Hello again Nashwan,
When you stated this,
Originally posted by Nashwan
Spain? Became Muslim under the Moors. So there can be no peace until Spain is again a Muslim country? Forgive me, but I don't see Spanish Christianity being a major problem amongst the Arabs? Or is that why Morocco keeps asking for Ceuta and Mellila? Are they just the first step to demanding Madrid?
Then you obviously haven't been reading Islamic Websites, or many of the Islamic works written since the end of the colonial era and the beginning of what Muslim scholars regard as the present "revival" of Islam. Yes, they plan on reabsorbing Andalusia, this is a long term goal, but one which Muslims have been dreaming of since 1492.
The following article, for instance, was published in the Toronto Star a little while ago (I'll have to split it into 2 parts):
Andalusia's connectionOne year after the Madrid bombings, calls for made-in-Spain imams grow stronger in a region that still reflects on its past Muslim gloriesSANDRO CONTENTA
EUROPEAN BUREAU
At the Jamal Islamiya mosque in this seaside town, a Muslim lament of historic proportions is proclaimed in large letters on a framed poster: "In 1492, we lost everything."
For the mosque's leader, and much of the Muslim world, the year marks the traumatic conclusion of Islam's golden age, a time remembered like a collective wound.
It's a period when the last piece of Muslim-held territory in Spain fell to Catholic monarchs, ending almost 800 years of Moorish rule on the Iberian peninsula.
Centuries when poetry, science and architecture flourished under Islamic caliphs expired with bonfires of Arabic manuscripts, mass expulsion and extermination in the Inquisition.
To the east, the Muslim empire of the Ottomans would reign for another four centuries. But many would trace its long decline to the fall of Al Andalus, the Moorish name for Andalusia.
The result is a yearning that today makes Spain, more than any other European country, a battleground in the name of Islam.
"They stole 500 years of history from us," says Omar Checa Garcia, who heads the Jamal Islamiya mosque and cultural centre. "We want it back, but we don't want revenge."
Others are not so accommodating. Osama bin Laden uses what he calls the "tragedy of Al Andalus" as a rallying cry for his deadly brand of Islamic jihad against "the crusaders and Jews."
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahiri, drew a parallel between the loss of the Iberian peninsula and the struggle of Palestinians.
"We will not accept that the tragedy of Al Andalus be repeated in Palestine," he said.
The taped sermons of some militant Islamic clerics admonish followers with the legend of "The Moor's Sigh."
Having surrendered Granada to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Castile and Aragon, a tearful Sultan Boabdil was scolded by his mother: "You weep like a woman for what you could not hold as a man."
On March 11, 2004, a cell of mainly Moroccan extremists, calling themselves "the brigade situated in Al Andalus," detonated 10 bombs that killed 191 people on Madrid commuter trains.
Many Spaniards blamed their conservative government's support of the Iraq war for making them targets.
Three days after the bombings, they swept the Socialist party to power and it moved quickly to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.
But jihad fuelled by the lost glory of Al Andalus suggests that won't be enough to take Spain off the target list.
In a communiqué claiming responsibility for the March 11 bombings, the cell invoked the name of the Moorish warrior who conquered the Iberian peninsula in 711.
"We will continue our jihad until martyrdom in the land of Tarik Ben Ziyad," it said.
Says Gustavo Aristiquie, an opposition MP and terrorism expert: "Spain is considered an apostate country that must be reconquered for Islam. It's a sacred duty, and that's why the jihadis are attacking."
The bombings also focused attention on Spain's estimated 1 million Muslims, most of them North African immigrants.
Illegal immigration is rapidly increasing their numbers, making integration one of Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's biggest challenges.
Warnings that mosques are increasingly falling under the control of radical clerics are coming from anti-terrorism experts and representatives of Spanish converts to Islam, a community estimated at 20,000.
They also warn of tensions between the growing number of immigrants adhering to fundamentalist brands of Islam and right-wing groups rooted in the alliance of fascism and the Catholic Church during Franco's dictatorship, which ended in 1975.
Spanish converts are lobbying the government for funds to train homegrown imams, arguing that defusing social tensions requires clerics who preach an Islam in harmony with European values, which they insist reflects the true spirit of Al Andalus.
"If we don't do this, it's war," says Abdelkarim Carrasco, head of the Federation of Spanish Islamic Entities, one of two Islamic umbrella groups that negotiates with the government.
Carrasco, 56, is a real estate agent in Granada, where members of the March 11 cell spent time in safe houses before the attacks.
Framed by the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, Granada was the peninsula's last Moorish kingdom to fall.
Its symbolic significance is heightened by the Alhambra palace, home and seat of government of the Nasrid rulers. The only Muslim palace to survive from the Middle Ages, it stands above the city on the Assabica hills, revered by Muslims and celebrated by tourists.
"I tell my Christian friends, `You are eating from the stones left by the Moors,'" says Carrasco, referring to Granada's booming tourist industry.
On a hilltop directly across from the Alhambra, the first Granada mosque to be built in 500 years opened its doors in 2003. Before construction, the choice of the highly symbolic site met with two decades of resistance from local authorities, not least because it is squeezed between a Catholic church and a nun's convent.
"The church hierarchy is very hostile to Islam," says Abdulhasib Castineira, director of the Great Mosque, which was built largely with funds from Morocco, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.
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End of Part 1
- SEAGOON
