement which would later split and was eventually re-branded as the Justice and Development Party. He became the first leader of Morocco's House of Representatives.
Al Khatib was born on 2 March 1921 in El Jadida. His father, Omar Al Khatib, was an administrative interpreter of Algerian origin and his mother Meriem El Guebbas was Moroccan.[1] He became the first surgeon in Morocco[2] and was involved when the Popular Movement was started. He was a campaigner for independence and he became the first leader of Morocco's House of Representatives. He was also a Government minister several times.[3]
After the 1965 period of emergency when the Moroccan King took on the temporary management of Morocco, he founded the Justice and Development Party which emerged from the Popular Democratic Constitutional Movement in 1988. These were Islamic parties that support the monarchy.[3] It is said that this new party was based on the Turkish party of the same name. But that's not true because the party in Turkey was founded in 2001. But it said that the Turkish Islamic politician Necmettin Erbakan was a big actor by founding the party.[4]
The party was successful in the 2002 election taking 42 out of the 325 seats.[4]
^Tarqi, Bouabid (2010). "El Khatib, Abdelkrim ben Omar". In Toufiq, Ahmed (ed.). Ma'lamat al-Maghrib (Encyclopedia of Morocco) (in Arabic). Vol. 25. al-Jamī‘a al-Maghribiyya li-l-Ta’līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr. p. 108.
