City Times interviews
Hajj Abdulhasib Castiñeira,
Director of the Granada Mosque

This is an interview with Hajj Abdulhasib castiñeira conducted by Gita Rajan CITY TIMES, of KHALEEJ TIMES. DUBAI.

In 711 Muslim forces invaded and in seven years conquered the Iberian Peninsula. It became one of the greatest Muslim civilisations; reaching its summit with the Umayyad caliphate of Cordovan in the tenth century. Muslim rule declined after that and ended in 1492 when Granada was conquered. What were the reasons that led to the populations' conversion from Islam to Christianity?

The “conquest” of Al Andalus, that is the Iberian Peninsula, was as much a military campaign as much as an spiritual one. Why? Because the small, relatively speaking, numbers of the Muslim army that entered the Iberian peninsula with Tariq Ibn Ziyad in 711 a.c. were people of knowledge and light, in the first century of Islam, people whose adherence to the prophetic message and whose imitation of the Prophet’s example was contagious and beneficial. On the other hand Spain was under the oppressive rule of a foreign dynasty, The Goths, of German origin, and Catholic Trinitarian, whereas the Spaniards were Unitarians, prosecuted by the Roman Church as heretics. The crossing over to Gibraltar by the Muslim army had been in response to the invitation of leaders of the Christians who saw in the Muslims allies and holders of an spiritual message. There was in fact a fertile field for the acceptance of Islam among the Spaniards of the time. Besides, the Muslims abolished all forms of taxation, leaving only Zakat for the Muslims and Jiziah for the rest, which represented a vast relief from the oppressive taxes of the Goths. These facts have been scientifically researched by historians and there is a remarkable and lengthy essay by Ignacio Olague, a Christian Spanish historian under the title: “The Islamic Revolution in the Occident”, which has dealt with this matter in depth.

Could you give us an idea of the number of indigenous Muslims in Spain? Could you explain the factors that influenced their re-conversion to Islam?

The first handful of Spaniards that accepted Islam in modern times did so on the eve of the 20th of November of 1975, a date that remains in peoples memory engraved of Spanish people because that was the date of General Franco’s death. At that point in time, Islam was considered so completely alien and unthinkable for Spaniards that the denial and alienation of the first small community of Spanish Muslims in a predominantly Catholic environment was very severe.

Since that time, almost thirty years now, many things have changed. On the one hand, Spain has become through a very rapid process of transformation virtually a secular society, with more than half of the population declaring themselves atheists; the democratic system of law and government has eliminated, at least in theory, the hegemony of the catholic Church, and the waves on immigration have brought nearly a million foreign Muslims to the country. Meanwhile, many thousands of people have embraced Islam, declared it openly and they have formed natural communities who have claimed their full rights as Spanish citizens while re-claiming their Islamic heritage.

The discovery of Islam by the westerners is a fact of increasing importance that is not new – great European intellectuals and scholars from the 18th to the 20th century admired and accepted Islam – and, despite all the current slanders and miss-representations by deviant and corrupt people, the convincing power of Islam, its appeal to the intellect, the sense of justice and the search for human realisation that it provides, is enormous.

There are, however, some differentiating factors that have made the rediscovery of Islam among Spaniards swifter and more “social” than the individual, one to one, acceptance of Islam very common in all other European countries.

1. The 500 years long anti-Islamic propaganda effort of the Catholic Church did not manage to erase undeniable achievements of the 800 years of Islamic civilisation in Spain. They stand up still as testimony to the greatness and advancement of Muslim society in Spain.

2. The fact that every village, mountain, river and region in Spain and Portugal has names which are pure Arabic, the memories of men of knowledge, events of unforgettable transcendence and the spiritual presence which still pervades the land from the saints and the believing friends of Allah and those who gave their lives in the path of God, who lived and died on this soil.

3. The vicinity of Morocco and Algeria: between the southernmost point of the Iberian peninsula, the Cape of Gibraltar and the African Coast there is a distance of only 14 kilometres.

4. The fact that Spain is today the southern gate of the European Union and that the majority of immigrants coming from the African continent enter Europe through Spain.

Considering the fact that you are trying to extend the reach of Islam in Spain, how difficult is the process in light of the western media labelling Muslims as terrorists? What are you doing to reverse this thought process for a better understanding of Islam?

The recent radicalisation of the campaign against Islam in the western countries has become paradoxically a blessing. The contrast between the ugly stereotype of the Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist and the reality of the Muslims, by and large a decent and honourable people, is becoming one more reason for non-Muslims to come closer and eventually accepting Islam. There is no doubt that the present campaign of harassment of the Muslims and abuse offence and vilification of Islam is demanding from us coming out and speaking out to counteract so much ignominy. This has also become a blessing in disguise because while Muslims where just concern with conducting a normal life they have now taken on the responsibility of defending the truth of their belief, the respect due to the prophetic message.

Muslims in Spain -and in general in the Western countries- are now in the spotlight. This is a blessing in itself because our words and our conduct is noticeable and observed. The message of the revelation has always caused shock and upheaval in every society because it upsets the ambitions and the interests of the tyrants and the despots. Islam was opposed and fought in the early times as it is attacked today or even more. The enemies and opponents are of the same kind, the brutality of the enmity is similar.

On the other hand there is a natural inclination in the inner being of the honest and sincere people towards the truth of Islam, and that is a built-in characteristic of the human creature. Man only finds rest tranquillity and serenity in the knowledge and recognition of its Lord and Creator. That aspiration is only met by the acceptance of the messenger and the message. In that respect, all Muslims are messengers of the prophetic message of Islam to mankind.

The extreme hostility to Islam developed by the dominant elite of capitalism demands from us Muslims to show not only knowledge of Islam, sincerity, honesty and integrity, but also skills of management, planning and organisation, in order that our message can be perceived and understood. In Spain we are facing some small but very belligerent groups of enemies who tried, for instance, to denounce the building of a new Mosque in Seville, accusing all Muslims to be terrorists. Those accusations have motivated TV debates and media statements, which at the end of the day, were all in favour of the Muslims and contributed to project a positive and upright image of Islam.

How significant is the Mosque of Granada to the people of Europe and the West? Considering that it is both of spiritual as well as architectural value how are you promoting it to the people of the Middle East, the UAE in particular?

The city of Granada is a world-famous enclave because of its location, right in front of the the Alhambra Palace, because of its reputation as the last stronghold of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula, and now because it is a symbol as the landmark of Islam in Europe. Granada represents the meeting point between Europe and Islam. Today the existence of a strong indigenous Muslim community and the presence of the new Mosque at the summit of the old Arab quarter, the Albaicin, makes it all the more evident that Islam is not a thing of the past but a living reality. Islam in Europe is often presented as a problem. And it is also presented as a foreign immigrant phenomenon. We are now providing evidence that both concepts are false. Islam is the solution and not the problem. Islam belongs to the history, the legacy of Spain; moreover it has relevance in Spain today and a universal authority, which is part of the miraculous power of the Prophetic Message.

For all those reasons the Jamiah Mosque of Granada has become a reference and an inspiration for other mosques and Islamic centres in Europe. We have been invited to give talks to leaders of Muslim Communities in Germany and Great Britain presenting a model of Mosque that is open to the society and that plays a role in its non-Muslim environment, alongside its natural functions of worship and services to the Muslim community.

As for your second question, the relevance of the Mosque of Granada for the Middle East and the UAE in particular, I would say that Muslims in the Arab countries must look to Islam in the West as their future. The poisoned dialectic of confrontation between Islam and the West is a false conflict. What matters now is the liberation of Western and Muslim people alike from the clutches of ruthless and decadent capitalism. The dominant laws and the system of liberal democracy sanction the freedom of worship of Allah. However, obedience to Allah in the matters of finance, money and fairness in business transactions is not tolerated. That arena is taboo. There is no tolerance there. And there lays precisely the cause of all evils trouncing the world today. The inspiration to liberate mankind has to come from Islam because it is the last revealed Divine message and it is only natural that it should come from the European Muslims. First of all unlike the arbas, Muslim from the west are free from the resentment and the false confrontation originated since the treachery to the Caliphate at the beginning of the 20th century and the bitterness caused by colonialism and the inadequate reaction of modernism… Muslims from the Western countries are free of all that preconditioning and it is easer for us to look straight to the face of the real issues that are causes of injustice and devastation in our time.

On the other hand the legacy of the traditional Muslim world, the knowledge of the Qur´an, the Sunnah, the Jurisprudence and the spiritual transmission, and the access to the sources through the Arabic language, these are treasures and indispensable means deposited in the hands of the Muslims in the Muslim and Arab World that we need dearly.

Our alliance has to be like the two hands that wash each other and like the beams of a building that support each other. There have been a number of people of the Emirates that have supported us in the construction of the Mosque at very difficult times when the Islamic Community was indebted and the project of the Mosque of Granada was stopped. Their moral and material support was essential and very generous. We have a strong connection and many good friends in the UAE and in other Muslim countries.