MEMRI Daily Brief (http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/876/9097.htm)
Spain In The Crosshairs Of Islamism
by Alberto M. Fernandez
28 March 2016
Spain, or at least the Spain of Islamic conquest and primacy, Al-Andalus, looms large in the Islamist psyche, particularly so in the context of Islamist supremacists like Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Spanish speaking world today – Spain, Latin America and beyond – which has in many ways moved on from what seems a distant historic past, is often blissfully unaware of the power of symbols and of history which can and do affect us.
We may recall the artistic beauties of Islamic Spain and the idealized vision of convivencia (coexistence). We have drummed into us the politically correct pabulum of the evils of Western culture and civilization and the superiority of all cultures but our own. We swallow whole the "myth of the Andalusian paradise" and naturally and understandably forget a sustained foreign military invasion that swallowed up most of Iberia and only seemed to ebb at the Spanish Muslim defeat at Tours, central France, in 732.
For the Arab world, Spain, or at least the romanticized and nostalgic image of Al-Andalus, is still a concept to conjure with. The great liberal Syrian writer Abdel Salam Al-Ujayli (ironically, from a prominent family in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa) dealt with this theme in his evocative and sympathetic story "The Lanterns of Seville" (1954). Much of the narrative is about an idealized past being lost and this as part of a larger decline. In this sense, the lament is as much or more about "the Muslims" than about Spain itself. This is a common theme. In 2014, the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Qasim Suleimani, listed the decline of the Muslim world as beginning with the fall of Muslim Spain.
Others echoes of Al-Andalus are more subtle or diplomatic. In 1997, the Saudi ruling family built a massive white mosque at the foot of the great cliff of Gibraltar (Gibraltar is named, of course, for the conqueror of Al-Andalus, Tariq Ibn Ziyad, and so Gibraltar is "Tariq's Mountain") in the British Overseas Territory of the same name. The December 22, 1997 account in Al-'Alam Al-Islami, published by the Muslim World League and translated by MEMRI, is surprisingly straightforward. It is mostly a historical account of the struggle for supremacy of the site between the Muslims, the Spanish and later, the English, but noting that "the flag of Islam waved high in the Iberian Peninsula, for eight centuries of glory, culture, thought and science." There is little or no whining, special pleading, or loaded language.
But much more common is the idea that the loss of Spain is an historic wrong that must be erased by violence. Salafi-jihadis from Osama bin Ladin to ISIS fighters in North Africa have frequently made this point. "Let the whole world know that we will never accept that the tragedy of Al-Andalus would be repeated," was a sentence used by bin Ladin in October 2001 in a video message after the September 11 attacks. In 2013, the Taliban called for reconquering Spain, accusing the infidel West of having "alienated Muslims from their glorious history." Urdu-speaking jihadis compared the loss of Kashmir to that of Al-Andalus.
The official media arm of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) official media arm is called Al-Andalus. Launched in 2009, the name was intentionally chosen "because it is the Muslims' lost paradise." AQIM justified the name by quoting seminal jihadist activist and founder of Al-Qaeda, Dr. Abdullah Al-Azzam, as saying, "Jihad has been an individual obligation since 1492, when Granada fell to the infidels – the Christians – and is to this day. And jihad will remain an individual obligation until we restore every bit of land that was once Islamic to the lands of Islam and to the Muslims." In another dispatch from 2007, AQIM called Spain "the stolen land."
Al-Andalus is also the name of a pro-Al-Shabaab radio station in Somalia. One ISIS spokesman recently spoke of using Libya as a launch point for the conquest of both Rome and Spain. In still another, chilling ISIS video from March 2016, child soldiers in Syria are indoctrinated to strive to reclaim both the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and Al-Andalus.
The bloody thirst for conquest amplified through social media is often paralleled by an aggressive, usually Salafi-inspired broadcast media effort to convert Latin Christians to Islam. What cannot be won by the sword can, perhaps, be won by preaching, especially if Westerners are unsure in their own beliefs and ripe for conversion.
The Saudi-funded Cordoba International TV, broadcasting in Spanish since 2012 from studios in Madrid, talks of building bridges to other cultures and religions but is actually a barely disguised effort at proselytization aimed at both Spain and Latin America. As a former Saudi ambassador says in an article on the channel's website titled "The Pains of Al-Andalus," "Al-Andalus could have led to all of Europe becoming Muslim land."
According to Cordoba TV's manager, the name was chosen because it "responds properly to our vision as a channel serving as bridges of understanding between culture and religions, such as Al-Andalus, a multi-cultural country at peace, harmony, flourishing... a city that we are very proud was the capital of the world." Here the young manager, Yasin Puertas, touches on all the shopworn buzzwords of our Western post-modern society – "understanding," bridges," "multi-cultural," "harmony" – to gild was is obviously a Saudi Wahhabi project aimed at the West. Cordoba was, of course, certainly a flourishing "multi-cultural" place, but it was also the seat of a powerful and confident military state made rich by yearly raids for treasure and slaves into Christian territory.
While Salafi-jihadis' interest in reversing the expulsion of Muslim invaders from Spain is perhaps not so surprising, the concept of the fall of Islamic Spain as a cautionary tale for Arab Muslims everywhere is more widespread. In 2011, the leading pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera featured a remarkable four-part Arabic language documentary series titled "Story of How the Muslims Lost Al-Andalus."
It was produced by Dubai-based Hot Spot Films, a frequent content provider for the Doha-based broadcaster that presents itself as using the documentary format as "a tool for resistance." Featuring token Spanish participation, the tale is told mostly through the words of modern Arab scholars from Egypt and Morocco, presenting an idealized image of Islamic Spain where there was coexistence "even with the Jews" and where Al-Andalus fell because of Arab Muslim infighting, disunity after the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate, and plotting by the Christians waging a "crusade."
The Arabic-speaking viewer is clearly meant to draw a connection between the fall of Spain and the situation of the Arab Muslims of today. In this cautionary tale, the ills that affected the Arab Muslims in Iberia then and those affecting the Arab Muslims of today are essentially the same.
Helwan University Professor Zubeida Muhammad Atta notes that the bickering of 20 petty Muslim kings, after the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba, facilitated the task of the Spanish "Crusaders." The petty kings now had to pay jizya (poll tax demanded of "protected" minorities) to the Christian northerners rather than the other way around. The Christians also learned to play the ambitions of one Muslim prince against another, and while the Muslims became more and more divided, the Christians united against them.
Part two of the series, dealing with the fall of the last Moorish kingdom at Granada, reads like a compendium of very contemporary grievance language used in today's Islamist discourse. The Spanish kings "occupy" Muslim cities, the Muslim opposition to them is "resistance." A rising against the Spanish in Granada is an "intifada, similar to that of the Palestinian Intifada." What the Spanish call "piracy" is described as "seagoing jihad." The fall of Granada itself is basically portrayed as due to scheming Christians and divided, bickering Muslims.
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