Muslims Demand "Right of Return" to Spain

GATESTONE INSTITUTE: Observers say that by granting citizenship to all descendants of expelled Muslims, Spain, virtually overnight, would end up with the largest Muslim population in the European Union.

"Is Spain aware of what might be assumed when it makes peace with some but not with others? Is Spain aware of what this decision [not to include Muslims in the return] could cost?... Does Spain have alternatives to the foreign investment from Muslims?" — Ahmed Bensalh, Morisco-Moroccan journalist.

"Persecution of Jews was just that, while what happened with the Arabs was part of a conflict. There is no basis for comparison." — Jose Ribeiro e Castro, Portuguese lawmaker who drafted Portuguese law of return.

Muslim groups are demanding Spanish citizenship for potentially millions of descendants of Muslims who were expelled from Spain during the Middle Ages.

The growing clamor for "historical justice" comes after the recent approval of a law that would grant Spanish citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.

Muslim supporters say they are entitled to the same rights and privileges as Jews because both groups were expelled from Spain under similar historical circumstances.

But historians point out that the Jewish presence in Spain predates the arrival of Christianity in the country and that their expulsion was a matter of bigotry. By contrast, the Muslims in Spain were colonial occupiers who called the territory Al-Andalus and imposed Arabic as the official language. Historians say their expulsion was a matter of decolonization.

In any event, the descendants of Muslims expelled from Spain are believed to number in the millions—possibly tens of millions—and most of them now live in North Africa. Observers say that by granting citizenship to all of them, Spain, virtually overnight, would end up with the largest Muslim population in the European Union.

Much of the Iberian Peninsula was occupied by Muslim conquerors known as the Moors from 711 until 1492, when the Moorish Kingdom of Granada surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon), in what is known as the Christian Reconquest.

But the final Muslim expulsion from Granada did not take place until over a century later, beginning in 1609, when King Philip III decreed the expulsion of the Moriscos.

The Moriscos—Moors who decided to convert to Catholicism after the Reconquest rather than leave Spain—were suspected of being nominal Catholics who continued to practice Islam in secret. From 1609 through 1614, the Spanish monarchy forced an estimated 350,000 Moriscos to leave Spain for Muslim North Africa.

Today, up to five million descendants of the Moriscos are living in Morocco alone; there are millions more living in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Tunisia and Turkey. Read on and comment » | Soeren Kern | Friday, February 21, 2014

Egyptians Protest the Fall of Islamic Andalusia and Vow to Liberate It (January 2, 2013)

In Search of the Spirit of Al-Andalus
With the Moorish architecture of Granada's Alhambra and Córdoba cathedral as a backdrop, Marcel Theroux meets a group of Spanish Muslims who are drawing on the area's Islamic legacy to a promote a new religious tolerance

Cities of Light
Cities of Light tells the relationship between Muslims, Christians and Jews in Spain

Watch the full episode. See more Cities of Light.

Muslim Reconquest of Spain Nears Completion: El Cid, Where Art Thou?
Spanish taxpayers now pay for massive mosque constructions
Image: The Last Crusade
THE LAST CRUSADE: Proof that history repeats itself comes with the news that Muslims have initiated their re-conquest of Spain.

The number of Muslims in Spain has climbed from 100,000 in 1990 to over 1.5 million in 2010.

Mosques are being constructed on a grand scale throughout the country.

The city of Barcelona, widely known as a European Mecca of anti-clerical postmodernism, has agreed to shell out nearly $30 million in public funds for the construction of an official mega-mosque with a capacity for thousands of Muslim worshipers.

The new structure in Barcelona will rival the massive Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, currently the biggest mosque in Spain. An official in the office of the Mayor of Barcelona says the objective is to increase the visibility of Muslims in Spain, as well as to promote the “common values between Islam and Europe.”

In the past decade, more than 1,000 mosques and Islamic prayer centers have sprouted up throughout the once devoutly Catholic country.

Twelve new masjids are scheduled to open in northeastern Spain within the next three months.

The construction of new mosques comes at a time when municipalities linked to the Socialist Party have closed dozens of Christian churches across Spain by the enactment of new zoning laws.

The Barcelona mosque project was announced during a weeklong seminar titled “Muslims and European Values,” sponsored by the European Council of Moroccan Ulemas and the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers in Catalonia.

A representative of the Barcelona mayor’s office who attended the conference told the Madrid-based El País newspaper that the municipality would get involved in the mosque project because “although religion pertains to the private realm, this does not mean it does not have a public role.”

The idea to build a mega-mosque funded by Spanish taxpayers comes after Noureddine Ziani, a Barcelona-based Moroccan imam, said the construction of big mosques would be the best way to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Spain. “It is easier to disseminate fundamentalist ideas in small mosques set up in garages where only the members of the congregation attend, than in large mosques that are open to everyone, with prayer rooms, cafes and meeting areas,” Ziani told the Spanish news agency EFE. Read on and comment >>> TheLastCrusade.org

Related >>>

Cities of Light: The Rise And Fall Of Islamic Spain (2007)
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When the Moors Ruled in Europe

The Myth of Al-Andalus. Jihad against Spain (and Portugal)

The Myth of Islamic Spain


Hat tip: Always On Watch

Al-Andalus: الأندلس

Who Is Really Being Dishonest About Islam?
AINA: In his "The Faith Divide" blog at the Washington Post's website, Eboo Patel took umbrage Monday at two recent reviews in the New York Times Book Review charging "Dishonesty About Islam in the NYT Book Review." Patel was angry at favorable reviews of what he called "Bruce Bawer's alarmist book Surrender" (about which he huffed, "the subtitle says it all: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom") and Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (which was reviewed by Fouad Ajami). Yet while making the improbable claim that the New York Times printed material that was dishonest and negative about Islam, Patel showed himself to be not a little disingenuous -- suggesting that before he call these reviewers on their alleged dishonesty, he should look to his own.

"Ajami," complains Patel, "opens his piece by juxtaposing two disparate pieces of history: the departure of Spain's last Muslim ruler in 1492, and the terrorist attacks on Madrid in 2004. 'A circle was closed,' Ajami writes, 'and Islam was, once again, a matter of Western Europe.'" What is wrong with this? "The Muslim presence in medieval Spain," asserts Patel, "is widely regarded as a time of tolerance, good government and support for the arts and education. In fact, Ajami himself wrote a positive review of one of the many books on that era, Maria Rosa Menocal's The Ornament of the World. Placing Al-Andalus, as it was known, in the same breath as a ghastly terrorist attack - as if to say 'Here's what happens when Muslims are around' - is beyond questionable. A dead fish wouldn't want to be wrapped in a newspaper article with that level of intellectual dishonesty."

Funny that Patel should mention Menocal. Certainly her Ornament of the World is largely responsible for the contemporary myth of a tolerant, pluralistic, proto-multicultural Al-Andalus. But even Menocal, in that very book, admits that tolerance and pluralism went only so far in Muslim Spain, which institutionalized discrimination against Jewish and Christian dhimmis:

The dhimmi, as these covenanted peoples were called, were granted religious freedom, not forced to convert to Islam. They could continue to be Jews and Christians, and, as it turned out, they could share in much of Muslim social and economic life. In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax -- no Muslims paid taxes and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals. (Pp. 72-3)

So much for a paradise of tolerance and multiculturalism. Historian Kenneth Baxter Wolf observes that "much of this new legislation aimed at limiting those aspects of the Christian cult which seemed to compromise the dominant position of Islam." After enumerating a list of laws much like Menocal's, he adds: "Aside from such cultic restrictions most of the laws were simply designed to underscore the position of the dimmîs as second-class citizens." >>> Robert Spencer, FrontPageMagazine (JihadWatch)| Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Al-Andalus: الأندلس

Moors Want Spain to Apologise after 400 Years
Flag of Andalusia courtesy of Google Images.
What Mr Keeley, the writer of this article, fails to point out is that Spain had been invaded and conquered by the Moors, and the Spaniards’ culture and way of life had been taken away from them by the marauding invaders. I see little need for Spaniards today to apologize for anything. This was not so much “ethnic cleansing” as winning back the country which rightfully belonged to them. – ©Mark

TIMESONLINE: It was the start of one of the earliest and most brutal episodes of ethnic cleansing in Europe, so Spain is, understandably perhaps, a little reluctant to mark the occasion.

Four hundred years ago today King Philip III signed an order to expel 300,000 Moriscos - or part-Muslims - who had converted from Islam to Christianity.

Over the next five years hundreds of the exiles died as they were forced from their homes in Spain to North Africa at the height of the Spanish Inquisition.

There are no plans to mark the date officially, although the occasion is being remembered in a series of exhibitions, conferences and public debates.

The anniversary comes days after José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, met Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, in Istanbul to celebrate the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations, which is intended to foster friendship between the West and the Islamic world.

Some Muslim writers and Spanish and Moroccan campaigners believe that Madrid should apologise for the wrongs committed during the 17th century. Juan Goytisolo, a Spanish novelist, said:

“Official and academic Spain retires into the fortress of cautious silence, which reveals obvious discomfort. The expulsion was the first European precedent ... of the European ethnic cleansings of the last century.” >>> Graham Keeley in Barcelona | Thursday, April 9, 2009

Islam in Europe: When Muslims Ruled in Europe
There is no doubt that this is a series of fascinating videos. But do they convey the truth about Islam in Europe, or do they whitewash the period in Spanish history? You decide.

One has to ask oneself the simple question: If the Muslims’ civilization in Al-Andalus was so wonderful, and the achievements so great, why has so little in the way of inventions and discoveries come out of the Muslim world ever since?

Further, if their building ability in those days was so exceptional, why do Muslim countries today need so many Western companies to build their cities in places like the Gulf? And if their medicine was so advanced, why do their doctors have to come and train in the West?

Was this documentary produced, perchance, by the renowned, politically-correct BBC? - ©Mark


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Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

An Islamic History of Europe: التاريخ الإسلامي في أوروبا
This series of twelve BBC videos are well worth watching. Bear in mind, however, that much appears to have been whitewashed. There is no talk of dhimmitude; and in general a very rosy picture is painted. One could be forgiven for believing that this is the story of El Dorado! You decide on the accuracy of all that has been reported. Above all, enjoy!


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Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

When the Moors Ruled in Europe
The following two videos about the Moors in Spain are quite fascinating; though when watching them, one should be aware that much has probably been whitewashed in the name of political correctness. For all that, they are well worth viewing.


Link: sevenload.com

Link: sevenload.com
Mark Alexander