Across Europe, Muslims are up to three times less likely to be employed than non-Muslims. Asim Siddiqui, member of The City Circle for the promotion of British Muslim community projects and founder of CEDAR (http://www.thecedarnetwork.com), holds that mosques and madrasahs could contribute significantly to help young Muslims in Britain achieve more. About 1,600 madrasahs in Britain educate as many as 200,000 children. They are the only place where Islamic education is available and therefore remain popular with British Muslim families, although the classes offered range from classic rote learning to a variety of subjects taught in creative ways.

CEDAR has now launched a mentoring programme in madrasahs that seeks to raise aspirations in young Muslims and introduces them to British Muslim professionals who can act as role models and contact persons for the younger. London Tawhid Mosque, for example, has tried the new scheme of experimental learning activities for the mosque’s madrasah students and other local youth. It included life mapping and a teamwork project for building a community centre for both Muslims and non-Muslims. The author claims that if used in this way, madrasahs could significantly contribute to a successful life and career of young Muslims in Britain.

On Thursday, the US government assured that all information provided in 2010 census will remain confidential. Some minority groups including Muslim Americans had raised questions regarding the confidentiality of their census data given the broad scope of national security federal laws such as the Patriot Act. In a note to Congress, the Obama administration ruled out the disclosure of 2010 census data under the Patriot Act assuring Americans and particularly minorities once again that their information will be kept confidential.

Demographics and Immigration
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It is difficult to estimate the size of the Muslim population living in Spain. Available statistics do not distinguish population according to faith, which means we can only estimate quantity using national origin or national identity as sign of religious adherence. This implies a certain margin of error and, indirectly, a certain “ethnification” of Islamic identity that would be determined by ancestry or national origin on the basis of this method, rather than by religious faith.

This should be taken into consideration before drawing any conclusions from the statistics that we will go on to present. Properly speaking we are going to speak about Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese, Pakistanis, etc., and not about Muslims.

If we take the statistics of Spanish and Foreign population coming from, or nationals of, countries with a Muslim majority population (where the Muslim population is estimated at more than 50% of the total population according to The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life¹), we obtain the following figures:

*Source: National Statistics Institute (INE: http://www.ine.es). Municipal Register, 1 January 2009. Compiled by Fernando Bravo.

As seen in the table, speaking about “Muslims” in Spain means speaking mainly about Moroccans.

In addition to that figure, the number of converts is uncertain because there is no reliable source.² But they are certainly a minority compared with Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese, or Pakistanis.

We could conclude that the total “Muslim” population in Spain could be approaching 1,200,000, representing 2.5% of the total population in Spain (46,661,950 on 1 January 2009 according to the INE Municipal Register). But we should remember that this way of proceeding has many problems. For example, although there is an important quantity of Nigerians and although we have included them in the table, we should bear in mind that the Muslim population in Nigeria is estimated at 50.4% of the total population, so there is a high probability that the Nigerian population in Spain could be Christian. Therefore, we could say that 1,000,000 would be a very generous estimate of the number of Muslims in Spain.

Nearly 90% of the total “Muslim” population is made up of foreign nationals. Of these, Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese and Pakistanis together make up 86% of the total. For this reason, we will only speak about Moroccans, Senegalese, Algerians and Pakistanis in order to make an approximation to the “Muslim” population demographic profile.

All of these four communities show a similar tendency in their quantitative evolution. Although the Moroccan community is much larger than the rest, they have all been growing fast since the mid-1990s.

The figures that we have showed until now come from the Municipal Register, which collects data that includes all residents in each municipality, regardless of their legal status (regular and irregular immigrants alike). But, contrary to what is commonly thought, “Muslim” immigration in Spain shows a high percentage of legality. Since 1996 the percentage of legality among Moroccan immigrants has always been higher than 74% and it is currently the highest among the different immigrant communities, of whatever origin. In the next graph we compare the figures of Moroccans in Spain provided by the Municipal Register with those of Moroccan immigrants with a residence permit:

For the rest of the four main communities, the percentage of legality has sometimes been lower, but never less than 50%.

The spatial distribution of “Muslims” in Spain is not homogeneous. The four provinces of Catalonia, especially Barcelona (see map of reference), and the provinces of Madrid, Almeria, Murcia, and the three provinces of the Autonomous Region of Valencia concentrate the majority of the population. But all provinces in Spain have a “Muslim” population, never less than 500 “Muslims”.

Moroccans live mainly in Catalonia —specifically in the province of Barcelona— where more than 30% of the total Moroccan population live; but also in Andalusia —mainly in the province of Almeria— in Madrid, in the Autonomous Region of Valencia —particularly in the province of Alicante— and in Murcia.

More than 30% of Algerians live in the Autonomous Region of Valencia — in the provinces of Alicante and Valencia, especially. Catalonia, Andalusia and Aragon have also a high quantity of Algerians, but much less than Valencia.

Catalonia is also the main destination for Pakistani settlement (much more than anywhere else), with over 60% of the total Pakistani population residing there.

And finally Catalonia also has the highest population of Senegalese (33% of the total population), followed by Andalusia, the Autonomous Region of Valencia and Madrid.
Catalonia is therefore the main centre of “Muslim” settlement in Spain, especially the province of Barcelona with a joint population of Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese and Pakistani of 178,476 people, representing 15% of the total “Muslim” population in Spain.

In the big cities the “Muslim” population represents a relatively small percentage of the total population. In Barcelona, the city with the biggest resident “Muslim” population (Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese and Pakistanis number 30,814), they represent a 1.9% of the total population. However, in the small town of Manlleu (also in the province of Barcelona), they represent a 16.8% of the total population (20,505). This tendency can be observed in the rest of Spain. We have Madrid with 0.9% of “Muslim” population, but we also have Humanes de Madrid (a small town near Madrid) with 5.04% of “Muslim” population. We always find the higher concentration of “Muslim” population in agrarian villages like Talayuela (in the province of Caceres, with 9,282 inhabitants) with 25.8% of “Muslim” population, or small cities like El Ejido (with an eminently agrarian economy, in the province of Almeria) with a population of 80,987 inhabitants in which the “Muslim” population represents 19.5% of the total population.³

In big cities like Barcelona or Madrid, the concentration in certain neighbourhoods is higher, but never that high. In Madrid, for example, we find the highest concentration in the Embajadores neighbourhood (in the city centre, with a total population of 49,754 inhabitants), with 9.61% of “Muslim” population (and, incidentally, a very important community of Bangladeshis).⁴ The “Muslim” population in big cities tends to be concentrated in deprived neighbourhoods, with a long history of immigration (national and international alike). Here, the concentration of immigrant population (of any origin) is usually very high, giving it a strongly multicultural character.

Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese and Pakistanis, all show very different age and sex distribution, due to their different immigration history. The Moroccan community is the most long-standing immigrant community in Spain as a result of which it has a more feminine character than the others:

The rest, Senegalese, Algerians and Pakistanis, show the typical pyramids of recent immigrant communities: mainly men of working age. The Moroccan pyramid still has that profile, but it also has a high number of women and children. It also shows the existence of a small quantity of elders, totally absent in the other three communities. In the Moroccan case, this reflects family formation and the stabilization of the community.

Labor Market
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It is the Moroccan community that has more workers affiliated to the Social Security than any other immigrant community: 238,048 (over the 227,690 Romanians). That means that 33.5% of the total Moroccan population is affiliated to the Social Security, a slightly lower rate than the total population average rate (38% affiliated).

Algerians and Senegalese show an even lower rate of affiliation (29% and 28% respectively), but Pakistanis show a rate similar to that of Moroccans (33.8%).

The great majority of “Muslim” workers affiliated to the Social Security are employees. Just a small minority of the affiliated are self-employed (5.9% of Senegalese, 6.3% of Algerians and 6.9% of Moroccans). Only Pakistanis show a different picture, because 15.3% of them are self-employed.⁵

The main sector of employment is services. The construction sector has traditionally been an important source of employment for immigrants, and still is, but its importance has heavily decreased owing to the current housing market crisis. This crisis has heavily affected immigrants, of all origins. In the case of Moroccans, Algerians, Pakistanis and Senegalese, their rate of affiliation to the Social Security has decreased since 2007, as we can see in the following tables:

“Muslims” affiliated to the Social Security by sector of employment

Source: Anuario estadístico de inmigración, 2007 and 2008, Secretaría de Estado de Inmigración y Emigración, Ministry of Employment and Immigration. Compiled by Fernando Bravo.

In fact, the current financial crisis has affected “Muslims” working in all sectors. Their presence in services, industry and construction has decreased in the last two years. But, at the same time, the presence of Moroccans, Algerians and Senegalese in agriculture has increased somewhat, possibly on account of having transferred from other sectors.

Within the services sector, Moroccans are preferentially employed in the commerce sub-sector (22,498), and the hospitality industry sub-sector (22,127). On the other hand, within the industry sector they are specially concentrated in the manufacturing industry sub-sector (18,528).

In the case of Algerians, they also are specially concentrated in the services sector and, within it, in the real-estate market sub-sector (1,840) and the commerce sub-sector (1,509). But among sub-sectors, the one where most Algerians are employed is the manufacturing industry (2,017).

Senegalese are also heavily concentrated in the manufacturing industry sub-sector (2,502). Within the services sector, Senegalese are employed in the real-state market sub-sector (1,631) and the commerce sub-sector (1,531).

Finally, Pakistanis are employed specially in the hospitality industry (3,752) and commerce (1,920) sub-sectors.

Apart from these figures, we also have to take into consideration that there might be a relatively high proportion of immigrants working in the “informal sector”, but we have no grounds on which to base speculations in this respect.

Housing
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There are no data concerning the housing of the “Muslim” population specifically. We can only infer their situation from the general situation of the immigrant population according to a published survey.

According to the Colectivo IOÉ, 87% of the immigrant population from East Europe, Africa and South America lives in rented accommodation. In other words, the remaining 13% are house owners. Of this 87%, 30% rents an entire house, while 47% lives in subleased houses, in which they only rent a room or share the rent with other people. This is the case especially for newcomers.⁶

It is interesting to note that, according to the aforementioned survey, a majority of those polled think that the house they left in their home countries is bigger (84%), more comfortable (81%), and quieter (72%), than the house in which they live now.⁷

The concentration of immigrant population per neighbourhood depends on the economic situation of the neighbourhood. In the richer neighbourhoods immigrants are scarcely present. However, in the poorer neighbourhoods their concentration is very high.⁸

Education
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The presence of “Muslims” in the education system is high. The Moroccan is the largest immigrant community in the education system, especially in pre-school and primary education, where Moroccans represent 22% and 16.4% of the total immigrant population at both educational levels. However the situation is different in terms of secondary education, where Moroccans represent the second-biggest immigrant community (12.6%) after Ecuadorians (17.2% of the total immigrant population in secondary education). The situation is even more alarming at Baccalaureate level, where the Moroccans only represent the fourth-biggest community with 5.4% of the total immigrant population, following Ecuadorians (15.4%), Colombians (9.5%), Romanians (8.8%) and Argentineans (6%). At the level of vocational training, the situation is slightly better: Moroccans are the third-biggest community (11.3%), after Ecuadorians (15.6%) and Colombians (11.4%). In the Social Guaranty Program (a vocational training program designed for people who have completed their secondary education without achieving the academic objectives corresponding to that level), Moroccans have the highest percentage (29.5%), far from the 16.8% of Ecuadorians. Therefore, while Moroccans and Ecuadorians have a similar population in the education system, Moroccans are worse off once they pass the primary-education level.

“Muslims” in the education system
(Not university level. As compared with other communities)

Source: Estadísticas Enseñanzas no Universitarias – Resultados Detallados – Curso 2007-2008, Ministry of Education, http://www.educacion.es/. Compiled by Fernando Bravo.
* FP: Formación Profesional (Vocational training).
** Prog. GS: Social Guaranty Program.

The rest of the “Muslim” communities are scarcely represented in the education system because, as we saw earlier, their population of under-16 year-olds is very small. The Senegalese, despite having a smaller population within the educational system than that of Algerians, Argentineans, Chinese and Pakistanis, represent a higher percentage of the immigrant population in the Program of Social Guaranty.

Apart from the figures already shown, it may be said that the great majority of the immigrant population (including, of course, “Muslims”) attend public schools (82.7%), public schools representing 73% of the total number of schools in Spain.⁹

State and Church
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Legally speaking, Spain is neutral vis-à-vis Religious confessions. Its 1978 Constitution established that “no religion shall have a state character. The public authorities shall take into account the beliefs of Spanish society and shall consequently maintain appropriate cooperation relations with the Catholic Church and other confessions” (section 16.3).

It is also stated that “freedom of ideology, religion and worship is guaranteed, to individuals and communities with no other restriction on their expression than may be necessary to maintain public order as protected by law” (section 16.1). So Spain is constitutionally a secular State where freedom of religion and thought is both recognised and protected.

In addition to what the constitution stipulates, in 1980 a Religious Liberty Law was approved. The Religious Liberty Law develops what the Constitution already says. It stipulates, for example, the necessity for religious communities to be registered at the Ministry of Justice’s Registry of Religious Entities in order to be recognised by the State as entities with “legal personality”. Among other things, following the constitutional command to “maintain appropriate cooperation” with religious confessions, it also established that the State “shall establish, as appropriate, Cooperation Agreements or Conventions with the Churches, Faiths or Religious Communities enrolled in the Registry where warranted by their notorious influence in Spanish society, due to their domain or number of followers” (article 7.1).

This “notorious influence” is what in the original text is called “notorio arraigo”. “Notorio arraigo” is a status given by the State to a religious confession that recognises that it is deeply rooted in Spain. It is a legal artifice that, in practice, discriminates some religions in their relationship with the State. Their lack of recognition by the State prevents them from enjoying the “same benefits and privileges as other groups with ‘deeply rooted status’”.¹⁰

In other words, it is only confessions with “notorio arraigo” that can sign an agreement of cooperation with the State. In practice only four confessions have done so: the Catholic Church, The Islamic Commission of Spain (CIE), the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE), and the Federation of Religious Evangelical Entities of Spain (FEREDE). The Catholic Church signed the agreement in 1979, the others in 1992.¹¹

No agreement of cooperation exists for the other confessions, although some of them have been recognised by the State as religions with “notorio arraigo”. For example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (in 2003), Jehova’s Witnesses and Buddhists (in 2007), have won recognition as confessions with “notorio arraigo”, but they have not signed an agreement of cooperation with the State similar to that of Muslims, Jews and Evangelicals. That turns their recognition as confession with “notorio arraigo” into dead letter. In addition, the confessions that have not won recognition as confessions with “notorio arraigo” are in an even worse situation of disadvantage.

However, neither recognition of “notorio arraigo” nor the establishment of an agreement of cooperation with the State guarantees actual cooperation, not even the practical recognition of the rights that the agreements stipulate. It was not until recently that the main articles of the agreements of cooperation were put into practice and true cooperation between the State and the Muslim, Evangelical and Jewish communities began.

In all events, the Catholic Church has always received preferential treatment at the hands of the State. In the symbolic sphere in particular, Catholicism has a heavy presence. Institutions like the Crown, some town halls, some public schools, or some public hospitals, although they are State institutions and despite the neutrality the Constitution mandates, publicly identify themselves with Catholicism and its symbols. The presence of Catholic churchmen (and Catholic churchmen only) in institutional ceremonies, and the presence of representatives of State institutions in Catholic ceremonies (and in Catholic ceremonies only) is commonplace.

Muslim in Politics
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The presence of Muslims in politics is very small. There is a member of the Catalonian Parliament, member of the Socialist Party, Mohammed Chaib. There are city councillors in the Assembly of the Autonomous city of Ceuta, both in the Socialist Party and the Popular Party,¹² and also in the Assembly of the Autonomous city of Melilla.¹³ There is also a Muslim city councillor (member of the Popular Party) in a small town in Seville: Gines.¹⁴

Recently a group of Muslims created the first national Muslim party in Granada.¹⁵

Muslim Organizations
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The first Muslim organizations were created in the cities of Ceuta and Melilla (the Spanish autonomous cities in the North of Africa).¹⁶ The first one that registered at the Ministry of Justice’s Registry of Religious Entities was the Muslim Association of Melilla in 1968 (right after the promulgation of the Franquist Religious Liberty Law of 1967). Soon after that, in 1971, the Mohamadia-Mahoma Muslim Zawiya of Ceuta also registered.

On the other hand, a little earlier, the Jamaat Ahmadia of Islam in Spain was created in Pedro Abad, in the province of Córdoba (Andalusia), followed by the creation a year later in Madrid of the Muslim Association of Spain (AME). Both associations were founded by students who had arrived in Spain in the 1960s and 1970s from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt, as a result of the rapprochement policy between the Franquist and the Middle East countries during that period.

Later on, after Franco’s death and the establishment of democracy, but one year before the promulgation of the Religious Liberty Law of 1980, the Muslim Community of Spain was registered at the Ministry of Justice’s Registry. This association was created in Madrid and was led by Álvaro Machordom Comins.

Right after the promulgation of the Religious Liberty Law, new Muslim associations came into being. A good many of them were led and made up by converts that played an important role during the first years of the process of institutionalization of Islam in Spain. However, already in the early 1980s some associations made up by immigrant communities began to be organized. It is the case, among others, of the Autonomous Muslim Association of Jaen and Province, registered at the Ministry’s Registry in 1983, with headquarters in the town of Linares and created by Pakistani immigrants employed at the mining industry.

After the promulgation of the Religious Liberty Law, the first steps were taken with a view to signing Agreements of Cooperation between the Spanish State and the Jewish, Evangelical and Muslim confessions.

The first condition required by law in order to sign such agreements was that those confessions had the recognition of “notorio arraigo”. In the case of Islam, the Advisory Commission on Religious Freedom approved the recognition of Islam as a deeply rooted confession on 14 July 1989. By that time, Protestants and Jews had already achieved this status.

But the signing of the agreements was subject to the existence of a single representative of Islam in Spain, a condition laid down by the Spanish government. To this end, days before the recognition of Islam as a confession with “notorio arraigo” in Spain, the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities (FEERI) was created. It was composed originally of nine Islamic religious associations with headquarters in Madrid, Granada, Seville, Almeria, Ceuta and Melilla.

A few months after, the Muslim Association of Spain (the same association that in April 1989 had submitted an official request to the Government for the recognition of Islam as a confession with “notorio arraigo”) created the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain (UCIDE).

The State’s insistence on the presence of a single interlocutor coupled with the lack of harmony between the two federations (FEERI and UCIDE) —something that continues today—, resulted in the need to create an Islamic Commission of Spain (CIE) as an interlocutor with the State. The two federations were kept as independent entities within the CIE and the leading posts within the Commission were distributed equally between them. There are therefore two General Secretaries, one for each federation, and four speakers, two from each of the Federations. In fact the two federations operate independently and the CIE meets only when dialogue with the State is needed.

In April 1992, the cooperation agreement between the Spanish State and the Islamic Commission of Spain was signed, but until recently it has not been put in practice. Islam was not an issue to care about. The bombings on 11 March 2004 were, paradoxically, the incentive for the State to have a higher grade of cooperation with the Islamic community in Spain. The conviction that the bombings were inspired by some uncontrolled radical imam in some “clandestine” mosque pushed the Government to initiate a new policy concerning the Islamic community.¹⁷

Soon it became clear that the Registry of Religious Entities at the Ministry of Justice was inefficient in terms of providing a clear picture of the number of mosques in Spain and their location (because registry is not compulsory, nor the data update). So, in order to encourage the inscription of mosques and religious associations in the Registry, the Government initiated a policy of funding projects made by religious communities (not just Islamic, but any religious community affiliated to any of the Federations that signed an agreement of cooperation with the State). In order to pursue that aim, the Government created the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation [Fundación Pluralismo y Convivencia]. Now the State funds projects implemented by individual religious communities, which does to some extent remedy their disadvantage with respect to the privileged status of the Catholic Church, which receives state funds directly (not linked to the execution of any specific project).

The result of all that has been an important increase in the number of Islamic “entities” registered at the Ministry’s Registry (see maps below). So, while there has been an important change in recent years, it has occurred mainly as a result of security concerns, and only secondarily to repair the discrimination that minorities have suffered in Spain.

During these years in which the State has sought a more frequent dialogue with the representatives of the Muslim community in Spain, the lack of representativeness of the Islamic Commission of Spain (CIE) has become clear.¹⁸ Those communities that feel dissatisfied with the management of the CIE, or do not feel represented by it, have begun to create their own federations, some of them with a marked regional character. In December 2009, a total of 23 Islamic Federative Entities were registered in the Register of Religious Entities of the Ministry of Justice. Besides FEERI, UCIDE, and the CIE itself, and also the 10 regional federations that UCIDE has created during the last years (in Ceuta, Aragon, Valencia, Madrid, the Basque Country, Extremadura, Murcia, Catalonia, Castile-Leon and in Castile-La Mancha), the following federations are registered: Islamic Commission of Melilla, Islamic Council of Valencia, Islamic Federation of the Autonomous Region of the Balearic Islands, Muslim Federation of Spain (FEME), Islamic Federation of Murcia, Higher Islamic Council of the Autonomous Region of Valencia (CISCOVA), Federation of Muslim Communities of Castile-La Mancha, Spanish Islamic Federation of Catalonia (FICDE), and the more recently created Federation of Sub-Saharan Muslim Communities for Dialogue, Culture and Rights (FEDICD), and the Islamic Centre of Catalonia.

With the exception of the Islamic Commission of Melilla, established in 1989 and composed of four communities (Muslim Religious Association, Muslim Religious Council, Muslim Community of Melilla and Association Badr), all these associations came into being after 2005 (especially in 2008 and 2009). The creation of these federations is mainly explained by the lack of representativeness of FEERI and UCIDE and its inoperability in search of a better dialogue with the regional administrations. Among the reasons that have led to the creation of these new federations the existence of different ideological positions cannot be ignored.

In late 2006 the Platform of Islamic Federations of Spain was created, as the product of the junction of five of the aforementioned federations. The Platform seeks to end the dominion that FEERI and UCIDE exert over the CIE. In order to pursue that aim, the Platform has proposed changing the CIE statutes, in order to allow new actors to join. That factor has made the operation of the CIE increasingly difficult, even more since FEERI is immersed in an internal crisis since 2000. The five federations that comprise the Platform are the Islamic Federation of Murcia, Spanish Islamic Federation of Catalonia, the Higher Islamic Council of the Autonomous Region of Valencia, The Muslim Federation of Spain, and the Islamic Federation of the Autonomous Region of the Balearic Islands.

Apart from the traditional rivalry between FEERI and UCIDE another factor of instability has appeared: the growing influence of al Ahd wal Ihssan [Justice and Spirituality, the Moroccan Islamist movement] among Moroccan communities in Spain. In the past few years, Justice and Spirituality has gained enough strength to challenge current Moroccan control over FEERI. Morocco, meanwhile, has tried to influence the Spanish Government presenting itself as the sole guardian of moderate Islam, and Justice and Spirituality as a radical group and a threat to Spain. It has also tried to extend its control over imams in Spain, and has tried to convince the Spanish Government that a Moroccan-controlled body of imams would be a guaranty of moderation. In this line Morocco convened a meeting of imams working in Spain. It took place in Marrakech in November 2008.¹⁹

Islamic Education
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The Agreement of Cooperation between the Spanish State and the Islamic Commission of Spain states (as do the agreements with Jews and Evangelicals) that, as the Education Law includes the right of having access to religious education in public and private-concerted schools,²⁰ Islamic religion must be taught where parents ask for it (article 10).

The Agreement also states that Islamic religion will be taught by teachers appointed by communities belonging to the Islamic Commission. The subject contents as well as textbooks will be also chosen by the communities belonging to the Islamic Commission.

It is also stated that the Islamic Commission could create its own schools, as well as universities and Islamic training centres.

However, the Agreement has not been implemented to any significant degree. Islam is taught in few schools. For example, in Catalonia and Madrid, where the majority of Muslim population lives, there is not a single teacher of Islam.²¹

As we can see in the following table, the teaching of Islamic religion lessons in Spanish schools is practically non-existent.

Source: Ministry of Education and Different Autonomous Regions with competence on education matters. I wish to thank the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation for providing me with this table.

The Ministry of Justice, through the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation, has tried to facilitate the development of this right by stimulating the publication of two Islamic religion textbooks for primary: Descubrir el islam 1 & 2. Both books have been written under the supervision of the Islamic Commission.

Security and Anti-Terrorism Issues
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Despite the terrible attacks of 11 March 2004 (11-M), Spain has not introduced new anti-terrorist legislation. However, a great many terrorist suspects have been arrested and imprisoned.
The most important trial of jihadists targetted those involved in the 11-M attacks.

The trial of the 28 defendants lasted 4 months.²² The judge finally convicted 3 of the 8 chief defendants to prison terms of 35,000 to 40,000 years. The rest received far lower penalties.²³
There has also been a trial against an al-Qaeda terrorist cell linked to the 9/11 attacks. In this trial the defendant “Abu Dahdah” was sentenced to 27 years in prison.²⁴

Other trials have been held against terrorist cells or supposed terrorist cells. In 2007 the Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) sentenced 5 members of the so-called “Dixan commando” to 13 years’ imprisonment.²⁵ Recently, 10 Pakistanis and one Indian received prison sentences of up to 14 years after being found guilty of planning to bomb the Barcelona underground.²⁶

According to one estimate, nearly 50% of those accused of being members of jihadist cells in Spain have been found not guilty. 89 people have been tried since 2005 by the Spanish National Court, of whom 42 were acquitted. Similarly, the final sentences meted out have always been less severe than the penalties called for by the prosecutor.²⁷

As we saw earlier, concern over terrorism and security has also guided the implementation of measures to improve relations between the State and Muslim communities. This policy has paved the way for a more fluid dialogue between State representatives and those of the Muslim communities. It also led to the implementation of the Cooperation Agreements.

Islamic Practice
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Mosques

In May 2004 there were 235 Muslim Religious Entities²⁸ registered at the Ministry of Justice’s Registry of Religious Entities.²⁹ At the end of 2008 there were 641. This does not mean that they were all were created in those four years. Many were, but many others had been created before. The new policy of cooperation between the State and the Muslim communities through the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation has generated greater interest in registering at the Ministry’s Registry.

According to the Agreements of Cooperation between the Spanish State and the Islamic Commission of Spain,³⁰ mosques are inviolable spaces (article 2.2) and they cannot be forcibly expropriated without the Islamic Commission being heard. In addition, they cannot be demolished without their holy character being previously removed, and their archives and documents are protected by law.

Mosques in Spain are predominantly small spaces. They are usually located in garages or warehouses on the outskirts of the towns because communities do not easily find better places or because local authorities or/and neighbours are opposed to mosques being opened in town centres.

There are very few big newly built mosques in Spain, only four: two in Madrid (Abu Bakr Mosque and the Islamic Cultural Centre of Madrid), one in Valencia (Islamic Cultural Centre of Valencia) and another one in Granada.

There are projects for building new big mosques in Seville and Barcelona, but they are still at the work-in-progress stage. The Seville project has met with serious opposition from neighbours.³¹ Opposition to the construction and opening of mosques is common in Spain. There have been important cases, especially in Catalonia.³²

Recently (15 July 2009) the Catalonian Parliament approved a law regulating places of worship in an attempt to solve the problems that religious minorities (not just Muslims) face when they try to open a new place of worship.³³

Cemeteries

There are 24 Islamic burial sites in Spain. The majority (14) are special spaces within public cemeteries. There is also an important proportion of Civil War Islamic cemeteries, created during the Spanish Civil War to bury the Moroccan soldiers that fought on Franco’s side. Of those Civil War cemeteries, some are not in use anymore, but others are still being used by the Muslim communities in Spain. The cemetery in Griñón (near Madrid) is one of those.

There are also two private Islamic cemeteries, property of two Muslim communities and used just by them.

*The Civil War Islamic cemetery in Griñón (Madrid) Source: http://www.iesoa.pangea.org/IMG/jpg/clip_image001.jpg.

The Agreement of Cooperation states that Islamic cemeteries will enjoy the same legal rights as mosques. Muslim communities are entitled to a special place in public cemeteries, as well as to having their own cemeteries. They also have the right to be buried according to Islamic burial rites (article 2.5).

Halal Slaughter

According to the Agreement of Cooperation the Islamic Commission of Spain has the right to have food slaughtered according to the Islamic rite and labelled as “halal”, but Islamic slaughter must respect the public health laws. It is also stated that public institutions such as hospitals, schools and the army must do their best to provide Muslims with halal food when required (article 14).

Apart from what the Agreement states and before it was signed, the Islamic Junta, an Islamic organization joined mainly by converts, created the Halal Institute in 1986 to provide Muslims with food labelled as halal.

Holidays

The Agreement of Cooperation states (article 12) that the members of communities belonging to the Islamic Commission have the right to ask to stop work on Fridays in order to attend the mosque (between 13:00 and 18:30). They also have the right to finish work an hour before sunset during the month of Ramadan. However they will have to recover the lost hours.

If an agreement is reached between employees and employer, Muslims could replace the common holidays among the non-Muslim population with the following Islamic holidays: Al-Hiyra (1st. Muharram), Ashura (10th Muharram), Idu al-Maulid (12th Rabiu al-Awwal), Al-Isra wa al-Mi’ray (27th Rayab), Idu al-Fitr (1st, 2nd, 3rd Shawwal), Idu al-Adha (10th, 11th, 12th Du Al Hyyah)

The same holds true for students in public schools.

Ceuta and Melilla, the Spanish Autonomous Cities in North Africa, were the first Spanish cities to officially recognise an Islamic celebration: the Eid al-Kabir.³⁴

As an important Shi’i community lives in Barcelona, the City Council has also allowed the celebration of Ashura with a procession through some streets.³⁵

Marriage

Islamic marriage is recognised by the State as legal if the bride and groom fulfil the legal requisites established by Spanish law (Agreement, article 7).

There are no statistics about Islamic marriages taking place in Spain, but we can make an approximation to the issue by showing the statistics of marriages that have taken place between Spanish and nationals from countries identified with Islam, and between nationals from countries identified with Islam.

Source: National Statistics Institute (INE: http://www.ine.es). Compiled by Fernando Bravo.

As we can see, there are more marriages between Spanish and Moroccans than marriages between Moroccans. This is an indication that marriages of Moroccan residents in Spain probably and preferably take place in Morocco, not in Spain. The same probably holds true for Senegalese, Algerians and Pakistanis.

Hijab

Unlike France, there is no legal ban on the wearing of the hijab in Spain. Controversies have nonetheless been aired in the media when certain schools tried to prevent Muslim girls wearing the headscarf. These few cases have been few and far between.³⁶

In all events, the media discourse in Spain concerning the hijab has been highly influenced by the polemics in France, more than by actual problems in Spain.

Recently controversy was sparked in the media concerning the case of a judge who refused to allow a Muslim witness to wear the niqab and a lawyer to wear the hijab. The case of the lawyer has been especially controversial since she has appealed to the Spanish High Court of Justice in order to have the right to wear it during the proceedings.³⁷

Media Coverage, Intellectual and Political Discourse
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There is no exhaustive study of Spanish media coverage of Islam and Muslims, although there are partial studies enabling us to make an estimation of this coverage in recent years.

If we use the following graph as a sample of this coverage, we could conclude that interest in Islam and Muslims is relatively recent.

El País and ABC are two of Spain’s leading newspapers. Both are addressed to a wide range of readers, albeit on different sides of the ideological spectrum: liberal in the case of El Pais, conservative in the case of ABC. Different as they are ideologically, they show a very similar tendency in the grade of attention they have paid to Islam.

Appearance frequency of the word “Islam” in two of the main Spanish newspapers

As we can see, they have always paid attention to Islam mainly during International crisis as the Iranian Revolution, the war in Former Yugoslavia, the Algerian Civil War, and above all after 9/11. We can easily identify each crisis by the peaks in the graph. So we can draw the following conclusions: Islam is mainly associated with violence, wars and international conflicts.

We cannot discern how many news items deal with the issue of immigration or Muslims in Spain because concern over this issues only became really apparent after 9/11. In the graph they are easily confused with news about, for example, terrorism, war in Iraq, etc.

Before 9/11 the media paid little attention to Islam. El País, as we can see, paid a little more attention to it during the Civil War in Yugoslavia and Algeria, but nothing compared to what happened after 9/11. Before that, the issue “Muslims in Spain” was dealt with in the context of a broader concern with the issue “Immigration”. Islam still was not a main issue. The main concern was irregular immigration and the integration of immigrants. And when media, politicians and intellectuals spoke about the integration of Muslim immigrants, they almost invariably spoke broadly about their “culture of origin”, not specifically about Islam. The objects of concern were Maghrebis, not Muslims. Few people thought of Maghrebis as Muslims, but as “moros” or Moors (an ethnic rather than religious category). During those years negative discourse about the presence of Maghrebi immigrants in Spain was part of a broader backlash against multiculturalism.³⁸

However this attitude against multiculturalism very soon led to a negative attitude against Islam and Muslims, even more after 9/11. But it was especially after the publication of La sociedad multiétnica [The Multiethnic Society] in early 2001 by Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori, when a national debate on multiculturalism and the integration of Muslims in Spain began. Sartori argued against multiculturalism and identified it as a threat to democracy. He also considered that European States should discriminate against immigrants on the basis of their “culture of origin” and give preference to the arrival of those immigrants with a culture similar to that of the host country. According to Sartori, the entrance of Muslim immigrants should be avoided because it was so difficult to integrate them.³⁹

The book was broadly discussed in newspapers and heavily influenced politicians, especially –but not only- in the Popular Party, then in power. For example, Enrique Fernández Miranda, who in those days was Secretary of State on Immigration, publicly manifested that he agreed with Sartori on the issue of multiculturalism.⁴⁰ It also inspired Federico Trillo, Ministry of Defence in 2002, when he argued in favour of the inclusion of South American immigrants in the Army, “because they are of our culture”, and against the inclusion of immigrants of other “cultures” (although Muslim soldiers are already part of the Spanish army).⁴¹

As we said before, after 9/11 the national debate on immigration, integration and multiculturalism, swiftly came to focus on Islam and Muslims. The debate oscillated between those who equated Islam with terrorism and was therefore a threat to the “west”, and those who tried to avoid such identifications.

The situation worsened after the attacks of 11 March 2004 in Madrid. Despite the pain, people remained calm and there were few racist or Islamophobic attacks. However, in the media the situation was different. It was not long before op-ed pieces of an Islamophobic character began to appear. In the following months, there was an ongoing debate on the nature of Islam, its supposed violent and intolerant character, and the need for the State to control mosques and what imams said there.⁴²

>*D7 ABC cover, 2 December 2007. Source: http://hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigate.exe/hemeroteca/madrid/d7/2007/12/02/001.html.

In the past two years the situation in the media seems to have calmed down. As seen in the previous graph, the attention paid to Islam by two of Spain’s leading newspapers has returned to pre-9/11 levels. However, given the current economic crisis, immigration has again become a major concern, in the media as well as among politicians.

For example, the municipal authorities in a small city in the province of Barcelona, Vic, recently decided to prevent the registration of irregular immigrants in the Municipal Register. After some controversy, the city hall backtracked and decided to obey the laws in force. The controversy has been used by the Popular Party to call for a reformation in the legislation on immigration and a “integration contract” for immigrants.⁴³ This “integration contract” was proposed by the Popular Party in its 2008 electoral campaign (sparking a great deal of controversy). It was argued that the contract was necessary to make immigrants obey laws, learn the language and respect Spanish customs.⁴⁴

Public Perception of Islam, Bias and Discrimination
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In September 2007 the Spanish Centre of Sociological Research (CIS) published the results of a national survey on Attitudes toward discrimination based on a racial and ethnic origin.⁴⁵ Those polled were asked whether they thought there were ethnic, religious or cultural groups that “did not mix with the rest of society”, and which groups sprang to mind. 15.7% of those polled said “Moroccans, Maghrebis, Algerians”, 18.2% “Muslims, Mohammedans”, 11.1% “Arabs” and 7.9% “moros” or Moors. If we put together all these different identifications under the label “Muslims”, then the result is that 52.9% of those polled thought that Muslims did not “mix with the rest of society”, a far cry from the 18.3% that said “Romanians”, and the 17.2% that said “gypsies”.

The situation has not changed much in the last decade. Already at the beginning of 2001 the CIS “barometer” showed similar data: For those polled, Maghrebis (there were no questions about “Muslims”) were the less likeable community among immigrants.⁴⁶

Again, in 2007 the Real Instituto Elcano (a think-tank that declares itself to be independent but that has strong links with the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs) published a survey in which the results showed that 96% of those polled thought that Muslims were sexist, 90% thought that that they were authoritarian, 68% that they were violent, and 37% of them had a “negative opinion of Muslim religion”.⁴⁷

This has probably triggered incidences of discrimination against the Muslim population, but we have no data in this respect. As the Constitution states, no-one in Spain can be obliged to declare his religious beliefs, and statistics for discrimination complaints do not collect religious affiliation of the victims, nor their national or ethnic origin. In addition, it is difficult to determine whether an act of discrimination or an aggression has been motivated by the victim’s religious, ethnic or national identity. An explicit confession of the perpetrator is needed in order to elucidate this point.

We can also reach a conclusion about the perpetrator’s motivation if his action has a symbolic component. In that sense, currents of opposition to the opening of mosques, to which we alluded earlier, might well have an Islamophobic component. But, even in those cases, we cannot always conclude that this is necessarily the case, because we also find similar situations when Evangelical churches or Jehovah’s Witnesses’ temples are going to be opened. We can also identify symbolic actions of an anti-Islamic character when we find, for example, swastikas painted on the walls of an Islamic cemetery or a mosque.

*A crossed-out Swastika on the walls of the Islamic cemetery at Griñón (Madrid). December 2009. Photo by Fernando Bravo.

But we can also identify Islamophobic actions perpetrated against institutions and people that have no relation with Islam. For example, in May 2008 the Spanish National Front (an extreme-right party) organized a demonstration in front of Casa Árabe [Arabic House, a cultural institution dependent on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs], because they identified it as an Islamic cultural centre.⁴⁸

*National Front poster on the demonstration at Casa Árabe with the Mayor of Madrid, Alberto Ruiz Gallardon, wearing a fez and saying: “An Islamic Cultural Centre is exactly what this neighbourhood needs and that’s that!” Source: http://estaticos03.cache.el-mundo.net/elmundo/imagenes/2008/05/13/1210696499_extras_ladillos_1_0.jpg.

In all events, as shown in a recent study by the Institute of Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC),⁴⁹ there is a lot of ignorance about Islam in Spain. Most people know nothing about Islam, and they cannot even elaborate a negative discourse about it. Negative attitudes toward Muslims used to be based on the traditional aversion towards “moros”, based on traditional racist stereotypes: “the Moor is dirty”, “the Moor is a liar”, “the Moor is a thief”, “the Moor is lazy”, etc.

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TAULÉS, SILVIA (2004): La nueva España musulmana, Barcelona, Debolsillo.

VALENCIA, RAFAEL (2003): “Los nuevos musulmanes”, in ROQUE, MARIA ANGELS (ed.): El islam plural, Barcelona, Icaria, pp. 361-368.

VICENTE, ÁNGELES (ed.) (2004): Musulmanes en el Aragón del siglo XXI, Zaragoza, Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo.

ZAPATA-BARRERO, RICARD; GONZÁLEZ, ELISABET y SÁNCHEZ MONTIJANO, ELENA (2008): El discurso político en torno a la inmigración en España y en la Unión Europea, Madrid, Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigración y Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración.

1. (2009): "Mapping the global Muslim population. A report on the size and distribution of the world's Muslim population", The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, october, http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=451 [last view: 22 December 2009].
2. There have been some estimates. A newspaper report said that the Muslim convert population was 2.5% of the total Muslim population in Spain (1 million); see MOLINA, MARTA (2007): “Nuevos musulmanes”, en El País, 31 July. Juan José Escobar Stemmann said that it was a 2%, without providing any source; see ESCOBAR STEMMANN, JUAN J. (2008): "Activismo islámico en España", Política Exterior, nº 124, pp. 67-81.
3. All figures from INE, Municipal Register, 1 January 2008.
4. All figures from Ayuntamiento de Madrid [Madrid City Council], Municipal Register, 1 January 2008, http://www.munimadrid.es/estadistica/.
5. All figures from Anuario Estadístico de Inmigración [Yearbook of Immigration Statistics], 2008, Madrid, Secretaría de Estado de Inmigración y Emigración, 2009, http://extranjeros.mtas.es/es/InformacionEstadistica/Anuarios/Anuario2008.html.
6. COLECTIVO IOÉ (Carlos Pereda, Walter Actis y Miguel Ángel de Prada) (2005): Inmigración y vivienda en España, Madrid, Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración, pp. 200-201.
7. Ibid., p. 203.
8. Ibid.
9. http://www.educacion.es/mecd/estadisticas/educativas/dcce/Datos_Cifras_web.pdf.
10. See “International Religious Freedom Report 2009”, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2009/127338.htm.
11. See the agreements (in Spanish) in the Ministry of Justice web page.
12. See a list of the members of the Assembly: http://www.ceuta.es/servlet/ContentServer?isP=CI-InfoInsPage&pagename=CeutaIns%2FPage%2FDiputadosAsamblea&p_pag=DiputadosAsamblea&cid=1120557358018.
13. See http://www.melilla.es/melillaPortal/fdes_d4_v2.jsp?contenido=51&tipo=6&nivel=1400&pagina=home&language=es&codMenu=234&codMenuPN=231.
14. http://www.webislam.com/?idt=10096.
15. (2009): “Musulmanes de Granada impulsan la creación de un partido político nacional”, Ideal.es, 16 February.
16. On the contemporary history of Islam in Spain see PLANET CONTRERAS, ANA I. (1998): Ceuta y Melilla. Espacios-frontera hispano-marroquíes, Melilla y Ceuta, Ciudad Autónoma de Melilla, Ciudad Autónoma de Ceuta, UNED-Melilla, pp. 107-114; PLANET CONTRERAS, ANA I. (2001): "Un colectivo islámico en la España de hoy. Del sucursalismo a la desobediencia: musulmanes y comportamientos políticos en Melilla", Anales de Historia Contemporánea, nº 17, pp. 485-500; LÓPEZ GARCÍA, BERNABÉ y PLANET CONTRERAS, ANA I. (2002): "Islam in Spain", in HUNTER, SHIREEN T. (ed.): Islam, Europe's second religion. The new social, cultural, and political landscape, Westport (Connecticut), Praeger, pp. 157-174; PLANET CONTRERAS, ANA I. (2008): "Islam e inmigración: elementos para un análisis y propuestas de gestión", in PLANET CONTRERAS, ANA I. and MORERAS, JORDI (eds.): Islam e inmigración, Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, pp. 9-52; ARIGITA, ELENA (2006): "Representing Islam in Spain: Muslim Identities and the Contestation of Leadership", The Muslim World, vol 96, nº 4, pp. 563-584; MORERAS, JORDI (2002): "Muslims in Spain: between the historical heritage and the minority construction", The Muslim World, vol 92, nº 1-2, pp. 129-142.
17. For several months after the bombings, the Government was under heavy pressure to control mosques and what was said there. See, for example, (2004): “José Antonio Alonso, Ministro del Interior: «Es necesaria una ley para poder controlar a los imames de las pequeñas mezquitas»”, El País, 2 May; (2004): “La Comisión Islámica califica de disparate el control de los imames”, El País, 3 May; (2004): “El Gobierno quiere llevar la ley de control de imames radicales al Pacto Antiterrorista”, El País, 4 May; (2004): “El Gobierno carece de un registro de imames y de mezquitas para controlar a los islamistas”, El País, 5 May; (2004): “El Gobierno estudia una reforma legal para el control de mezquitas e imames”, El País, 8 May; See also the 6 May 2004 op-ed piece “Interior de las mezquitas”, also in El País.
18. On the situation of the Islamic Commission of Spain see ARIGITA: "Representing Islam in Spain”. On the foundation of new regional federations see the case of Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha in LÓPEZ GARCÍA, BERNABÉ, et al. (2007): Arraigados. Minorías religiosas en la Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, Icaria; GARCÍA ORTIZ, PUERTO, et al. (2009): "Comunidades islámicas", in GARCÍA ORTIZ, PUERTO y HERNANDO DE LARRAMENDI MARTÍNEZ, MIGUEL (eds.): Religion.es: minorías religiosas en Castilla-La Mancha, Barcelona y Madrid, Icaria y Fundación Pluralismo y Convivencia, pp. 245-278.
19. See CEMBRERO, IGNACIO (2008): “Marruecos convoca a más de cien imanes afincados en España”, El País, 7 November; PAGOLA, JON (2009): “Fieles a Mohamed VI e islamistas pugnan por el control de los musulmanes en España”, ABC, 1 November.
20. Private-concerted schools are private schools that receive public funding.
21. See AYLLÓN, DANIEL (2009): “El islam tiene 46 maestros para 150.000 alumnos”, Público.es, 6 September.
22. “El juicio por los atentados del 11 de marzo en Madrid queda visto para sentencia”, Europa press, http://www.europapress.es/00309/20070702225224/11-juicio-atentados-11-marzo-madrid-queda-visto-sentencia.html.
23. (2007): “España: fallo judicial por el 11-M”, BBCMundo.com, 31 October; Romero, MANUEL & YOLDI, JOSÉ (2007): “El tribunal culpa a una célula islamista del 11-M, descarta a ETA y desmonta los bulos amparados por el PP”, El País, 31 October.
24. (2005): “La Audiencia Nacional condena a 27 años de cárcel a «Abu Dahdah» por dirigir la célula española de Al Qaeda”, ABC, 26 September.
25. (2007): “La Audiencia Nacional condena a 13 años de cárcel a cinco miembros del ‘comando Dixan’”, El País, 9 February.
26. (2009): “Condenados a penas de hasta 14 años los 11 islamistas que planearon volar el metro de Barcelona”, El País, 14 December.
27. (2009): “Absueltos casi el 50% de los acusados por terrorismo islamista desde 2005 en España”, LaVanguardia.es, 11 April.
28. In Spanish law a “religious entity” is a religious organization with legal personality recognised by the Ministry of Justice. That designation includes religious communities, associations and federations. Therefore, it should not be confused with the number of mosques. All mosques in the Ministry’s Register are religious entities, but not all religious entities are mosques.
29. http://dgraj.mju.es/EntidadesReligiosas/.
30. Acuerdo de cooperación del Estado Español con la Comisión Islámica de España (aprobado por la Ley 26/1992 de 10 de noviembre, BOE de 12 de noviembre).
31. RINCÓN, REYES (2008): “La mezquita de Sevilla se queda otra vez sin suelo por un error municipal”, El País, 17 October.
32. See MORERAS, JORDI (2008): "¿Conflictos por el reconocimiento? Las polémicas en torno a los oratorios musulmanes en Cataluña", en PLANET CONTRERAS, ANA I. y MORERAS, JORDI (eds.): Islam e inmigración, Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, pp. 53-79.
33. See http://www20.gencat.cat/portal/site/Departament-de-la-Vicepresidencia/menuitem.231745376b0b41e13a81e810b0c0e1a0/?vgnextoid=8360d49a17e72210VgnVCM1000008d0c1e0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=8360d49a17e72210VgnVCM1000008d0c1e0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default.
34. See (2008): “El Aid El Kebir de 2010 también será día festivo en Ceuta”, Sur.es; Cembrero, Ignacio: “La fiesta del Cordero será oficial”, El País, 30 November.
35. See (2009): “Los chiíes de Barcelona celebran la Ashura con permiso del Ayuntamiento”, ABC, 9 January.
36. On the issue of the hijab in Spain see MIJARES, LAURA y RAMÍREZ, ÁNGELES (2008): "Mujeres, pañuelo e islamofobia en España: un estado de la cuestión", Anales de Historia Contemporánea, nº 24, pp. 121-135.
37. CEBERIO, MÓNICA (2010): “El supremo decidirá sobre el uso del ‘hiyab’ en los juicios”, El País, 15 January.
38. See ZAPATA-BARRERO, RICARD; GONZÁLEZ, ELISABET and SÁNCHEZ MONTIJANO, ELENA (2008): El discurso político en torno a la inmigración en España y en la Unión Europea, Madrid, Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigración y Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración; BRAVO LÓPEZ, FERNANDO (2002): Los partidos políticos parlamentarios españoles ante la inmigración (1999-2002), DEA Tesis, Department of Arab and Islamic Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; ABELLA, CARLOS MANUEL (2005): Los discursos mediáticos acerca de la inmigración y el multiculturalismo en España: análisis de los editoriales de ABC, El Mundo y El País, 1994-2002, PhD Tesis, Department of Theory and Method of Social Analysis, Universidad de la Coruña, La Coruña.
39. SARTORI, GIOVANNI (2001): La sociedad multiétnica. Pluralismo, multiculturalismo y extranjeros, Madrid, Taurus.
40. BRAVO LÓPEZ: Los partidos políticos parlamentarios, pp. 69-71
41. Ibid., pp. 72-73.
42. See some examples of Islamophobic op-ed pieces in the Spanish media in NAVARRO, LAURA (2008): Contra el islam. La visión deformada del mundo árabe en Occidente, Córdoba, Almuzara; BRAVO LÓPEZ, FERNANDO (2009): Islamofobia y antisemitismo: la construcción discursiva de las amenazas islámica y judía, PhD Tesis, Department of Arab and Islamic Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid. See also BRAVO LÓPEZ, FERNANDO (2009): "Islamofobia y antimusulmanismo en España: el caso de César Vidal", Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos, nº 8, pp. 47-71.
43. See (2010): “Los alcaldes del PP exigen una reforma de la Ley de Extranjería”, El País, 25 January; (2010): “El PP retoma la creación de un «contrato de integración» para inmigrantes”, ABC, 23 January.
44. See (2008): “Rajoy promete a los inmigrantes un «contrato de integración» si gana las elecciones”, ABC, 6 February.
45. See (2007): “Actitudes ante la discriminación por origen racial y étnico”, 19 September, http://www.cis.es/cis/opencms/-Archivos/Marginales/2720_2739/2731/e273100.html. Similar data can be found in (2009): “Actitudes hacia la inmigración (II)”, 20 September, http://www.cis.es/cis/opencms/-Archivos/Marginales/2760_2779/2773/e277300.html, and also in DESRUES, THIERRY and PÉREZ YRUELA, MANUEL (eds.) (2007): Opinión de los españoles en materia de racismo y xenofobia. 2007, Madrid, Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales.
46. See http://www.cis.es/cis/opencms/-Archivos/Marginales/2400_2419/e240900.html.
47. NOYA, JAVIER (2007): "Los españoles y el islam", Real Instituto Elcano. ARI, nº 47, pp. 13-17.
48. See FIGUERAS, AMANDA (2008): “El Tribunal Supremo de Justicia de Madrid autoriza una manifestación contra Casa Árabe”, ElMundo.es, 14 May.
49. The study is still unpublished. It was based on discussion groups.

Demographics
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The capital of Spain has a population of 3,287,630. The 17.4 percent (574,869) is of foreign origin. As there are no census or official records of the religious faith of the population living in Spain, one way to estimate the number of Muslim population is by approaching the statistics about foreign population coming from countries that have a majority of Muslim population.¹ So, in this text, when we refer to Muslim population we shall be referring to national origins, and most often to those that have a significant presence. One should be careful though, as this communities are settling for a growing length of time and are changing their nationality by naturalizing as Spaniards, children are being born in Spain who may continue to be Muslim but of Spanish nationality, a person may have been born in a Muslim majority country and profess a minority religion, and, finally, Spanish conversions to Islam are almost impossible to quantify.

Holding this in mind we may start by saying that today the major population of Muslim faith comes from Morocco, although it was not so in the early 1970’s. In those days many students arrived from the Middle East - Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon - to study medicine at the Spanish Universities, and they were the ones to create in Madrid the first Muslim association, the Asociación Musulmana de España, in the year 1971. Although there were other presences in the territory, as the Muslim Brotherhood and the At-tala’i, this was the only association registered as a religious one at the Ministry of Justice until the year 1986.

The 80’s were also a decade of conversion to the Muslim religion by an important number of Spanish citizens. Although they do not represent an important figure numerically (there are no available figures to account for the number of converts but in no case do they surpass 10 percent of the whole Muslim population), it is important to take them into account as they were many times related to the left-wing political parties and were active agents in the process of negotiation with the Spanish state of the public presence of Islam.

The presence of Islam is amplified in the 1990’s with the arrival of immigrants from countries of Muslim majority, especially from Morocco. The 1992 extraordinary regularization process attracted and most often legalized a great number of immigrants that were living in Madrid without need for official documents. From the very first moment the Moroccan population appears as the most relevant figure and continues to be so until today. According to the Municipal Register -that collects data on the whole population regardless of their legal or illegal residence status (in the case of foreign population)- Moroccans represent the 4.66 percent of all foreign population in Madrid. The other relevant communities from Muslim majority countries observe a great comparative numerical difference: population from Bangladesh represents 0.69 percent, from Senegal 0.44 percent, from Mali 0.43 percent, from Nigeria² 0.33 percent, from Algeria 0.2 percent and from Pakistan 0.19 percent.³

Source: Ayuntamiento de Madrid (Madrid City Hall). Padrón Municipal de Habitantes (Municipal Register), 1 January 2009. http://www.munimadrid.es. Compiled by: Rita Gomes Faria.

The crisis that is affecting worldwide economy had an impact on the immigration numbers in Madrid and one can see in the graphics below that the number of people from Muslim majority countries has been descending, although it is starting to remount again from 2008 on.





Concerning the distribution of the population from Muslim majority countries in the city of Madrid, the districts that have more Muslim presence are Centro -mostly the neighbourhoods of Lavapíes and Embajadores-, Puente de Vallecas and Villaverde (three areas that have traditionally been occupied by migrants), followed by the districts of Carabanchel, Latina and Tetuan.

Population from Muslim majority countries in each district in the city of Madrid

Source: Ayuntamiento de Madrid (Madrid City Hall). Padrón Municipal de Habitantes (Municipal Register), 1 January 2009. http://www.munimadrid.es. Compiled by: Rita Gomes Faria.

The two stages of the presence of Islam in Spain –before and after the 1990’s- become obvious when we analyse the number of Muslim religious entities registered at the Ministry of Justice. Until 1992 there were only six religious entities in Madrid: the Asociación Musulmana de España (1971), the Comunidad Musulmana Marroquí de Madrid Al-Umma (1986), the Comunidad Islámica de Madrid (1990), the Centro Islámico de Formación Religiosa (1990), the Comunidad Islámica An-Nisa (1990), and the Liga del Mundo Islámico -Centro Religioso-Cultural Islámico de Madrid- (1992). Today there are 30 religious entities in the city of Madrid. Religious entities are religious groupings with juridical entity recognized by the Ministry of Justice. This denomination includes religious communities as well as associations and federations. It must not be mistaken for the number of mosques. All the mosques registered at the Ministry of Justice (Registro de Entidades Religiosas⁴) are religious entities but not all Islamic religious entities are mosques. Federations and associations are also registered and acquire juridical personality as religious entities.

It is notable that when comparing population figures for foreigners from Muslim-majority nations with the geographical location of religious entities, we observe that Centro, Villaverde and Tetuan concentrate the Muslim presence of both population and institutions.

However it is also relevant to consider the fact that the Housing is much more costly in the capital city, and that many Muslim immigrants moved to the surrounding municipalities, creating small religious communities there. So, if we consider the whole Comunidad de Madrid we can find up to 80 mosques and prayer halls (usually of very small size and in poor conditions). Other important sites of Muslim religious entities presence are Collado Villalba, Aranjuez, Fuenlabrada, Leganés and Getafe, followed by Colmenar Viejo, Humanes de Madrid, Torrejón de Ardoz, Galapagar, Navalcarnero, Móstoles, Alcorcón and Parla. These are municipalities where the presence of Moroccan population is also noteworthy.

Moroccan population in some municipalities of the Comunidad de Madrid:

More than 40 percent of the mosques and prayer halls situated in the rest of the Comunidad de Madrid are located in these 14 municipalities.⁵

Labor Market
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In Madrid people from Muslim majority countries are affiliated to the social security mostly as employees (87 percent) and only 13 percent are self-employed.

The main sector of employment is the services (over 60 percent). Within this, most people are working in the commerce sub-sector (13.7 percent) or in the hospitality industry sub-sector (13.4 percent). In both cases, the area of ethnic commerce is highly important.

Construction was a major sector of employment until recent years but the economic crisis in Spain has had a great impact in this area and the unemployment rate of people working in construction has increased. Also, many Muslims working in the construction sector have had to change occupation (many have moved to the countryside to work in agriculture) or are still unemployed. In the year 2008 about 11.6 percent of migrants from Muslim majority countries were affiliated to the social security under this epigraph.

Also the industry sector - mainly the manufacturing industry sub-sector - is an area where we find Muslim populations working (5 percent).

In the case of women, it is also important to notice the domestic service (0.3 percent) and social activities (3.5 percent) as important areas of occupation. When considering these figures one must be careful and remember the existence of informal labor relationships between employee and employer in the domestic service area.

Muslim Organizations
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Comisión Islámica de España (C.I.E.)⁶

In the year 1989 a group of converts to Islam created the Federación Española de Entidades Religiosas Islámicas (F.E.E.R.I.) with the purpose of drawing together all the Muslims in Spain and becoming the interlocutor before the central state in the negotiations of an official agreement in the 1990’s. It was formed mostly by Spanish converts to Islam but received an important amount of financial support from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran and Morocco. During negotiations, many disagreements between the different communities involved in the process caused the dissolution of F.E.E.R.I. Seven communities, including Syrian and Palestinian students, formed a new federation called Unión de Comunidades Islámicas de España (U.C.I.D.E.⁷). In face of the coming out of a third party in the negotiations, issues of inadequate representation arose and the Spanish state demanded a single interlocutor in all matters concerning the Muslim community. As a result, both federations joined a single entity named the Comisión Islámica de España (Spanish Islamic Commission/C.I.E.), which was the group to be included in the 1992 agreement, “Acuerdo de Cooperación del Estado Español con la Comisión Islámica de España”⁸

This entity experienced difficulties in operation from the beginning due to the existence of duplicated hierarchic posts: its Permanent Commission is composed of three members of F.E.E.R.I. and three members of U.C.I.D.E., and two of its Secretary Generals are the Presidents of both Federations.

Federating is not mandatory for the Muslim communities, and each one may choose freely to which to federate, choose to change federation at any time, or choose not to federate at all. As we saw before, many new communities have appeared and new federations have been created across the Spanish state since the signing of the Agreement in 1992, in part due to internal leadership problems of other federations.

The origins of U.C.I.D.E. can be traced back to the Asociación Musulmana de España, the first Muslim association to be registered in Madrid in 1971. This association functioned, as it does today, as a federation that included other smaller Muslim communities from all over the country. The President of the Asociación Musulmana de España, Riay Tatary Bakri, is still today simultaneously the President of U.C.I.D.E. For the case of F.E.E.R.I., the chairmanship of the current President Abdelkarim Carrasco is being charged with irregular administration by the communities associated with the Federación Islámica de Murcia⁹

In the case of Madrid, U.C.I.D.E. has federated more Muslim communities: 240 entities (40 of which are in the Comunidad de Madrid), compared to the 62 that are federated by F.E.E.R.I. (12 of which are in the Comunidad de Madrid). For the case of the Comunidad de Madrid, in the year 2006 the Federación Musulmana de España (FEME) was created, an entity that gathers 15 of the 19 Muslim communities present in the northern region of the Comunidad de Madrid.

The national head offices of the C.I.E. are the headquarters of the two Islamic Federations that compose it (those being the two main mosques in the city of Madrid).

Mezquita Omar de Madrid or Mezquita de la M-30¹⁰

This mosque, which is now the reference for all the diplomatic posts from Muslim countries in Madrid, is the home of the Centro Cultural Islámico. It was built on grounds donated by the Ayuntamiento de Madrid (Madrid City Hall) during the governance of the socialist mayor Enrique Tierno Galván on the occasion of a visit of the Saudi King Fahd Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud whom contributed to the construction of the building with 2.000 million pesetas. The Mezquita Omar de Madrid, also known as Mezquita de la M-30, was inaugurated in 1992 with the presence of the Kings of Spain (Juan Carlos I and Sofia of Borbón) and of the Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz. The mosque depends on the Muslim World League¹¹, the Islamic non-governmental institution founded in Mecca in the sixties, whose funding comes from different Muslim countries but mostly from Saudi Arabia. The Mosque holds the head office of the Federación Española de Entidades Religiosas Islámicas (F.E.E.R.I.).

The Centro Cultural Islámico de Madrid has established a religious authority for the monitoring of the ritual sacrifice of animals according to the halal rites at Spanish slaughterhouses as they have the right to grant the “marca de garantía halal” (halal guarantee brand)¹²

Mezquita Abu-Bakr or Mezquita de Estrecho

This mosque is the headquarters of U.C.I.D.E. In 1988, supposedly with the financial support of personal donations of Muslims from all over the world, the Comunidad Islámica de Madrid, in cooperación with the Asociación Musulmana de España, built the Mezquita Abu-Bakr, also known as the Mezquita de Estrecho. At the time it was the most important mosque in the city, but now that position is held by the Mezquita de la M-30. It also holds the Unión de Comunidades Islámicas de Madrid, a local federation created by the President of U.C.I.D.E.¹³

As a result of the “Acuerdo de Cooperación del Estado Español con la Comisión Islámica de España” agreement of 1992, the Comunidad de Madrid, by initiative of the Socialist Party, developed the “Convenio Marco de Colaboración entre la Comunidad de Madrid y la Unión de Comunidades Islámicas de España” in 1998. The agreements established between the Spanish state and the Muslim national community were applied at the autonomic level. The agreement is structured in three parts:

I. Institutional relations: Supports dialogue and cooperation between the two entities.

II. Culture: Where the autonomic government takes concern in the encouragement of the participation of the Muslim population in all cultural activities, in the restoration of Islamic patrimony and the organization of activities to promote tolerance and solidarity.

III. Social Work: To take social care of Muslims in social disadvantage, to promote the cession of public grounds for the building of cemeteries and mosques, to facilitate halal food in public hospitals, public kindergartens and public facilities of social aid, to attend the special needs of Muslim immigrants, and to promote educational programmes for fighting school failure by Muslim students.

The signature of this agreement is interesting as it shows the move by U.C.I.D.E. as to become the main interlocutor with the autonomic government in that it implies the acknowledgment of U.C.I.D.E. as the valid reference to the Comunidad de Madrid in all issues related to the Islamic religion.

Other associations

Apart from the small prayer hall, the main mosques and entities related to them, there are other Muslim organizations present in Madrid:

-The Asociación de Universitarios de Madrid: heiress to the Asociación de Estudiantes Marroquíes de Madrid created in 1993, it is composed by Moroccans that originally came to Spain to continue their university education¹⁴

-The Forjadores de Vida (Sunnaa Al Hayat ): this is the Madrid representation of the international NGO based on the movement led by the Egyptian TV-preacher Amr Khaled. In Spain the first group is created around 2004 in the town of Mataró (Catalonia),

-The Asociación ONDA: heiress to the Al Adl w-al-Ihsan (Justice and Spirituality Movement). This is a spiritual-political movement created in Morocco by Abdelssalam Yassine in contestation for the religious leadership of the King of Morocco (Amir Al Muminín). In Spain its members fight for the rights of Moroccans as Muslims and citizens, and provide social support to immigrants as well as participate in the education of imams (through the Liga de Imames de España¹⁵)

Other associations exist, constituted mainly by sons and daughters of immigrants, generally university students, whom, on the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of the 11th of March of 2004 show motivation for the spread of awareness on social issues among Muslim population and to make known the true meanings of Islamic religion to the general population. These are:

-The Asociación de Jóvenes Musulmanes de Madrid: created in 2004, it is composed by young sons and daughters of Syrian, Jordanian and Palestinian immigrants,

-The Asociación Cultural Tayba: also created in 2004, it has a more diversified composition as it draws together youngsters born in Spain from Moroccan immigrant parents, Moroccan youngsters sent for by their parents whom had immigrated to Spain, Spanish converts to Islam and also non-Muslims.

Islamic Education
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Even though the “Acuerdo de Cooperación del Estado Español con la Comisión Islámica de España” states the right of Muslim students to receive an Islamic education in both public and private schools (Ley 26/1992, de 10 de noviembre, Art. 10, B.O.E. nº 272 de 12 de noviembre), in Madrid there are no teachers of Islamic religion in primary or secondary public education.

Islamic education is therefore primarily provided by mosques. Generally all mosques, in spite of their size, provide Arabic and Islam courses for children and adults. Usually it is the imam himself who also carries out the duties of teacher of religion. In some cases, in communities with a strong presence of young university students, these may work as volunteer teachers. In both cases, the conditions on which these courses are taught are not sufficient as generally the communities lack both the physical space and the material resources as to provide positive educational results.

In Madrid there are some private schools that have religious education on their syllabus. They are:

-The Escuela Iraquí en Madrid¹⁶: This school had been providing for an Islamic education in Madrid since the year 1977. Along with the common subjects of primary and secondary education, the school offered Islamic Education, Arabic and Koran as specific subjects to 100 students, mainly of Iraqi origin but also of Spanish, Libyan, Saudi and Moroccan origin. It closed its doors in the year 2005 as a consequence of the fall of the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

-The Escuela Al-Fateh Arabe: This school offers primary and secondary education accord to the Libyan educational system for the children of the employees of the Libyan Embassy in Madrid.

-The Instituto Saudí Umm Al-Qurá: This private school, that offers both kindergarten, primary and secondary education to over 300 students, was connected to the Centro Cultural Islámico de Madrid from its origin in 1993 until the year 1998, when it became an independent institution¹⁷ The school follows the syllabus of the Saudi Arabian educational system and receives students from Saudi Arabia but also of Moroccan, Egyptian, Iranian and Spanish origin.

Political participation
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There is no presence of Muslims among local or autonomic elected politicians.

Public Perception
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Muslims are perceived as a unified group, sharing beliefs but also behaviours and ways of living. They are seen as people for whom the religious practice and belief is dominant in their everyday life, often preventing them from participating in more wide social relationships. The true diversity of national origins, doctrinal disparities, social and political differences is most frequently not regarded. The distrust the Spanish population may feel for the Muslim identity is in most cases connected to the wariness they feel about the Moroccan immigrants (also called contemptuously Moros).

The bombings perpetrated on the 11th of March of 2004 showed us an image of unity among the population of Madrid. Some of the people killed in the trains were of Islamic faith and during the day of the attacks and the days that followed there were no public demonstrations against the Muslim population neither individual confrontations. During the civil society manifestations that took place the following days one of the most common slogans was “Todos íbamos en ese tren” (We all were in that train), showing how citizenship made an effort to differentiate the Muslims living in Spain from those placing the bombs.¹⁸ What was noticed was an increase of the police stop and search of population with a Muslim/Arabic appearance. In some exceptional cases, as in the Fuenlabrada municipality, the police has activated strategies for a more effective police stop and search, as the Moroccan population was becoming scarce of police officers. In any case, it was much more the newspapers that, in the following weeks, intensified the news on Islam in Spain, the incorporation of immigrants of Islamic religion in the Spanish society, and the need for control of the messages imams spread through the mosques. Curiously enough some associations of migrants -as the ATIME (Asociación de Trabajadores Inmigrantes Marroquíes en España)- demands from the Spanish state a higher control over the choosing of the imams and the religious activities of the Muslim communities.

Important Incidents
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Hijab-related

In the year 2002 the story of Fatima Elidrisi was in the public eye. On the written press, on television, on the Internet… everywhere was the image of Fatima, being refused education in a public school for wearing the hijab. The girl had arrived in Spain in the middle of the school year and the Comisión de Escolarización Municipal (Concejalía de Educación del Ayuntamiento de San Lorenzo del Escorial ) designated a state-sponsored religious school for her, the Colegio Inmaculada Concepción. The nuns conditioned her acceptance to the abandonment of the hijab. In face of the girls’ father refusal, she was designated to another school, this time the Juan de la Herrera Public School. This second school complained to the Comisión about having to receive the troublesome students that were being neglected by the state-sponsored private schools. However, in interviews given to different journalists, the School Principal mentioned the girls hijab and related it to the discrimination of women. From then on, the debate focused on the hijab and on women’s (and girls) human rights. It became the first headscarf affaire in Spain.

Terrorism

The most important event to report in Madrid is the terrorist attack perpetrated the 11th of March of 2004 by the Al Qaeda, when nine backpacks full of explosives exploded on the inside of four trains, arriving from the outskirts of Madrid (Alcalá de Henares) and Guadalajara at rush hour (07:36-07:40), in the Atocha (seven explosions), El Pozo (two explosions) and Santa Eugenia (one explosion) railway stations. In this incident 191 persons were killed and 1.858 turned out injured. A few weeks later the police found part of the terrorist command in a town in the outskirts of Madrid called Leganés and the bombers committed suicide by exploding the house where they had been in hiding, causing the death of a police officer. This bombings were perpetrated only three days before the general elections and there was a heated public debate on the fact that one of the main reasons for the Partido Popular to loose the elections was its denial of the authorship of the bombings, claiming that they were by ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the terrorist group created in 1959 in the País Vasco) when most of the international news agencies and newspapers were already mentioning Al Qaeda.

Still, this was not the only incident occurring in Madrid. In April of 1985 a bomb exploded in a restaurant called “El Descanso” known for being commonly visited by American militaries of the American Air Base in Torrejón de Ardoz. Supposedly the attack was perpetrated by the Islamic Yihad, motivated by the armed conflict in Lebanon. In this attack 18 people were killed and 82 were wounded.

Bibliography
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(Also see the www.euro-islam.info Spain Country Profile for an extensive bibliography on Islam in Spain)

ÁLVAREZ DE MIRANDA, Berta (2005), “La religiosidad de los inmigrantes musulmanes: marroquíes en Madrid, turcos en Berlín y bengalíes en Londres”, Panorama social, nº 2, pp. 129-143.
(2007), Aquí y allí: vínculos transnacionales y comunitarios de los inmigrantes musulmanes en Europa, Real Instituto Elcano, Documento de Trabajo nº 9, 14 de marzo.
(2008), “La diversidad de los inmigrantes musulmanes en Europa” in Victor Pérez-Diaz (coord.) Colección Mediterráneo Económico - Modernidad, crisis y globalización: problemas de política y cultura (nº 14), Madrid: Cajamar Caja Rural, pp. 185-202.

ESCOBAR STEMMANN, Juan José (2007), “Los islamistas y la democracia ¿Debate imposible?”, Política Exterior, nº 116 (marzo/abril), 13 p.

FRANCÉS BRUNO, Eva (2008), La Regulación del Pañuelo Islámico en el Espacio Público Español. Alternativas a legislar, Opex (Observatorio de Política Exterior Española), Documento de trabajo 32/2008, Fundación Alternativas.

JIMÉNEZ-AYBAR, Iván (2006), “Tras el 11-M: presente y futuro del proceso de institucionalización del Islam en España”, Derecho y religión, nº 1, pp. 67-86.

LACOMBA, Joan (2001), El Islam Inmigrado. Transformaciones y adaptaciones de las prácticas culturales y religiosas, Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte.

LÓPEZ GARCÍA, Bernabé and Mohamed Berriane (eds.) (2004), Atlas de la Inmigración Marroquí en España, Madrid: UAM - Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración.

LÓPEZ GARCIA, B., Ángeles Ramírez Fernández, Eva Herrero Galiano, Said Kirhlani and Mariana Tello Weiss (2007), Arraigados. Minorias religiosas en la Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid: Icaria Editorial and Fundación Pluralism y Convivencia.

LORENZO VÁZQUEZ, Paloma (2004), La Enseñanza Religiosa en la Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

MARTÍN MUÑOZ, Gema (1994), “El islam en España hoy”, in Luisa Martín Rojo (ed.) Hablar y dejar hablar (sobre racismo y xenofobia), Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, pp. 219-230.

MIJARES MOLINA, Laura and Ángeles Ramírez Fernández (2005), “Gestión del Islam y de la inmigración en Europa: tres estudios de caso”, Migraciones, nº 18, pp. 77-104.
(2008) “La ‘islamización’ de la inmigración: algunas hipótesis acerca del caso español”, Quaderns de la Mediterrànea, nº 9, pp. 389-392.
(2008), Mujeres, pañuelo e islamofobia: un estado de la cuestión”, Anales de Historia Contemporánea, nº 24, pp. 121-135.

MORERAS, Jordi (2002) “Muslims in Spain: Between the historical heritage and the minority construction”, The Muslim World, vol. 92, nº 1-2, pp. 129-142.
(2006), Migraciones y Pluralismo Religioso. Elementos para el debate, Barcelona: Fundació CIDOB.

PEW FORUM ON RELIGION & PUBLIC LIFE (2009) Mapping the Global Muslim Population. A report on the size and distribution of the worlds Muslim population, Washington: Pew Research Center.

PLANET CONTRERAS, Ana (2008), “Laicidad, Islam e inmigración en la España contemporánea” in Encarna Nicolás and Carmen González (eds.) Ayeres en Discusión. Temas claves de Historia contemporánea hoy. IX Congreso de la Asociación de Historia Contemporánea, Murcia: Universidad de Murcia-Servicio de Publicaciones.

SCHMITT, Maggie and Begoña Pernas (2008), Pasos hacia la igualdad. El Proyecto Stepss (Strategies for Effective Polica Stop and Search) en España, Grupo de Estudios y Alternativas 21 (GEA 21).

TÉLLEZ, Virtudes (2008), “La juventud musulmana de Madrid responde: lugar y participación social de las asociaciones socioculturales formadas o revitalizadas después de los atentados del 11-M”, Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos – REIM, nº 6 (septiembre-diciembre de 2008), pp. 133-143.

1. We defined a country as of Muslim majority according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (2009)
2. One should be aware of figures concerning countries as Nigeria (that the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life provides a 50.4 percent of Muslim population), as in the case of Madrid there is a very important number of people of Nigerian origin that profess the Christian faith and attend Christian churches both in Madrid or in surrounding municipalities as Fuenlabrada.
3. Islam in Madrid is mainly Sunni but there is also some population from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon that profess Shí’isme.
4. In Relaciones con las Confesiones (Secretaria de Estado de Justicia – Ministerio de Justicia):
   http://www.mjusticia.es/cs/Satellite?c=OrgPaginaREG&cid=1080215934426&pagename=Portal_del_ciudadano%2FOrgPaginaREG%2FTpl_OrgPaginaREG
   
5. There are 200 municipalities in the Comunidad de Madrid
6. http://muslim.multiplexor.es/promo.cie.htm. See the Country Profile (Spain) for more extensive information on the C.I.E., U.C.I.D.E. and F.E.E.R.I.
7. http://www.ucide.org
8. The full document is available at the website of the Ministry of Justice:
   http://www.mjusticia.es/cs/Satellite?c=OrgPaginaMJ&cid=1079361822828&p=1246950586397&pagename=Portal_del_ciudadano%2FOrgPaginaMJ%2FTpl_OrgPaginaMJ
   
9. Leaded by Munir Benyelún, who supposedly is also a member of the Justice and Spirituality movement (Al Adl w-al-Ihsan).
10. http://www.ccislamico.com
11. The religious entity registered at the Ministry of Justice is Liga del Mundo Islámico (Centro Religioso-Cultural Islámico de Madrid).
12. There is also a trademark called “Halal Guarantee Brand of the Junta Islámica” registered at the Office of Patents and Brands by the Instituto Halal (Halal Institute) http://www.institutohalal.com . This institution, located in Andalucía, was created by the Junta Islámica in 1989, an association composed mainly by converts to Islam. Its President, Mansur Escudero, was also the President of F.E.E.R.I. until de year 2000 (when he was replaced by Abdelkarim Carrasco) and Secretary General of C.I.E. until de the 2006. http://www.juntaislamica.org
13. Today it does not have an active agenda as it was created in case a local federation was required in the future.
14. This is a cultural association but the amount of activities organized in which Islam is present in one way or another makes us refer to them.
15. The President of the Liga de Imames de España, Rachid Boutarbouch, is also the visible face of Adl w-al-Ihsan in Spain.
16. http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/ce.escuelairaqui.madrid/
17. Although currently the school is functioning at the grounds of the Centro Cultural Islámico (Mezquita Omar de Madrid or Mezquita de la M-30), the principalship and the government of Saudi Arabia are trying to buy a building, preferably of an old school, to transfer.
18. There is a collective documentary called “Madrid 11-M: Todos íbamos en ese tren” (Production: Spain, 2004), in which 23 short films pay tribute to the victims of the bombing, among them one called “Un dia sin luz”, by Jose F. Echeverría, that tells about the death in one of the trains of a 13 year old Muslim girl.

In the 2009 Report consigned March 1 to the Parliament, the Italian Secret Services point at the risk of a “next door” Islamic terrorism. They speak of homogrown mujahidin and free lance jihadists. These, are second generation immigrants who live in situations of socio-economic and emotional malaise. They are not directly recruited by al-Qaida but are influenced by on-line propaganda. On internet, in fact, they can find discussion groups and do-it-yourself books. The Secret Services highlight the role played by European converts in the cyberjihad: although they are a minority, they nonetheless represent a real risk. Another interesting aspect that emerges from the Report, is the weak link between illegal immigration and Islamic radicalism. The Report concludes that Italy is a target for three main reasons: 1. It takes part to military missions, 2. Its commitment against international terrorism and 3. It is the symbolic centre of Christianity. Institutional representatives or famous people could be exposed as well. The secret Services recognize the possibility that those who cannot reach Afghanistan or other war scenarios decide to conduct attacks directly in our country.

The overwhelming majority of German Muslims do not define themselves purely in terms of their religion. Yet this plays only a negligible role in the continuing rowdy and polemical debate on Islam that has gone out for its latest spin on Germany’s op-ed pages in recent weeks. Author Michael Kiefer calls for “de-Islamicising” the debate on immigrants and integration in order to meet reality.

In many conflicts, he argues, Islam is not the problem and therefore, a solution that targets Islam, will not solve anything. Religion should not play a role in integration work in schools, kindergartens or communities. What people want is equal opportunities in the labour market or improvements in their residential area. The idea is to identify these common interests and to work on them on a local basis, leaving religious actors aside. The author argues for rethinking the German integration approach and conceiving of immigrants as partners and actors, integrating them through participation.

The Egyptian philosopher and theologian Nasr Abu Zayd, participated at the event “The Dialogue Among Cultures” organized by Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations the 2nd of March in Pisa, Italy. Abu Zayd proposes a humanistic interpretation of the Qur’an challenging the fundamentalist and dogmatic interpretation of the holy book. Due to his position, he had to abandon Egypt and move to The Netherlands where he teaches at the university of Utrecht. Abu Zayd’s thesis is that the Qur’an is not just a text, but mainly a plurality of discourses that need to be interpreted. The Qur’an, from his point of view, is a recitation and, as such, it was originally addressed to a multiplicity of recipients and is constituted by a plurality of voices. Moreover, it encompasses different types of discourses: dialogical, polemic, exclusive, inclusive and many others. He claims that overemphasizing the divine element brought to the preponderance of the literal interpretation in light of which many historical decisions were taken for divine injunctions. He defends the human dimension incorporated in the structure of the Qur’an and, consequently, a humanistic hermeneutics of it. Adopting this perspective will demonstrate to Muslims that issues such as modernity and democracy should be discussed independently from theological or juridical limit. At the moment, he is committed in setting up a net of people, intellectuals and not intellectuals, devoted to encourage autonomous thinking in the Muslim world.

The Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who was banned from entering the UK last year, has now shown his anti-Islam film at the House of Lords. The screening and subsequent press-conference was accompanied by a supporting demonstration of the right-wing British National Party and many counter-protesters outside Parliament.

In an article for The Independent, entitled “Islamophobia on tour: Wilders comes to Britain”, the author claims Britain should have renewed the ban to prevent Wilders from promoting his racist views. Indeed he repeated his view that Islam was a fascist ideology, called the Prophet Mohammed “a mass murderer, a barbarian and a paedophile” and suggested that immigration from Islamic countries to Europe should be stopped.

Only few members of the Houses of Commons and House of Lords attended the press conference — six in total –, among them Lord Pearson, who invited Wilders, and Baroness Cox. The remaining audience of around 60 was made up of parliamentary staff. The whole event has stirred much criticism and counter-protests.

A new report from Integrerings- och mangfoldsdirektoratet (Directory of Integration and Multitude) show that Norwegian newspapers published 77,670 articles on the subject of Islam in 2009. Out of all articles written on immigrant issues 71 percent could be considered to hold a negative view. Immigrants are written about, but seldome listened to. Only in two percent of all articles published in Norway’s eight main newspapers, immigrants were interviewed and given a chance to talk for themselves. Predominantly immigration was presented as a problem, not as a resource.

With the British general elections coming up later this year, party leaders are beginning to look out for voter groups, among others, for Muslims. Observers might expect Muslims to be disappointed with Labour, who went to war in Iraq and initiated strict anti-terror rules that are said to have stigmatized Muslims significantly.

According to an opinion poll conducted by Theos, a “public theology think tank”, the picture however looks still good for Labour. If there were a general election tomorrow, 35 percent of voting Muslims (meaning those Muslims who claim they are more likely than not to vote) would vote Labour. This compares with 22 percent of voting Christians and 23 percent of the entire voting population. By comparison, whereas 30 percent of the voting population would tick the Conservative box, only 13 percent of voting Muslims would do so.

But the elections are still far away, and opinion polls are likely to change even last minute, and so also Labour politicians are best advised to woo Muslim voters.