THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY IN SPAIN

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MADRID 000645

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: SOCI KPAO KISL SP
SUBJECT: THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY IN SPAIN

REF: A. 04 MADRID 3887

B. MADRID 517


1. SUMMARY. This message is the first of two cables
discussing Spain's large and growing Muslim community that
stems from Poloff's discussions with leading members of the
Muslim community in Madrid. Islam has long been a force in
Spanish history dating back to Moorish rule from the eighth
to fifteenth centuries, but Muslim institutions lacked
official recognition until 1992. There is little
comprehensive data on the Muslim community in Spain, and
estimates place the number of Muslims anywhere from 500,000
to 1,000,000. The largest Muslim populations are found in
Catalonia, followed by Madrid, Andalusia, the Valencian
Community and Murcia, and the African enclaves of Ceuta and
Melilla. The majority of Muslims are recent immigrants from
Morocco, but there are also Algerian, Pakistani, and Arab
communities, as well as a number of Spanish converts to Islam.


2. Muslim community leaders generally favor the policies of
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, although some
believe that he has not gone far enough in addressing their
concerns. The community leaders were united in their
negative view towards former Prime Minister Jose Maria
Aznar's policies. Although Spanish law has many protections
against discrimination, in practice, Muslims have a harder
time finding work and housing in Spain. Muslim leaders are
concerned about what they regard as media misinformation
about their community. The major priority of the Muslim
community is increased educational opportunities, including
the teaching of Islam in public schools. END SUMMARY

//ISLAM ON THE RISE//


3. There is little comprehensive data, but it is clear that
Islam is growing rapidly in Spain. The population has
doubled in the last ten years due to immigration, the high
birth rate among Muslims, and new Muslim converts. The
Spanish government bars questions on religion in censuses and
other official questionnaires, limiting the ability to
compile statistical data. The diversity of the community and
the large number of illegal immigrant Muslims in Spain also
make demographic data difficult to obtain. Estimates of the
size of the Muslim community in Spain vary from 500,000 to
1,000,000. Roughly 60 percent of the Muslims in Spain are of
Moroccan origin. In March 2004, the National Institute of
Statistics reported that there were 375,767 Moroccans living
in the country legally as of January 2003. Salih Alaly,
Assistant Director of Madrid's Islamic Cultural Center,
estimated that the congregation of the Islamic Cultural
Center, Madrid's most important mosque, was 40-50 percent
Moroccan, 30 percent Algerian, 10-15 percent of Spanish
origin, and the rest from other nations.


4. According to Mustapha El M'Rabet, the President of the
Association of Moroccan Workers and Immigrants in Spain
(ATIME),the leading employment sectors for the Muslim
community include typical jobs for the immigrant
community--construction, agriculture, the restaurant
industry, restoration and landscaping, and work as domestic
servants. Second generation Muslims in Spain tend to have
higher levels of education and tend to improve their
situation; many get jobs as journalists, doctors, and
computer operators, according to Yusuf Fernandez, spokesman
for the Islamic Federation of Spain.

//WHERE DO THEY LIVE?//


5. Spain's largest Muslim population is found in Catalonia,
the traditional destination for Moroccan immigrants.
Fernandez estimates that 300,000 to 350,000 Muslims live in
Catalonia, including Moroccans and a substantial Pakistani
community in the Barcelona area.


6. Fernandez estimates that 250,000 Muslims live in the
Madrid area, where there are more than 55 mosques. Press
reports assert that close to one-third of these mosques have
affiliations with Islamic radical groups. The largest mosque
in Spain is the Islamic Cultural Center, informally dubbed
the M-30 mosque because of its proximity to a major highway
running through Madrid. Salih Alaly estimates that 2,000
Muslims attend services at the M-30 mosque each Friday.


7. Other important Muslim communities in Spain include
Andalusia, the Valencian Community and Murcia, and the
African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Immigrants are
attracted to Andalusia because of its geographical proximity
to North Africa and the large number of manual labor jobs in
the agricultural sector. Andalusia derives its name from Al
Andalus, the Moorish name for Spain. The Alhambra, among the
best-preserved Muslim landmarks in the world, is located in
the Andalusian city of Granada. The Valencian Community and
Murcia attract Muslim workers because of the high demand for
cheap manual labor in construction and agriculture. Ceuta
and Melilla are located in North Africa and are far easier to
access than other Spanish communities across the Straits of
Gibraltar.

//LEADING MUSLIM ORGANIZATIONS//


8. The Muslim community is diverse and does not speak with
one voice. The community is officially represented by the
Islamic Commission of Spain (CIE),which includes the Islamic
Federation of Spain and the Union of Islamic Communities in
Spain. There are over 240 mosques and 64 religious
communities registered with the Islamic Federation with more
than 160 additional mosques throughout Spain that are not
represented by the Federation. Although M'Rabet's ATIME is
not a religious organization, its 14,500 members are
predominantly Muslim and participate in debates on the role
of Islam in Spanish society. ATIME has proposed the creation
of a Muslim Council in Spain, and has engaged prominent
members of the GOS to push the idea. M'Rabet says his
proposal is meant to clear up the current disorganization in
the Muslim community by setting forth rules on the training
of imams and discussing the origins of financing for Muslim
activities in Spain. According to M'Rabet, the Muslim
Federation and the Islamic Commission are against this
proposal because they fear it would erode their current
influence with the GOS.

//RECOGNITION OF ISLAM IS NEW IN SPAIN//


9. Representatives of Islamic, Protestant, and Jewish faiths
signed a bilateral agreement with the GOS in 1992 that was
designed to give other religions equal status with the
Catholic Church. The November 1992 act fixed relations
between the GOS and the Spanish Islamic community as
represented by the CIE. Fernandez told us that "religious
freedom is rather young in Spain," as the Catholic Church has
had many advantages that other religions have not had.
Mercedes Rico Carabias, the Director General for Religious
Affairs at the Ministry of Justice, told Poloff that
"although the Catholic Church has traditionally received
special considerations from the state, the government has
tried to be more inclusive of other religions" (Ref A). Rico
Carabias handles the GOS's relations with the Muslim
community from a religious perspective while the Main Foreign
Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior handles Muslim
issues related to immigration and terrorism. The GOS is
currently trying to implement expanded public funding and tax
benefits for Muslim, Protestant, and Jewish institutions.

//MUSLIMS VIEWS OF THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT//


10. M'Rabet and Fernandez said they appreciated the approach
of the GOS towards the Muslim community after the March 11,
2004 train bombings. Both praised the recent efforts of the
Zapatero administration to normalize the immigration status
of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants (Ref B).
M'Rabet noted that the February 7, 2004 immigration
normalization is positive because it "resolves the problems
of many people in irregular situations and it helps eliminate
the 'black market' in labor." He further added that the
normalization allows law-abiding citizens to pay their taxes,
making the proposal good for his workers association and good
for the GOS. Fernandez ventured that the immigration
normalization would benefit the Socialist Party by
reinforcing its positive image in the Muslim community.


11. While praising Zapatero's political discourse as
"correct" and "conciliatory", M'Rabet noted that the current
government had been in power only nine months and still lacks
"an effective plan of integration" for the Muslim community
that would include improved access to jobs, authorization for
Islamic instruction in the public schools, and improved
access to health care for Muslim immigrants. Ebraheem A.S.
Alzaid, the Director of Madrid's Islamic Cultural Center,
described Zapatero as "better than Aznar", but Alzaid noted
that he has yet to see significant concrete actions from the
current government. He is concerned that although the GOS
promised to hire Islamic teachers for public schools under
the 1992 bilateral agreement, there are no Islamic teachers
in Spain's public schools today.

//VIEWS OF AZNAR//


12. While Muslim leaders are generally sympathetic to the
policies of the Zapatero government, the previous Popular
Party government of Aznar is not viewed in the same light.
Fernandez believes that the Socialist government is a "better
fit for the Muslim people," as "Aznar was a Catholic
fundamentalist who supported the Catholic religion at the
expense of Protestants, Jews, and Muslims." Alzaid took
issue with Aznar's anti-terrorism speech at Georgetown
University on September 21, 2004. He did not agree with
Aznar's remarks attributing the Madrid bombing to al-Qaida,
but also tracing the roots of the attack to the
eighth-century invasion of Spain by the Moors and the
successful resistance and the subsequent reconquest of Spain
by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. He favors the current
government's allusions of "international terrorism", where
Aznar talked of "Islamic terrorism, but never of Christian or
Jewish terrorism."


13. M'Rabet believes that Aznar's Popular Party has
occasionally made the situation worse for immigrants in Spain
by blaming increased crime on immigrants from Colombia,
Kosovo, and Morocco. M'Rabet said that there are clearly
mafia elements in some of the immigrant communities, but
argued the talk of increased crime as a result of immigration
does a disservice to the thousands of hard working law
abiding immigrants in Spain.

//PROBLEMS OF DISCRIMINATION AND MISINFORMATION//


14. The Muslim community continues to suffer from
discrimination, particularly in obtaining work and rental
housing. M'Rabet told us that anti-discrimination laws exist
and the government talks of equal rights, but Muslims in
Spain face large informal hurdles to renting apartments and
obtaining bank loans. He says many owners and bankers will
refuse apartments and loans upon viewing a Moroccan
applicant. The Islamic Federation reported that the building
permit process for new mosque construction could be difficult
and lengthy, especially for building sites in central urban
locations. Many Spanish citizens blame recent Moroccan
immigrants for increased crime rates in the country, which
sometimes results in anti-Muslim sentiment. M'Rabet claimed
that police frequently ask for identity documents based
solely on physical appearance of people who look like they
are Muslims.


15. There has been no documented increase in violence
towards Muslims following the March 11 train bombings in
Madrid. However, Muslim leaders were concerned that media
reports appeared to link the Islamic religion to the
terrorist attacks, as opposed to focusing on the extremists
themselves. Alzaid, a Saudi national, is concerned about
media reports that state that Saudi imams are influencing
Islam in Spain. His position as Director of the Cultural
Center does not include preaching duties. He told Poloff
that none of the imams in Spain are of Saudi origin and that
he was not aware of any imam who had received religious
training in Saudi Arabia. All of the Muslim community
leaders were concerned about the negative portrayal of
Muslims on television and in films.

//COMMENT//


16. The Muslim community in Spain is likely to grow
proportionately larger in the coming decades due to Spain's
low fertility rate, need for manual labor, aging native
population, porous borders, and close proximity to countries
of migration in North Africa. While more than 90 percent of
Spain's population is Catholic, only 20 percent of Catholics
go to church regularly. By contrast, Spanish Muslims remain
devout, even after many years of residence in Spain. New
immigration normalization rules and proposed changes in
voting for residents of Spain are likely to make the Muslim
community an increasingly powerful voice in the politics of
Spain, which may in turn generate friction with non-Muslim
Spaniards. Post has stepped up outreach efforts to the
Muslim community to demonstrate USG interest in their
concerns and to encourage Muslim leaders to act as a force
for moderation. END COMMENT.

MANZANARES