Muslim Reconquest of Spain Nears Completion

January 5, 2010

http://eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com/2011/01/muslim-reconquest-of-spain-nears.html?zx=5d3dcd6c0c09d8e7

Muslim Reconquest of Spain Nears Completion

Quite a sad news to begin a year with.

(UCI) Proof that history repeats itself comes with the news that Muslims have initiated their re-conquest of Spain.

The number of Muslims in Spain has climbed from 100,000 in 1990 to over 1.5 million in 2010.

Mosques are being constructed on a grand scale throughout the country.

The city of Barcelona, widely known as a European Mecca of anti-clerical postmodernism, has agreed to shell out nearly $30 million in public funds for the construction of an official mega-mosque with a capacity for thousands of Muslim worshipers.

The new structure in Barcelona will rival the massive Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, currently the biggest mosque in Spain. An official in the office of the Mayor of Barcelona says the objective is to increase the visibility of Muslims in Spain, as well as to promote the “common values between Islam and Europe.”

In the past decade, more than 1,000 mosques and Islamic prayer centers have sprouted up throughout the once devoutly Catholic country.

Twelve new masjids are scheduled to open in northeastern Spain within the next three months.

The construction of new mosques comes at a time when municipalities linked to the Socialist Party have closed dozens of Christian churches across Spain by the enactment of new zoning laws.

The Barcelona mosque project was announced during a weeklong seminar titled “Muslims and European Values,” sponsored by the European Council of Moroccan Ulemas and the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers in Catalonia.

A representative of the Barcelona mayor’s office who attended the conference told the Madrid-based El País newspaper that the municipality would get involved in the mosque project because “although religion pertains to the private realm, this does not mean it does not have a public role.”

The idea to build a mega-mosque funded by Spanish taxpayers comes after Noureddine Ziani, a Barcelona-based Moroccan imam, said the construction of big mosques would be the best way to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Spain. “It is easier to disseminate fundamentalist ideas in small mosques set up in garages where only the members of the congregation attend, than in large mosques that are open to everyone, with prayer rooms, cafes and meeting areas,” Ziani told the Spanish news agency EFE.

Ziani also said European governments should pay for the training of imams, which would be “a useful formula to avoid radical positions.”

[...]

Elsewhere in Spain, residents of the Basque city of Bilbao were recently surprised to find their mailboxes stuffed with flyers in Spanish and Arabic from the Islamic Community of Bilbao asking them for money to build a 650 square meter mosque costing $750,000. Their website for this Islamic community says: “We were expelled [from Spain] as Moriscos in 1609, really not that long ago. … The echo of Al-Andalus still resonates in all the valley of the Ebro [ie Spain]. We are back to stay, Insha’Allah [if Allah wills it].”

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UK More Interested in Islam, 100,000 Have Converted

by Maayana Miskin January 5, 2010 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141561

A study conducted by Swansea University for the British group Faith Matters has found that UK citizens are increasingly interested in Islam, with the number of converts to Islam nearly doubling in 10 years. An estimated total of 100,000 have converted to Islam, 5,200 of them in 2010.

In 2001, it was estimated that 60,000 British citizens had converted to Islam.

Of the most recent converts, two-thirds are women. Most are white and native to Britain. The average age of new converts is 27.

One in four believe there is a “natural conflict” between being devoutly Muslim and being a British citizen. More than half said they had met with a negative response from family regarding their conversion.

When asked what they believe to be the negative aspects of British society, the converts cited alcohol consumption, “sexual permissiveness,” and “unrestrained consumerism.”

Similar studies in France and Germany found that approximately 4,000 people convert to Islam each year in both countries.

Faith Matters director Fiyaz Mughal said the precise number of converts to Islam is unknown, but that it is clear that the number has “risen dramatically” over the past decade. Converts could play an important role in both British and Muslim society by helping to reconcile the two worlds, and by “disentangling cultural norms... which blur the true essence of Islam,” Mughal opined.

Britain has faced challenges integrating its Muslim population. A 2008 report showed that one-third of Muslim students justified killing in the name of religion, and a recent BBC report found thatthousands of Muslim children in Britain are being taught to hate Jews, Israelis, and homosexuals.

In some cases British Muslims have actively fought Israel, by sending aid to Hamas in Gaza or by joining Hamas in Gaza.

In 2009 the government decided to combat homegrown Muslim terrorism with a program to screen Muslim schoolchildren for potential terrorists.