Abdelkrim al-Khatib (Arabic: عبد الكريم الخطيب, romanized: ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khaṭīb; 2 March 1921 – 28 September 2008) was a Moroccan surgeon, politician and activist. He was a co-founder of the Popular Movement and later founded the Constitutional and Democratic Popular Movement (CDPM), which was renamed the Justice and Development Party (PJD) in 1998. He served as the president the House of Representatives from 1963 to 1965. He also held several ministerial positions.
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Biography
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. He became the first surgeon in Morocco 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.
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. 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.
Al-Khatib led the PJD into the 2002 general election, in which the party won 42 of the 325 seats in the House of Representatives. Following the election, Driss Jettou, an independent technocrat, formed a Koutla coalition government without the PJD, leaving the party as the largest opposition group in the House. Al-Khatib remained secretary-general of the PJD until 2004, when he was succeeded by Saadeddine Othmani. He subsequently assumed an honorary founding role within the party and remained associated with it until his death in 2008.
Al-Khatib died in Rabat on 28 September 2008, aged 87.
Family
El Khatib is the maternal uncle of Moroccan General Housni Benslimane whose sister is the mother of Ismail Alaoui the ex-president of the Party of Progress and Socialism. El Khatib is also the maternal uncle of Saad Hassar, former secretary of state in the Moroccan Interior Ministry