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

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