The second coming of the caliphate in Spain

[88m3]

In austerity-stricken Spain, the government and media have been warning of threats of radicalisation and terrorism.

Last updated: 22 Jul 2014 12:06

Belen Fernandez


Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.
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The Spanish government is planning a new law to fight 'violent radicalisation' [AFP/Getty Images]
In June, Spanish monarch Juan Carlos abdicated the throne in favour of his son Felipe.

More drastic systemic rearrangements have since been proposed, however, by the guardians of another world order. A short video, the subject of recent hype in the Spanish media, features two men who claim to be jihadists in Syria and who explain - in Spanish - that "Spain is the land of our grandfathers" and will thus be reclaimed for Islam as part of the effort to recuperate rightful territory "from Jakarta to Andalusia". (Their particular jihadist outfit is not specified.)

The tone of the declaration is slightly less than spine-chilling. The holy warriors appear carefree, and one laughingly encourages the other to speak: "Come on, man."

Of course, some view prospects of land recuperation as more apocalyptic in nature. On her website Atlas Shrugs, professional Islamophobe Pamela Geller took credit for predicting the impending Muslim takeover; in a post under the category Spain's Islamic Kingdom, she wrote: "Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya… Jordan and now Rome and Spain. Regular Atlas readers have been expecting this for some time".

If only Oriana Fallaci, the late Italian journalist and patron saint of Islamophobia, were around to witness the second coming of the caliphate - the logical result of her warning that Muslim immigrants to Europe were endeavouring to replace miniskirts with chadors and cognac with camel's milk.

When debating whether she despised Mexicans or Muslims more, Fallaci eventually opted for the latter"because they have broken [her] balls", and threatened to blow up a mosque slated for construction in Tuscany.

So much for fighting terrorism in Europe.

Blame it on the jihadists

As it turns out, the Muslim reconquest of Spain couldn't have occurred at a more auspicious time.

We all know that the terrorist threat comes in handy when governments need to curtail civil liberties. And austerity-stricken Spain is nothing if not a place of far too many such liberties, as evidenced by massive protests against health care and education cuts, wanton home evictions, and other means of diverting economic disaster onto the poorer echelons of society.

Has austerity worked?
A new Citizens' Security Law just approved by the Spanish cabinet will do much to ensure that freedom doesn't get out of control. The law prescribes fines of up to 600,000 euros ($809,307) for unauthorised gatherings and protests in certain locations and of up to 30,000 euros ($40,465) for "obstructing authority in the carrying out of administrative or judicial decisions, such as evictions".

The encroaching caliphate will presumably facilitate the clampdown on rights, especially given that an anti-terror plan is already in the pipeline over at Spain's interior ministry. According to the news agency EFE, the aim of the plan - which will be unleashed in a few months - is "prevention of violent radicalisation". Conveniently, Spanish interior minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz, curator of the Citizens' Security Law, previously accused "radical and violent elements" of infiltrating protests by unions and social organisations.

So it doesn't require a huge leap of the imagination to assume that ostensibly anti-jihad actions by the Spanish police and Civil Guard will affect non-jihadists as well. The liberal application of terror charges has meanwhile led to the detention of a spate of Twitter and other social media users for allegedly "glorifying terrorism" via such activities as indicating support for Basque independence.

As for Catalonian secessionist aspirations, Fernandez Diaz has sworn that an independent Catalonia would be more susceptible to terror attacks. This sort of scientific reasoning, it seems, could be exploited by the Spanish state to justify all sorts of measures (eg, if we don't evict you from your home, the terrorists will attack).

And the interior minister's claims to fame don't stop there. Earlier this year, he also awarded a top policing medal to a statue of the Virgin Mary - his own little holy war, perhaps, on those who believe in a separation of church and state.

The terrorist distraction

According to the jihad video from Syria, incoming terrorists will not stop at Catalonia.

Obviously, this is not to make light of the terrorist threat, which is quite real - thanks in no small part to the history of western imperial machinations in the Middle East, which have contributed to the proliferation of the jihadist mindset. The Madrid terror attacks of March 11, 2004, for example, were apparently inretaliation for Spain's participation in the ongoing terroristic assault on Iraq.

And indeed, news currently emanating from other sections of the caliphate confirms that it's no laughing matter.

Spain's ABC newspaper reported in June that the "jihadist factory" operating in the country consists of at least a dozen centres for recruitment and training of fighters who are then dispatched to locations like Syria and Iraq. Another ABC article specifies that Spain produces an estimated 40 fighters per month, including persons with Spanish nationality, and that the "process of radicalisation… especially affects Muslim males under the age of 30". The fear is that, if the jihadists survive their business abroad, they'll bring the battle home.

Fernandez Diaz has described jihadist terrorism as "the most serious threat to society in the 21st century". But the obsession with the terrorist threat helpfully distracts from other serious societal problems, such as Spain's youth unemployment rate, which rose to 57 percent last year.

It also fuels racism, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment - afflictions that are already well-represented in Spanish society and that only further alienate and disillusion persecuted demographics.

To be sure, the jihad phenomenon is complex and shouldn't be over-simplified. But it seems that rectifying some of society's other problems might help ensure folks have better things to do than set up caliphates.

Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/op...oming-caliphate-spain-201472281945111694.html

 

[the cac mamba]

you would think that the religion of peace wouldnt need to violently reclaim other territories, for itself

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Been telling ya'll about this threat of islam and ya'll wanna act all PC and say its fear mongering.

 

[Ikwa]

Shook ones :mjkkk:

 

[Ritzy Sharon]

so OP, HL's leading anti-Islam troll, saw the title, maybe skimmed through the article and saw some of his favorite words like "radicalization" "jihad" "terror attacks" and thought this article was another sensationalist piece designed to stigmatize and whip up hostility against Muslims.

if he actually read the article or was familiar with Belen Fernerndaz's work, he would have never posted it.

the (ADHD) struggle is real.

 

[tstone]

Below is an article about one of the hundred's of Jewish physicians, scholars, scientist and philosophers, that flourished and prospered in the "first" Islamic Spain Caliphate, but was ran out of Spain when the Christians took over and the Spanish inquisition started. Educate yourself about how Jews and Muslims lived together in Spain and started the European Renaissance, prior to European mid-east and world colonialism. Don't believe that bullshyt about fighting for thousands of years.

Guiding Jewish/Muslim Relations Through the Life of Maimonides, the 12th Century Jewish Scholar

Despite the current state of tension that exists between them, Muslims and Jews have a long history of tolerance and mutual admiration. Perhaps this is no more obvious than in the life of Moses Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher who flourished intellectually and professional under Muslim rule.

Born in 1138, Maimonides was raised in the city of Córdoba, Spain, one of the greatest intellectual and spiritual havens of its time. Córdoba is the setting for one of history's most important examples of interfaith tolerance. Between 711 and 1085, Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in Andalucía -- the name given to Muslim Spain -- in a relative state of harmony, which was utterly unthinkable in other European cities such as London or Paris. This state of tolerance even has its own name -- convívencía -- which can literally be translated as "living with-ness," or "requiring tolerance."

In Andalucía, Jews were not only able to keep their ways, but they found a secure home after years of persecution under Christian rule. They called their Spanish home "Sefarad," the name which they gave to the Iberian peninsula. Some scholars describe this period as the "Jewish Golden Age."

From an early age Maimonides learned Arabic and the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato. In doing so he was able to merge different cultures into his understanding of the Hebrew humanities and Jewish theology, which were his main disciplinary interests. Through cross-cultural learning, Maimonides was able to translate Muslim and Greek knowledge into Jewish life, marking one of the greatest transmissions of ideas the world had ever seen.

His life, however, changed drastically in 1147 when the Almohads, a radical Muslim sect from North Africa, invaded Córdoba to conquer and convert all non-Muslims to Islam. Maimonides fled Córdoba for the city of Granada where he and his family lived until 1150. Eventually they settled in Fez, Morocco, where he studied at the University of Al-Qarawiyyin, reportedly the world's first university.

Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, a 14-volume text on halaqa, or Jewish law, which he composed in Fez, firmly established him as the leading rabbinical thinker of his day. Maimonides' key point in the Mishneh was that every part of Jewish law serves a rational purpose, which he could not have theorized without Greek philosophy or Muslims' translations and interpretations of Aristotle and Plato.

After leaving Fez, Maimonides journeyed to the Holy Land, and then to Fostat, Egypt around 1168. It was in Fostat where Maimonides became a physician to Al-Fadil, vizier and royal secretary to Saladin, the first sultan of Egypt and Syria and founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Saladin appointed Maimonides to the prestigious position of Court Physician. Though Maimonides remained loyal to the Jewish faith of his ancestors, it is clear that he also embraced people of different cultures.

Maimonides owes a lot of his intellectual achievements to Neo-Platonic philosophy, which took root in Muslim Spain. His appreciation for Greek and Muslim philosophers is displayed in an 1199 letter he sent to rabbi Samuel ibn Tarron, his Jewish friend in France who was working on a Hebrew translation of Maimonides' work. The letter stated: "Take good care to study the works of Aristotle only with the help of his commentators... Aristotle's work is sufficient... As for logic, it is necessary to study only the works of Al-Farabi. All his writings are excellent... ." It is obvious that Maimonides borrowed the best ideas from two great civilizations -- ancient Greece and Muslim Spain -- to create a new understanding of Jewish Holy Scripture which would be compatible with the then "modern" concept of rationalism.

His most famous work is The Guide of the Perplexed, completed toward the end of his life in 1190. Written in Arabic, Maimonides' book strikes a balance between religious and secular knowledge by arguing that the soul improves only through knowledge. Indeed, he suggested that the highest human achievement is the perfection of the intellect, which is impossible without learning.

Maimonides The Guide argued that "[a]ll the great evils which men cause to each other because of certain intentions, desires, opinions, or religious principles... originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom. If men possessed wisdom... they would not cause injury to themselves or to others." He recommends that people need knowledge to possess wisdom. It is only through education that people of different cultures can overcome divisions and conflict.

To arrive at this state of enlightenment, Maimonides encouraged people to find knowledge outside of their own religious tradition because each religion offers wisdom. In The Guide(1.51), we find evidence to support this claim, as he wrote:

There is no oneness at all except in believing that there is one simple essence in which there is no complexity or multiplicity of notions, but one notion only; so that from whatever angle you regard it and from whatever point of view you consider it, you will find that it is one, not divided.
Maimonides was directing us to the idea that a "single truth" exists and that no matter which "angle" you look at it, you can always find that it "is one, not divided."

Sufism particularly influenced his philosophical writings. In The Guide, he turned to the ideas of Muslim mystics by clearly referring to "Sufi-thought" regarding "the light." He wrote:

We are like someone in a very dark night over whom lightening flashes again and again. Among us there is one for whom the lightening flashes time and time again, so that he is always, as it were, in increasing light. There are others between whose lightening flashes are of greater or shorter intervals. It is in accord with these states that the degree of the perfect vary.
Maimonides references Al-Ghazali, an influential Muslim theologian and philosopher who in the 11th and 12th century encouraged Muslims to move away from orthodox Islam to Sufism. Al-Ghazali claimed that the "light" and the "truth" had a relationship in that seeing the "light of truth" is like seeing an instant strike of lightening, which he argued would help illuminate and expand peoples' minds. Sufis call this illumination awqat.

Sufism taught Maimonides that literalism was not the only way to understanding God. His writing encouraged Jews to follow their intellect and abandon their literalist interpretations of Jewish Holy Scripture. Maimonides, however, was not suggesting that Jews should abandon their traditions. Instead he critiqued scripture by "decoding" its hidden meanings. In this sense he rediscovered esoteric meanings of Judaism, which he would gift to a new generation of Jews.

Maimonides also looked to Sufis to find balance for the soul. For the soul to grow spiritually, Sufis believe that people must be healthy in body, mind, and spirit. He borrowed this belief and broke down the soul into two different types: a soul that possesses anger and carries a heavy spirit versus a soul that has an even disposition and which is light at heart.

Maimonides did not think it was healthy for the soul to have "unbounded desires" which "is never stated with pursuing passions." Referencing Jewish Holy Scripture (Koheles 5:9) he argued in The Guide that a person who has a covetous soul "will not be sated with all the wealth of the world." Maimonides' thought mirrors Rumi, the Sufi poet who wrote later in the 13th century that those who know "the value of every article of merchandise... don't know the value of [their] own soul, it's all foolishness." Maimonides and Rumi encouraged people to move beyond materialism. Instead they wanted people to live generous and compassionate lives.

Maimonides' passion for knowledge and his willingness to join ideas from other cultures into his philosophy serves as an important reminder and useful tool in building bridges of intercultural understanding. Instead of focusing on cultural differences, he worked to find areas of common ground. In this light Maimonides' life is an example of how people living in diverse societies can work together to build stronger communities.

Maimonides' legacy reminds us of the great Jewish saying of tikkun olam, "to heal a fractured world." In searching outside the realm of his own cultural tradition for wisdom, Maimonides showed us how we can build on our commonalities through a process of mixing. His life is proof that people of various backgrounds can break down walls which divide us upon our differences.​

http://www.themuslimtimes.org/2013/...elations-through-the-life-of-a-jewish-scholar