THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 147, August 4, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
MUSLIMS IN CATALONIA:
THE CHALLENGE OF INTEGRATION & RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
A Book by Alex Seglers Gomez-Quintero
Reviewed by Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
MUSLIM CITIZENSHIP VERSUS ISLAMISM IN CATALONIA, SPAIN: WHAT PEACEFUL INTEGRATION OF MUSLIM
IMMIGRANTS IN CATALAN & SPANISH LIFE REQUIRES -- MUSLIM ACCEPTANCE OF EUROPEAN & WESTERN
CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC VALUES -- MUSLIM LOYALTY TO THE PRINCIPLE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, AS IT IS DEFINED
& PRACTICED IN EUROPE & THE WEST -- WILLINGNESS OF MUSLIMS TO JETTISON THE TENETS OF ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY --
MUSLIM REJECTION OF ISLAMIST DEMANDS FOR EUROPEAN ACCOMODATION TO SHARI'A-BASED FAMILY LAW,
LEGALIZING SUCH PRACTICES AS POLIGAMY, FORCED MARRIAGES, UNILATERAL DIVORCE BY A HUSBAND'S ORAL
DECLARATION, & FEMATE GENITAL MUTILATION
FULL STORY:
The history of the Catalans and Islam is distinctive from that of the rest of Spain. The Catalan language, which counts
some 10 million speakers, is an official idiom, along with Castilian, in the Spanish regions of Catalonia, Valencia, and the
Balearic Islands. Barcelona, the great Catalan metropolis, was taken back from Muslim conquerors in the year 801 —
only ninety years after the Umayyad invasion of 711 — and became the capital of the Marca Hispanica, or the Spanish
March, controlled by the Christian heirs of Charlemagne. Catalonia was thus never part of Al-Andalus and is one of the
few regions of Spain from which a Muslim cultural legacy, in the form of architectural monuments and Arabic
loan-words, is absent.
Muslim immigration became a significant recent phenomenon in Catalonia in the 1980s when the need for agricultural
labor in the region's rich vineyards and other farming enterprises became acute. Alex Seglers Gomez-Quintero, the
author of Muslims in Catalonia: The Challenge of Integration and Religious Freedom, is Professor of
Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Barcelona and has conducted wide-ranging studies of immigration in Canada and
throughout the European Union. This book, aimed mainly for the use of Catholic clerics and governmental authorities, is
a serious, factually-based examination of the legal issues that have emerged as Catalonia has struggled with North
African and black African immigration.
While Seglers does not take up the point, Catalonia resembles, in some ways, the Flemish areas of Belgium, the
Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, and Switzerland vis-à-vis the challenges presented to a native population by
an influx of new Muslim residents. Muslims represent a minority in these territories (anywhere from 4-6 percent of the
population, according to a 2005 estimate) and are increasingly demanding special status for themselves. In the meantime,
the Catalans, Flemish, Dutch, etc. are communities and nations with small populations whose cultures and languages
vary from those of their larger European neighbors. If Muslims are a minority in Catalonia, Catalans are a minority in
Spain. Catalans, and other small European nations, thus fear cultural dilution from two directions, and concern about a
growing, and increasingly militant, Muslim population in these small Western European communities is based in reality.
At the same time, new Muslim residents have, for the most part, been slow to recognize the sense of cultural threat felt
by those from whom they ask a privileged protection.
Seglers argues that a peaceful integration of Muslims in Catalan life is possible, if it is based on Muslim acceptance of
European democratic values. The author writes that guarantees of religious freedom in Europe must rest not on
acceptance of Islamist demands for special treatment, but in demarcating the principle that Muslims may become
citizens, as long as they jettison the tenets of Islamist ideology. As he writes, "Muslim citizenship" and Islamism remain
at odds, producing "hidden conflicts."
Such conflicts include controversies over Islamist proposals for European accommodation to Shari'a-based family law,
with rights to polygamy and an acceptance of forced marriages. These matters, according to the author, define the limits
of religious freedom and include important examples little known outside Spain. In 1994, for example, a Moroccan
immigrant tried to register a second matrimony in Spain. He argued that, before becoming a Spanish national, he had
contracted the marriage with his second wife in his native land, where polygamy is legal. His case was dismissed, due to
Spain's ban on polygamy, which was reaffirmed by adoption of new legal language in 2000.
A ban on talaq, or unilateral divorce by a husband's oral declaration, was strengthened when, in 1999, the practice was
judged a violation of "the constitutional dignity of the person and against the Spanish conception of marriage." The
country has also maintained legal prohibitions on forced marriages and female genital mutilation.
Seglers' work is replete with important information in which Catalonia and Spain serve as particularly appropriate
examples for examining the legal and social problems rising from increased Muslim immigration in the West. He is
especially critical of the current legal regime governing relations between Islam and the Spanish state through the
Comisión Islamica de España (Islamic Commission of Spain, or CIE). The CIE was established in 1992 and was the first
institution to embody an "official" Islam in Western Europe. Seglers points out that the CIE defines Islam as a faith
equal in rights with the Catholic Church, which represents 94 percent of the Spanish population. He writes
disapprovingly:
"It is evident that the CIE was not born as the fruit of an
imposition by the Spanish political power; nevertheless,
the need to consolidate it as unique interlocutor has
ended with its conversion into a kind of artificial church,
parallel to the Catholic [Church]."
Seglers points out that, in contrast to Catholicism, Islam in Spain "has neither a body of canon law nor a hierarchy
rooted in the broader society, nor the same spiritual needs as the Catholic citizenry." Put simply, Catholicism is, by far,
the majority faith of Spanish religious believers, with a long history and association with the dominant culture, and, in
Seglers' view, religious minorities like Muslims, as well as Jews and Evangelical Protestants, cannot reasonably be
considered as institutional equals to the Catholic Church. Additionally, having come under the direction of members
of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Saudi and Moroccan religious scholars, the CIE is currently being reorganized.
Seglers' book is uniquely valuable, but unfortunately, the likelihood that it will be translated or published in other
languages is small. Spain's modern encounters with Islam should not be neglected by the rest of the world.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Europe, European States, Politics, & Public Policy
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, an American journalist, columnist and author, is Executive Director of the Center for
Islamic Pluralism, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., and designed to promote "moderate Islam."
Schwartz, describing himself as a Jewish convert to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, is a vocal critic of the ideology
of Islamism and an equally vocal critic of the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Originally an adherent of the political Far
Left, he currently identifies as a Neoconservative.
Schwartz has published extensively on Islamic, European, Spanish, and Catalan affairs.
The foregoing book review by Schwartz was originally published in Middle East Quarterly, Spring, 2010, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/2699/muslims-in-catalonia)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
August 4, 2010
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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