MADRID (dpa) – Spain’s 15th-century Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella would not have believed their eyes. Five centuries after the last of the Islamic Moors were expelled from Spain, Moslems are flocking back into the country once known as Al Andalus.
Hundreds of mosques are being built, and Moslems are praying on the streets for lack of space.
Different schools of Islam are seen to be fighting for control of the religion in Spain, with fundamentalists and moderates clashing to gain power over mosques, press reports claim.
Yet amid reports of radical Saudis allegedly financing mosques a spokesman for the embassy of Saudi Arabia in Madrid denied that Riyadh was pushing for a radical type of Islam to take root in Spain.
“There are no conflicts between different currents of Islam in Spain,” the spokesman said. “We are all Moslems, and the presidents of Spain’s Islamic associations are friends with each other. The Western press is always looking for conflicts where there are none.”
The spokesman did, however, confirm reports that Saudi Arabia was interested in helping to build a large mosque in the Catalan capital Barcelona.
The construction of the new “Islamic Cultural Centre”, to match the one in Madrid whose mosque can accommodate 5,000 believers, has been delayed because an adequate site has yet to be found.
The Moors from North Africa ruled large parts of present-day Spain for centuries, turning the country into a beacon of science and high culture in medieval Europe.
Spain has the Moorish period to thank for some of its most distinctive traits such as flamenco music and pottery styles, and it boasts some of the world’s foremost Islamic historic sites from the Alhambra palace-fortress in Granada to the huge mosque in Cordoba.
But in 1492, the last bastion of Moslem Spain collapsed when Granada fell to the Christian reconquest. Moslems – so it was believed – had been thrown out forever.
More than five centuries later, however, Spain has around half a million Moslems and their numbers are growing rapidly.
More than 300 mosques have cropped up all over the country, and the eastern region of Catalonia alone has an estimated 70 butcher’s shops which sell meat from animals slaughtered in accordance with Islamic rites.
In Catalonia, the believers no longer all fit into the small mosques, and Moslems are forced to pray on the street, prompting police to divert traffic or to disperse worshippers, press reports said.
In the former Islamic stronghold of Granada, Moslems have their own shops, school, newspaper and are coining their own money. They are in the process of building a large mosque right next door to a Catholic convent, the daily El Mundo reported.
Not only Saudi Arabia, but also other countries are reportedly helping to promote Islamic activities in Spain, including Libya and Morocco.
Most of the Moslems in Spain are Moroccans while Moslem immigrants also come from other countries including Algeria, Pakistan, Senegal and Indonesia.
Around 10,000 Moslems are students from Arab countries, and some 80,000 Moslems live in the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast.
Up to 25,000 Spaniards have also converted to Islam over the past decades, often after feeling dissatisfied with the country’s predominant Roman Catholicism and searching for another “spiritual home”, as one female convert put it.
Islam is now Spain’s second biggest religion after Catholicism, followed by around 350,000 Protestant Christians and 20,000 Jews.
With 26 million Moslems now living in western Europe and their numbers growing, “there will be more Moslems than practising Christians in Europe within two years,” El Mundo predicted.
Moslems are urgently lacking facilities ranging from cemeteries to butcher’s shops and complain that the authorities give them no support while the Catholic Church gets around 100 million dollars annually from state coffers in officially secular Spain.
The law allows Moslem children to receive classes in religion in state schools, but there are only around 80 teachers while 500 are needed, the daily El Pais reported.
The spread of Islam is causing concern in the Catholic Church, which has traditionally had a certain influence over Spain’s ruling conservatives.
Yet the lack of official support plays straight into the hands of radical Islamic tendencies, the daily La Vanguardia wrote.
“In the longer run, a radical type of Islam could become implanted in Spain,” Moslem Socialist MP Jadicha Candela said.
