Spain’s New Muslims

Kamal Mekhelef, secretary of the Cordoba Muslim Association and former director of a small mosque that Franco built there for his Muslim Moroccan soldiers, is more direct. “Some converts do play the role of mediator. They were born here, and they know the country and its culture,” he says. “But they’re not all the same. Some know Islam well; they’ve studied it for years . . . others are still learning.” And Mekhelef plainly disagrees with some of the Junta’s actions. “I don’t defend the fatwa [against bin Laden], not at all,” he says. “To condemn an act of terrorism — as we all should — is one thing. But a fatwa is a much more serious thing, issued only by those with a great deal of education and preparation. I don’t think that those who declared it against bin Laden had that kind of education. I would never do such a thing.”

The clearest sign of this conflict came early in 2006, when Escudero was ousted from the leadership position he had held in the Islamic Commission since the organization’s founding. The move surprised Escudero and provoked concern among many New Muslims about the direction Islam might take in Spain. Abdennur Prado, head of the Catalan Junta Islámica, notes that “Arab culture cannot offer the model for Islam’s integration into lay society. We are the ones who have broken the monopoly that certain foreign groups have in western Europe.” Many saw in Escudero’s expulsion a disapproval of the Junta’s actions, especially the bin Laden fatwa. Others considered it a referendum on the Junta’s more liberal interpretations of the faith. Although the Islamic Commission’s new secretary general, Félix Herrero, is a convert himself, many liberal Muslims and non-Muslims accuse him of being controlled by powerful Saudi interests, and police have conducted an investigation related to terrorism at his mosque in Malaga.

At Granada’s mosque, Abdulhasib Castiñeira speaks about some recent visitors, Norwegian theologians. “They were Protestants, and we had a very good, very probing conversation about our religions,” he recounts. “At the end, one of them turned to me and asked, ‘But given immigration and the birth rates, aren’t Muslims going to take over Europe one of these days?’ I answered, ‘If you have two groups, and one of them scorns marriage and has a high rate of divorce and doesn’t want to bring children into the world, and the other one has strong families with lots of children, well, what’s wrong with that?’”

Castiñeira’s story may not comfort many Westerners, but no one can deny his conviction that his faith, his Islam, supports the things that matter — or should matter — to Europeans, whether they be Enlightenment values or strong families. At a time when European society grapples with the outrage provoked by cartoons of Muhammad, debates the propriety of head scarves in public, and feels threatened both by Islamist terrorism and, too often, by government responses to it as well, Castiñeira promises a way out of a clash of civilizations. “Just look at this mosque,” he says. “When it was being built, some extremist residents protested, saying that we were trying to reclaim al-Andalus. But then the mosque opened, and there hasn’t been a single problem. They’ve realized that we’re an important part of the city.”