Five hundred years after being hounded out by the Roman Catholic monarchs Isabel and Ferdinand, Spain’s Muslims have built a mosque overlooking what was once Islam’s most important outpost in Europe, the Alhambra palace in Granada.
The call to prayer of the muezzin can now be heard in the narrow streets and alleyways of Albaicin, the city’s old Moorish district, as a new generation of Spanish converts which is growing in numbers and confidence gives the city back a small part of its ancient Islamic heart.
“When we stand in the garden and look out at the Alhambra, we tell people that what they see is not something built by Arabs but by the people of Granada – by their own forebears, who were Muslims and spoke Arabic,” said Malik Ruiz, a local engineer who is the president of the mosque.
There was nothing coincidental about the choice of the site. It is at the highest point of Albaicin, whose steep, twisting alleyways boasted 27 mosques before the Moorish king Boabdil was forced out of Granada as the Christian reconquista triumphed in 1492. Bloody persecution of the city’s Muslims followed and the mosques were burned down or turned into churches.
The appearance of the pounds 2.8m mosque, financed by donations from the United Arab Emirates, coincides with an increasing awareness in the city of the importance, and commercial value, of its Islamic past.
Gift shops selling local pottery, winged cherubs and statues of the Virgin Mary are giving way to boutiques full of ironwork, leather lampshades and teapots identical to those found in the souks of northern Morocco.
Yet building a mosque in this conservative provincial city has not been easy. It took 22 years to overcome objections from neighbours.
” Moros fuera “, “Moors out”, read the graffiti on a wall in Albaicin, once one of the city’s poorer districts but now going rapidly up-market.
The dream of a return to al-Andalus, the Moorish province in Iberia, has lived on for centuries in Islamic poetry. The new wave of converts, however, has arrived not from the south but the north.
The first Spanish converts to arrive in the 1970s had embraced Islam while living in London and had Ian Dallas, a controversial Scottish convert, now in his 60s, as their figurehead.
A local journalist, Tomas Navarro, claims the mosque is run by a cult-like sect: “Traditional Arab Muslims steer clear of it.”
Mr Ruiz strongly denies the claims and is threatening to take Mr Navarro to court. The mosque welcomed all Muslims, he said, and had declined offers of money from some Arab countries in order to hold on to its independence.
“This is a place where you are free to say what you want,” he said.
An imam was brought from a desert area of southern Morocco partly because he was free of the influences that spawned groups such as al- Qaida, he added. “Islam condemns violence.”
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/5319/alhambra-mosque-granada-rediscovers-its-muslim-roots
JUST SAYING This tidbit oughta get the Ground Zero Cordoba mosquevites' panties in a twist (/snix).
Spain's "Cordoba Mosque" was converted into Roman Catholic Cathedral.
The Great Mosque of Córdoba, Spain, begun 786 by Muslims (who tookover St Vincent's Church). But in 1238, the Cordoba Mosque was converted into Roman Catholic cathedral. The Catholic Cathedral is known locally as La Mezquita —The Mosque.
Aerial view of the Great Mosque of Córdoba, Spain, begun 786, doubled in area in the 10th century to 585 x 410 feet, with 1,200 columns supporting horseshoe arches, patterned with colored marbles and other stones. Although it was converted into Córdoba's Roman Catholic cathedral in 1238, the building is known locally as La Mezquita —The Mosque. LINK AT SITE: see the Great Mosque of Córdoba, showing the Christian alterations.
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Clearly, when he gave his build-the-mosque speech (from the WH) Ohaha's articulated words and his voice inflections, were archly crafted. Ohaha knew full well that he was throwing a megaton bomb into the American culture......and he was not in the least concerned.
Ohaha knows full well that building the Ground Zero mosque is another version of "Triumphalism".....brough to you from another group of hyphenates bent on mischief. Latinos are itching for Reconquista. The mosquevites are looking to impose Sharia law on the US.
All of us are sick and tired of these foreign-born "hyphenates" sticking it to Americans. Americans know all the world wants to live like we do---even our poorest live handsomely compared to some of these backwater Third World hellholes. Now instead of blending into the US melting pot, the hyphenates want to radically change our culture---they want us to be like them.
That ain't gonna happen.
Just an aside, but few Americans know that the first nation to recognize the new nation of the United States of America, was the Kingdom of Morrocco.
I’ve been to the El Alhambra more than once and own a couple histories of that palace/fortress. It is an interesting edifice and has a sad and very bloody past.
One Moorish prince, upon becoming king, ordered all the other princes gathered in the Court of the Lions. There they were all slaughtered at his command. I have to say that the Saud’s of Arabia seem to have averted that type of travesty, but it isn’t unknown in Middle Eastern history.