Blood and Faith

by Matthew Carr

  All this suggests that Spain is still not entirely comfortable with its Muslim past—or present. Anti-Muslim sentiment is not as widespread in Spain as it has become in some European countries, but it can still be seen in the campaigns against mosque construction, such as the intense local opposition to the building of the Grand Granada Mosque in the Albaicín. Faced with falling congregations and the loss of its predominant place in Spanish society, the Catholic Church has expressed increasing anxiety at the Muslim presence. Commenting on the cancellation of compulsory religious classes by the socialist government and rumors that other religions, including Islam, would be placed on an equal footing with Catholicism, Spain’s leading archbishop, Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, declared, “Some people wish to place us in the year 711. . . . It seems as if we are meant to wipe ourselves out of history.”7

  This insecurity about the future of the Church has coincided with a more assertive attempt on the part of Spain’s Muslim communities to gain equality of status within Spanish society. One bone of contention has been a campaign by Muslims in Córdoba to be allowed to hold Friday prayers inside the Great Mosque, where Christians still worship at the cathedral that once offended Charles I. Some campaigners have argued that such permission would convert the Mosque into a symbol of reconciliation, but Church authorities have so far refused, on the grounds that the presence of Muslim worshippers would “confuse” Christians.

  As is the case elsewhere in Europe, the Spanish right wing has attempted to take advantage of the “War on Terror” and mobilize such anxieties to its own advantage by linking the past to the present—a tendency reflected in books such as Spain Faces Islam: From Muhammad to Bin Laden and The Jihad in Spain: The Obsession to Reconquer al-Andalus. At present such views belong to the margins, but this may not always be the case as the current global economic recession continues to eat away at Spain’s brittle prosperity.

  Whatever the future may hold, however, the memory of al-Andalus has long since ceased to be a source of shame. Each year thousands of tourists visit the fabulous architectural remnants of Moorish Spain, the Alhambra, the Great Mosque of Córdoba, the Madinat al-Zahra, and the Giralda. Farther away from these monuments to emirs and caliphs lie traces of the more humble history that brought that world to an end. From time to time, builders and construction workers discover aljamiado manuscripts in wall cavities and under floorboards. In 2004, two Arabic manuscripts were discovered in an old box in Hornachos, including a book of prayer.

  In the village of Valor in the eastern Alpujarras, a group of Spanish converts to Islam have placed a small plaque as a tribute to “Aben Humeya and the Moriscos, the height of freedom for al-Andalus.” Travelers who take the winding road that leads up from Órgiva to the Sierra Nevada can pause to enjoy the stupendous views of the Alpujarran plains from the “Barranco de Sangre,” or Ravine of Blood—the site of a desperate battle between Christians and Moriscos during the Alpujarras war, where legend has it that Christian blood ran uphill so as not to mingle with the blood of infidels.

  Not many visitors go the inhospitable mountains above the Júcar River that once constituted tierra morisca, Morisco land. Here you can still find the foundations of Morisco houses, the overgrown terraces they once cultivated, and the ruined castles where they took refuge in times of danger. On the outskirts of the town of Cortes de Pallas, at the base of the Muela de Cortes, there is as pretty a valley as you are likely to find anywhere in Spain, where farmers still water their fields with the irrigation channels and wells dug by the Moriscos. Here the trickle of water, the lush vegetation, the rocky hillsides, the brilliant blue sky, and the distant sight of the Júcar Reservoir far below emanate a serenity and peace that makes it difficult to conceive of the horrific scenes that once took place on the looming cliffs nearby, where Morisca women leaped to their deaths in the terrible winter of 1609 because a small group of vain, arrogant, and bigoted men regarded their presence in Spanish territory as a defilement.

  What lessons, if any, does the story of the Moriscos have for our own century? Four hundred years later, it is tempting to regard Spain’s great purge as a remote historical tragedy from a more ignorant and fanatical age. The vicious diatribes of Bleda and Aznar Cardona, the baroque theatrical spectacle of the auto-da-fé, the persecution of men and women for eating couscous or washing their hair, the genealogies of blood and faith—all these phenomena can appear to be morbid expressions of a religious hatred that has no place in more enlightened times. This was how Spain once looked in the nineteenth century, when liberal European and American historians depicted the country as an anachronistic bastion of reaction in post-Enlightenment Europe. “Bigotry has long, in the eyes of Spain, been her glory; in the eyes of Europe her disgrace,” wrote Richard Ford in 1845. Since then, the modern world has generated too many purges and expulsions for any society to be complacent about its capacity for rationality and tolerance.

  Nor has the spread of secularism proved to be a barrier against such events. Avowedly secular states, from Nazi Germany to the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, have all attempted to establish racial or ethnic homogeneity within a single national territory through the physical removal or mass murder of unwanted or “surplus” populations. As in sixteenth-century Spain, such actions are invariably presented as acts of self-defense on the part of majorities who set out to cleanse themselves or prevent their collective values from corruption and defilement. The protagonists of these episodes invariably invert the actual balance of power so that even the most powerful majorities present themselves as victims rather than persecutors, whose existence is threatened by the weaker group they set out to eliminate. History teaches us that when these parameters are taken for granted, then anything becomes possible. In his tribute to the sixteenth-century dissident Sebastian Castellio, written in the shadow of Hitler, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig once noted that “each new era uncovers a fresh group of unhappy persons upon whom to empty the vials of collective hatred. Sometimes it is on account of their religion, sometimes on account of the colour of their skin, their race, their origin, their social ideal, their philosophy, that the members of some comparatively small and weak group are made targets for the annihilative energies latent in so many of us.”8

  Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, these “annihilative energies” continue to stalk a media-saturated world in which powerful economic forces and unprecedented technological transformation are dissolving national and cultural frontiers and bringing the most disparate peoples into unexpected and often unwanted proximity with one another. Among other consequences, this dramatic convergence has been accompanied by a new convergence of politics and religion, a resurgence in nationalism and separatism, and a rise in racial and ethnic tension in many different countries.

  The richer, industrialized nations of the Western world have not been immune to these tendencies. In Europe and the United States, unprecedented levels of immigration from the Third World have fueled xenophobic and racist sentiment. Where immigrants from Latin America or Europe’s former colonies were once seen as essential components of the postwar economy, an increasingly influential school of thought in the early twenty-first century has depicted the cultural and ethnic diversity produced by these migratory currents as a threat to the core national identities of the countries that receive them.

  In some countries, such anxieties have generated a reaction against the multiculturalist model of integration that once celebrated cultural diversity as a positive phenomenon, in favor of a new emphasis on cultural homogeneity. Critics have claimed that multiculturalism has “failed” and paved the way for cultural and ethnic separatism at the expense of “social cohesion.” In the United States, the late political scientist Samuel Huntington warned against the “Hispanization” of American society and claimed that America’s Anglo-American Protestant heritage was in danger of erosion by Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants who have turned parts of the south into “Mexamerica.”9

  Wh
ere previous immigrant groups were absorbed into the American “melting pot,” Huntington argued, Mexicans have resisted assimilation and have continued to maintain their linguistic, cultural, and even political loyalties to their country of origin, to the point where the future of the American “national creed” is in jeopardy. In Australia, the “Australia First Party” has blamed the multiculturalist policies of “New World Order globalist capitalism” for turning Australia into a “nation of tribes.” Similar sentiments have been expressed in Europe, where politicians in various countries have expressed criticisms like those of the Danish minister for cultural affairs Brian Mikkelsen, who warned his conservative People’s Party annual conference in 2005 that Denmark’s multiculturalist policies were paving the way for “a parallel society in which minorities practice their own medieval values and undemocratic views.”10

  In Denmark, as elsewhere in Europe, the backlash against multiculturalism has primarily focused on the country’s Muslim population. At present, Europe is home to 15 to 18 million Muslims, who first began to arrive in large numbers as immigrant workers in the early 1970s. These migrants were once likely to be identified in terms of their national origins, whether Turkish, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, or Moroccan, but they and their descendants are now more likely to be depicted as members of a single homogeneous category of Muslim—a category that is increasingly regarded with fear, suspicion, and hatred. These sentiments have been exacerbated by the September 11 attacks, the “War on Terror,” and a series of atrocities involving radical Islamist groups and individuals, from the bombings in Madrid and London to the murder of Theo van Gogh in Holland. The security fears generated by the ongoing terrorist emergency have combined with the “culture wars” of recent years, such as the Danish cartoons furor, so that the Muslim presence in Europe is often presented as a common threat not just to particular national cultures but to the future of European civilization itself.

  These threat narratives incorporate a wide gamut of ideological persuasions and sometimes contradictory positions, in which liberal defenders of freedom of cultural expression demand the prohibition of the Muslim head-scarf, secularists and atheists call for the “re-Christianization” of Europe, Catholics present themselves as defenders of the Enlightenment, and former fascists defend Europe’s “Judeo-Christian” essence. All these different perspectives share a similar view of Islam as the barbaric antithesis of modernity, intent on imposing itself on the entire world through covert cultural infiltration or overt violence. And it is here, in this hostile anti-Muslim consensus, that the twenty-first century sometimes begins to resemble the sixteenth. A sixteenth-century Spanish time traveler in today’s Europe would certainly be puzzled by the representation of Europe’s Muslims as a collective threat to European secularism and tolerance—to say nothing of the often-repeated references to Europe’s “Judeo-Christian” roots. But he or she would have felt on more familiar ground on hearing Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial speech in September 2006, when he quoted the fourteenth-century Byzantine Christian emperor Manuel II Paleologus’s observation that Muhammad had brought “things only evil and inhuman” into history, such as his command to “spread by the sword the faith he preached.”11

  If some contemporary “Islamic threat” narratives echo medieval anti-Islamic polemics in their depictions of Islam as an inherently aggressive “religion of the sword,” the construction of the contemporary Muslim enemy often fuses culture, religion, and politics in ways that would not be entirely unfamiliar to a visitor from Hapsburg Spain. Just as sixteenth-century Spanish officials regarded the Moriscos as “domestic enemies” with links to the Barbary corsairs and the Ottomans, so journalists and “terrorism experts” increasingly depict Europe’s Muslims as an “enemy within” with links to terrorism and enemies beyond Europe’s borders. Just as inquisitors regarded Morisco communities as inscrutable bastions of covert Mohammedanism and sedition, so some of these commentators depict a continent pockmarked with hostile Muslim enclaves, “Londonistans,” and no-go areas that lie entirely outside the vigilance and control of the state, in which the sight of a beard, a shalwar kameez (unisex pajamalike outfit), or a niqab (veil) is evidence of cultural incompatibility or a refusal to integrate.

  As in the sixteenth century, the depiction of Europe’s Muslims as “suspect communities” tends to interpret cultural and religious difference—whether real or simply imagined—as an expression of willful defiance of the majority. The covered female face has become a particular object of such suspicions, even if the meanings associated with it have changed. Where Spanish clerics once associated the almalafa with female sexuality and saw it as a threat to Catholic morality and virtue, the Muslim veil has been variously interpreted in recent years as a threat to European secularism, as a symbol of the oppression of women, or even as a terrorist threat, as the Dutch cabinet described the burqa in November 2006 during a discussion that resulted in a decision to ban it from public places throughout Holland.

  Holland is not the only European country to have introduced legislation banning the burqa, the niqab, and the hijab. Whether such bans are presented as a defense of female equality or the promotion of integration, they tend to share a common perception of Islam as a primitive culture or religion that monolithically sanctions genital mutilation, the stoning of homosexuals, and the oppression of women, and demands violent jihad as a religious obligation. It is not necessary to eulogize Islam as a pristine “religion of peace” to recognize the underlying bigotry behind these narratives. All religions contain contradictory elements within their doctrines and traditions that can be used and misused, according to specific historical and cultural circumstances, and Islam is no exception. There are reactionary elements among Europe’s Muslim communities who denounce the “decadence” of the West, who talk of executing apostates and homosexuals, and who boast of the superiority of Islamic civilization. There is a small minority of radical extremists who have carried out or attempted to carry out mass killings of European civilians. But these groups constitute a minority within a minority, especially when compared with the hostile consensus that is beginning to take shape among media pundits, politicians, “terrorism experts,” and the ordinary population which increasingly depicts Europe’s Muslims as a dangerous and backward minority whose members will not or cannot adapt to European norms.

  Such hostility tends to ignore the distinctions between religious and secular Muslims, among different strands of Islam and different cultural traditions of European Muslims, and among the terms fundamentalist, terrorist, and Islamist, prefering to cite the most extremist and reactionary preachers, such as Abu Hamza or Abu Qatada, as evidence of a generalized cultural backwardness. Other religious groups, including Christians, also harbor reactionary attitudes toward women and homosexuals, but such attitudes among Muslims tend to be singled out as evidence of a collective incompatibility with the superior values of a secular, enlightened, and tolerant Europe. One increasingly influential school of anti-Muslim thought has depicted Europe as a continent that is in the throes of cultural suicide and imminent transformation into a colony of Islam called Eurabia. The mostly conservative and right-wing writers in Europe and the United States who subscribe to this thesis often fuse science-fiction visions of a dystopian future with historical references to the Battle of Poitiers or the 1683 siege of Vienna in their presentation of Europe’s Muslim immigrants as the vanguard of a new Islamic conquest. To proponents of Eurabian scenarios, such as the Egyptian-born writer Bat Yeor and the radically anti-Muslim British media pundit Melanie Phillips, every new mosque, every Arab investment, and every Arab endowment to a European university is a confirmation of Europe’s spiritual sickness and subservience to Islam that has placed the continent’s institutions in a state of “dhimmitude.”

  Other writers, such as the American Catholic intellectual George Weigel and the Canadian columnist Mark Steyn, depict a suicidal and masochistic Europe fatally afflicted by a crisis of civilizational morale. To the Amer
ican anti-Islamic ideologue Daniel Pipes, Eurabia stems from Europe’s “alienation from the Judeo-Christian tradition, empty church pews and a fascination with Islam,” whereas “Muslims display a religious fervor that translates into jihadi sensibility, a supremacism toward non-Muslims and an expectation that Europe is waiting for conversion to Islam.”12

  Alarmists warning of this Eurabian future appear oblivious to the resemblance between their paranoid theories of a Muslim takeover and anti-Semitic tracts such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Such views do not come from marginalized ideologues on the far-right political fringe, but from writers such as Pipes, Steyn, and Phillips, who regularly write for mainstream newspapers and publications. Where Spanish anti-Morisco writers once warned that Moriscos were outbreeding Christians, Eurabian narratives are prone to equally apocalyptic demographic predictions, in which rising Muslim birthrates and declining fertility rates among “secular” and “Christian” Europeans alike will transform Europe into what the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci called “a province of Islam, as Spain and Portugal were of the time of the Moors,” which “teems with mullahs, imams, mosques, burqas and chadors.”13