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