PROGRESS MINGLED WITH COMPLACENCY: MUSLIM

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 MADRID 000482 SIPDIS SIPDIS EUR/FO FOR FARAH PANDITH EUR/PGI FOR IVAN WEINSTEIN EUR/PPD FOR ANNE BARBARO AND JEAN DUGGAN NEA/MAG FOR ROBERT EWING E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/14/2017 TAGS: KISL PREL PGOV SP SUBJECT: PROGRESS MINGLED WITH COMPLACENCY: MUSLIM INTEGRATION IN SPAIN REF: MADRID 382 MADRID 00000482 001.2 OF 004 Classified By: DCM Hugo Llorens for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (U) Senior Advisor to A/S Fried Farah Pandith did not have the opportunity to clear this message. ¶2. (C) SUMMARY AND COMMENT: In her March 4-7 visit to Madrid, Senior Advisor to A/S Fried for Muslim Engagement Farah Pandith met with a broad variety of concerned parties, including representatives from key government ministries, leaders of the main Islamic organizations in Spain, ambassadors from predominantly Islamic nations, members of Parliament, students, think tank representatives, and private citizens involved with the Muslim community. The visit provided Post an opportunity to broaden our knowledge of and relations with the Islamic community while highlighting for Pandith several unique characteristics of Muslims and Muslim engagement in Spain: a relatively new and largely Moroccan Muslim population within a broader immigration crisis; the lack of voting rights and political organization; the historical legacy of Al-Andalus and the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula; and a prevailing belief that the March 11 terrorist attacks were the product solely of Spanish foreign policy (Iraq). ¶3. (C) SUMMARY CONT'D: The diversity of Islamic groups with which Pandith met served to highlight their lack of coordination and internal political unity. Islamic leaders acknowledged that the lack of access to accredited imam training inside Europe is a continuing problem. Muslim organizations have difficulty finding domestic funding sources (although support from countries of the Middle East is available). The various Muslim religious and community leaders, academics and GOS officials included in the agenda all seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the prospect of further engagement with Pandith and the USG. GOS leaders acknowledged the potential for a radicalization problem, although they chiefly sought to downplay the threat, preferring to highlight differences between Spain and other European nations grappling with Muslim integration. Pandith was pleased with the Embassy's Muslim engagement efforts and strategy, but encouraged our working group to explore a variety of options to refine and improve our focus. She committed to returning to Spain to explore the regions of Andalucia and Catalonia, where Islamic influence is more pronounced than in Madrid. END SUMMARY AND COMMENT. //GOVERNMENT HAS PLAN, SUCH AS IT IS// ¶4. (C) Senior Advisor to A/S Fried for Muslim Engagement Farah Pandith visited Madrid from March 4-7 as the first stop on her exploratory trip to Spain, Germany and the UNITED Kingdom. In various meetings and separate lunches hosted by the Ambassador and the DCM, Pandith received a crash course in the government's Muslim integration efforts from justice, education and security officials. Justice Ministry interlocutors focused on both the government's formal relationship with the Islamic Commission (CIE) and the increased registration of Islamic communities as proof of the government's initial success in bringing Islamic organizations and populations in from the unknown. An Interior Ministry representative highlighted the result of a recent government-funded survey which found that a large majority of Muslims felt integrated in Spain. ¶5. (C) Justice officials also explained the government's preferential relationship with the Catholic Church which gives it access to public funding and schools. Most GOS officials lamented that legislative efforts to level the playing field between the Catholic Church and other religions were a non-starter in the Spanish Parliament. They touted the creation of a new foundation (created after the March 11 terrorist attacks) designed to provide public moneys for social integration, education and cultural projects sponsored by other religious faiths, and they provided Pandith with a copy of the first grade textbook on Islam funded by the foundation. ¶6. (C) At the Ministry of Education, officials outlined the effort to provide Islamic education in the public schools as well as the paucity of teachers in the field, attributing this shortfall to the resistance of regional governments. (NOTE: Regional governments control religious education in 12 of Spain's 17 autonomous communities. END NOTE.) They also MADRID 00000482 002.2 OF 004 noted a lack of parental requests (a group of 10 students/parents must request the hiring of a religious teacher for classes in anything other than Catholicism) and an inability on the part of the Spanish Islamic Commission to identify appropriate teaching candidates. By contrast, Moroccan teachers are providing Arabic and Moroccan cultural classes in many public schools with funding from the Government of Morocco. ¶7. (C) COMMENT: In general, GOS leaders sought to emphasize that Spain is at an advantage to other European nations because its immigration phenomenon is relatively new and officials have the benefit of seeing how the British, French and German models have failed. They did not, however, back up their argument with anything approximating a well-reasoned and coordinated approach across multiple government institutions to ensure that Muslim immigrants would not become dependent on social welfare, would integrate successfully into mainstream Spanish society, and would have access to Islamic teaching based in Western norms. The belief that Muslims would fare far worse under a conservative government colored the comments of government officials, who seemed resigned to do the best with what little they had. Interlocutors openly acknowledged the influence of the Catholic Church, and some of them alleged that the Spanish right sought to generate xenophobic responses from the public to any government program seen to favor Islamic communities. Government leaders also appear to believe that the March 11, 2004 train bombings were primarily a product of the Aznar administration's involvement in the Iraq war, not a symptom of any underlying problem of Muslim integration nor of an ongoing Al-Qa'ida threat. MFA Subdirector General for Foreign Policy Felix Costales pushed hard for the Alliance of Civilizations during a lunch with Pandith, saying that the U.S. goals of increased dialogue and exchange are essentially the same as those of the AoC. END COMMENT. //ISLAMIC POPULATION HAS NO POLITICAL POWER// ¶8. (C) As new immigrants in Spanish society, most Muslims either have not sought to regularize themselves or have secured residency but are not yet citizens. As such, they have no power as a voting bloc and have not yet organized any sort of political structure capable of securing government involvement in their issues. //ISLAMIC LEADERS HAVE GOOD WILL BUT NO LEADERSHIP// ¶9. (C) Pandith met with the leadership of the three most recognizable Islamic organizations, the Islamic Junta, FEERI and UCIDE. In meetings with each group and a separate visit to Madrid's largest mosque and community center (the Saudi government-supported M-30 mosque) Pandith learned that the leadership of each group has great hope for the Muslim population in Spain, but little concrete influence over it. All leaders identified the need for imams grounded in European society, and they lamented the lack of a credible European imam program. Due to this shortfall, mosques in Spain either import their imams from the Arab world or worship in smaller communities with self-taught or poorly educated imams. Pandith offered the leadership of all of these groups the opportunity to facilitate greater exchange and communication with Islamic leaders in the U.S., and all were amenable to the idea in principle. ¶10. (C) On the question of Islamic education, a representative from UCIDE cast the question more broadly, saying that Spain is currently going through a debate not on Islam in schools but on religion in schools. He said that Muslims would be fine with no religious training of any kind in public schools. However, as long as the government allowed Catholicism to be taught, the Muslim community would continue to seek the exercise of its right to have Islam taught in the schools as well. ¶11. (C) Leaders of Islamic organizations also mentioned their groups, objections to U.S. policy in Israel and Iraq, calling them "anti-Islamic." Pandith seized on the opportunity to highlight the need for modern Islamic leaders to differentiate between foreign policy and religion. She noted the impossibility of the UNITED States being anti-Islam when it is itself home for several million Muslims. Pandith sought to discard the concept of a geographically-defined "Islamic world", noting that Islam is a global religion. She asked the leaders to recognize that while we can disagree on MADRID 00000482 003.2 OF 004 politics, we must be careful not to cast U.S. foreign policy as a war on Islam. These arguments were well-received. //ISLAMISTS ON THE WEB; YOUTH AND ACADEMICS// ¶12. (C) Yussuf Hernandez, the director of Spain's leading website on Islam (www.webislam.es) told Pandith that the most important aspect of his website is the discussion forum, which allows for Muslims all over the world to discuss openly their beliefs. However, he lamented that his organization lacks personnel to ensure proper monitoring of the forums, which occasionally are hijacked by Islamist and extremist influences. According to Hernandez, U.S. web-users are actually the most frequent patrons of Web Islam not Spaniards. ¶13. (C) Pandith had dinner March 5 with a group of five female university students who had traveled together to a Department-funded Summer Institute in the U.S. The students, three of whom were Muslim, provided Pandith with a micro-study of Spanish youth; the non-Muslim students discussed how the trip gave them their first opportunity to have a Muslim friend and clarified for them the need for greater understanding of the religion in Spain. ¶14. (C) At a March 6 breakfast with Spanish scholars of Islam and think-tank representatives, attendees told Pandith of the need to create a European identity for Islam and to constrain the Arab world's ability to project its interpretations of Islam onto Europe. The resurgence of Islam in Spain is sufficiently new that there are actually very few academics and opinion makers of Islamic faith focused on integration and engagement issues, a fact which attendees acknowledged. //"WE ARE ARABS"// ¶15. (C) The Ambassador hosted a lunch for Pandith on March 6 with several Arab Ambassadors and leaders of Islamic associations and community groups from as far away as Barcelona, Cordoba and the North African enclave of Melilla. The discussion was lively, as the ambassadors (Jordan, U.A.E., Arab League, Algeria, Iraq, Egypt) and others seized the opportunity to question Pandith on what her goals were in Europe. One of the most provocative comments came from Teresa Aranda, Vice President of the Atman Foundation, who told Pandith that Spain is inherently an Arab country (referring to Spain's history of Moorish occupation which ended in 1492 with the expulsion of the last Moors from Spain by the "Catholic Kings" Fernando and Isabela) and would do well to remember that fact. She said the names of many of Spain's cities are derived from Arabic, its cuisine and lifestyle are similar to that of the Arab world, the Arabs constructed the greatest of Spain's historical landmarks, and some share similar physiological features. Other Spaniards at the table, however, said that while Spain remembered its Arab history, most Spaniards would not agree with the proposition that Spain is inherently an Arab country. //BASICALLY OPTIMISTIC; NEXT STEPS// ¶16. (C) At a roundup meeting at the conclusion of her visit, Pandith told the Embassy's Muslim engagement team that she was optimistic about Spain's chances to successfully integrate its Islamic population, but that she was surprised by the complacency of some government officials, especially in a country that was a victim of such a terrible homegrown attack by Islamist extremists. Pandith told the DCM that she planned to come back fairly quickly to tour both Andalucia and Catalonia to get a better sense of Islamic attitudes in areas of greater population and influence. In addition, she hoped to get a better picture of what media Muslims are using to get their information. She encouraged the Embassy to expand on our Muslim engagement strategy and focus especially on reaching youth leaders who will potentially be influential in Spain's future. She also agreed with Embassy officers on the idea of a more coordinated approach with Embassies Rabat and Algiers to seek info on Islamic attitudes in the countries of emigration, as well as to explore avenues for cooperation and exchange. Pandith committed to creating structures to facilitate Post-to-Post-to-Department coordination on Muslim engagement efforts, so that European posts could share each other's good ideas. The DCM asked the team to meet again in the near future to make adjustments to the Muslim Engagement strategy in line with Pandith's findings. MADRID 00000482 004.2 OF 004 -------------- Visit Embassy Madrid's Classified Website; http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/madrid/ -------------- Llorens