The Islam of “Our” Ancestors: An “Imagined” Morisco Past Evoked in Today’s Andalusian...

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/22117954-12341261

Journal of Muslims in Europe 2 (2013) 137-164 brill.com/jome

The Islam of “Our” Ancestors: An “Imagined” Morisco Past Evoked in Today’s

Andalusian Conversion Narratives

Marta Dominguez DiazAssistant Professor Islamic Studies, University of St Gallen

[email protected]

AbstractSpain has the highest rates of conversion to Islam in the European Union. A significant proportion of converts live in Andalusia, which was once part of medieval Muslim Spain (al-Andalus). The “Muslim past” is looked to with a burgeoning sense of nostalgia, yet little is known about this romantic longing. Some converts perceive al-Andalus as a glorious epoch marked by religious co-existence (convivencia) and the flowering of Arabic culture, remembering those medieval Muslims who were exiled from Spain or who stayed and practised Islam secretly, and viewing themselves as heirs of these medieval Muslims. Conversion for them is not conversion but a rediscovery of the “truly Muslim nature” of Andalusia. Fundamental to this Andalusian convert discourse is the claim that Islam is not an “imported” religion but a local, indigenous one. An analysis of these Andalusian converts’ narratives will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the current ideological battles over national and religious identity.

Keywords Islam in Spain; conversion to Islam; Moriscos; al-Andalus

The nature of the relationship between Spain and its Muslim populations is fundamentally conditioned by its geographical proximity to North-Africa but also by the presence of Muslims in the Peninsula for a significant part of its his-tory, what makes of the case of Spain a quite unique one within Western Europe. Though the presence of Islam in present-day Spain is largely the result of migration1 there is a somehow significant proportion of Muslims who are

1 In modern times the Muslim presence in Spain has been almost imperceptible. The 1960s mark a turning point. Before that decade, Spain had primarily been a country of emigration, due to economic circumstances and political exile. But since the 1960s—and more so since the 2000s—dramatic economic change has resulted in an abrupt transformation in migration

138 M. Dominguez Diaz / Journal of Muslims in Europe 2 (2013) 137-164

converts.2 The majority of these converts live in the southern Spanish province of Andalusia, a region bordering neighbouring Morocco3 and once part of Medieval Muslim Spain (al-Andalus).4 Andalusia is a region in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, with a rich cultural specificity; it is interesting to note that many folklore-related phenomena that are worldwide attributed to Spanish culture (e.g. flamenco, bullfighting) are actually specific to the Andalusian region and only recently adopted by the rest of the country as symbols of national identity. Part of the cultural specificity of Andalusia has to be attributed

patterns: nowadays immigration vastly exceeds emigration. The 2000s saw a booming Spanish economy and the country suddenly became Europe’s prime destination—with 2.5 million newcomers between 2002 and 2007. The change has been sudden. Foreigners comprised 3.1% of Spain’s population in 1999, whereas in 2009 they represented 13.8%. The current economic crisis threatens to reverse this trend, with both nationals and foreigners leaving the country at the same time as there is a substantial decrease in the number of arrivals—920,000 people arrived in 2007, but only 21,723 in 2011. Nevertheless, Spain has the second highest immigration rate within the EU (after Cyprus) and the second highest absolute net migration in the world, after the United States. Accurate estimates are difficult to provide since Spain does not have a census which ascertains religious affiliation. The Muslim presence is therefore estimated on the basis of those coming from Muslim majority countries, which were about 800,000 in 2009. The total coming from Muslim majority countries is less, however, than all those from Spanish-speaking American countries, the Latin American component being responsible for having a less remarkable Muslim presence than the rest of countries in Western Europe, despite of the fact that Moroccans, 1.5% of Spain’s population, are the second most sizeable group of foreigners. For further statistical information see The Spanish Government’s Statistics Website, with information last updated on 30 September 2012, available at http://extranjeros.empleo.gob.es/es/estadisticas/, accessed 22 November 2012.

2 It is difficult to provide wholly accurate figures, but it is estimated that approximately 50,000 of Spain’s Muslims are converts. In itself this figure may not seem surprising, particularly if considering the figure in relation to the 47 million Spain’s 2011 total population and in light of data which indicates that there are between 80,000 and 100,000 converts in the UK in and already 100,000 in Germany back in 2004. It is difficult to obtain accurate estimates of the number of converts in Spain. The estimate of 50,000 Spanish converts originally was provided in 2007 by the Junta Islamica Catalana, an organisation mainly made up of converts. One may assume they might be inclined to go for the highest estimates. This article considers 50,000 as an estimate for 2010, following Lema Tome’s article (2010) the most recent and reliable source I have been able to obtain insofar. See Lema Tome, Margarita. “La immigración Islámica en España,” Jura Gentium, 10, (2010). An interesting article discussing the sources of data on Islam in the UK can be found at Tomkins, Stephen. ‘A closer look at reports about the growth of Islam in the UK,’ The Guardian, 8 January 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/08/islam-uk-growth-muslims, accessed 22 November 2012.

3 Valencia, Roberto. “Los nuevos musulmanes”, in: Roque, Maria Angels, and Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi. Eds. El islam plural. (Barcelona: Icaria Editorial, 2003), pp. 361-368.

4 Although the borders of Al-Andalus changed over time, it is worth noticing that the territory under Muslim rule was larger than today’s Andalusia, including other Spanish and Portuguese regions of the Iberian Peninsula.

M. Dominguez Diaz / Journal of Muslims in Europe 2 (2013) 137-164 139

to its historical past, a territory that was under Muslim rule for almost eight centuries. Al-Andalus was the medieval Arabic term used to designate the ter-ritories that were under Muslim rule from the times of the initial conquest in 711 CE until the fall of the Naṣrid kingdom of Granada in 1492. However, a dif-ficult to numerically determine although somehow significant presence of Muslims is believed to have lasted beyond the end of the 15th century.

Conversion to Islam in Andalusia have often been attributed to a growing sense of nostalgia among some Spaniards about “their Muslim past,” yet little is known about the actual relationship between representations of the past and religious identity. Conflicting portrayals of Andalusia’s historical past have had a direct effect on the ways in which people in this region bordering the Muslim World construe their identity. The ongoing debates over what constitutes Andalusian identity depend on the actual role that the Muslim presence has played in defining the identity of the region and of Europe, at last. In this con-tested arena, some are prone to ignore the fact that Muslim rulers and popula-tions were part of the history of the Iberian Peninsula for almost eight hundred years. In contraposition, others are eager to emphasise this chapter of Iberian history and understand it as part of a larger continued line of Muslim presence and influence that has blended with other cultural trends.

The present article seeks to analyse the ways in which some converts to Islam in Andalusia understand their religious identity and how they relate it to a certain understanding of the historical past of the region.5 The article, thence, understands religious conversion as an individual identity process informed by social narratives of cultural belonging. It first examines the different historical perspectives that have been developed in relation to the Muslim presence in

5 This article is part of an on-going research project exploring modern re-appropriations of the historical al-Andalus, the data used are both written (books, booklets, internet materials) and oral sources. On the latter, this article relies on data collected though informal conversations and ethnographic observations gathered among 17 female and 5 male converts from Andalusia that I met when conducting fieldwork in Southern Spain and Northern Morocco for a different study about a transnational Moroccan Sufi Order. Most of my interviewees are either members of Sufi Orders or sympathise with Sufism, although the diversity of approaches to Islam and ideologies within Sufism they represent is significant. Some respondents for example, were prone to adhere and strictly follow Malikism, whereas others had a rather lax and individualised approach to Islamic Law. There were respondents from various age groups, 10 of the women were between 25 and 35 years old, two were under 25 and 5 were above 35. As for males, 4 were of the 25-35 age group and one only was above 35. The data was gathered between June 2007 and September 2010. Sociological aspects such as the gender, age, or religious orientation of the interviewees may surely contribute to shape their ideological stances and constitute an elucidating ground for scholarly inquiry, yet these aspects have not been scrutinised on their own in the present article. Further research would be needed on this regard.


the medieval Iberian Peninsula. Second, it discusses how diverse versions of this chapter in the history of the Peninsula emerged in relation to particular views of the modern nation-state in attempts to legitimise these views. Third, the paper discusses the impact of some Andalusian convert voices on the positioning of Islam in the national identity debate and it examines how their political affiliations may be shaped by notions of belonging. Fourth, it analyses the ways in which the life and deeds of Miguel de Cervantes de Saave-dra (d.1616), a central figure in the history of Spanish literature, have been approached by modern voices, including those of some converts, in the al-Andalus debate about identity. It argues that this is an illustrative example of how religious identity is being negotiated and disputed in modern-day Anda-lusia. Finally, the paper explores the intricate relationship between some lines of Andalusian nationalism6 and some of the approaches of conversion to Islam, suggesting that these may be seen as ideological trends which are not only and often subtly intertwined, but which in some instances nourish each another. Overall, the article suggests that religious conversion is an individual identity process which is informed by collective narratives of who we are and where we come from, and that it may be seen as a social action intricately tied to particu-lar discourses of the historical past with political and social implications for the present.

Historical Representations of al-AndalusSpanish national identity has repeatedly tried to come to terms with its Anda-lusian past. The way in which al-Andalus is historically analysed, understood and revisited is part of one of the most heated debates in modern Spain. The degree of relevance attributed to the Andalusian historical legacy—whether it is viewed as central or by contrast as somehow insignificant—has direct impli-cations for how Spain thinks about itself; it constitutes part of a debate about identity which has far-reaching political ramifications. Al-Andalus has not only

6 The article refers to nationalism to denote a shared sense of identification of a group of individuals with a “nation” (i.e. a community of people who share a mental image of a certain cultural and historical affinity). See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). In the case analysed here the nation has a territorial demarcation; whenever the article speaks of Spanish nationalism, it refers to identification with a territory that coincides with the modern borders of Spain, whereas when it discusses Andalusian nationalism it reflects a sense of belonging connected to the southern region of Andalusia.


concerned historians, but has permeated discourses at all social and political levels. A Muslim presence (i.e. significant parts of the population being Muslim and ruled by Muslims) which has endured for eight centuries can no more be ignored in discussions concerned with Spain’s past and they cannot be brushed aside in any serious discussion about her present. The al-Andalus historian Garcia Arenal has acutely observed that the legacy of al-Andalus appeals to the emotions and is closely related to contemporary matters. Because it is such a live issue, Garcia Arenal concludes that it is difficult to approach al-Andalus from a merely historiographical angle.7 This is particularly so today, when issues such as the Muslim presence in Europe elicit such intense reactions.

For most of the 20th century, Spanish historians approached and catego-rised any historical event that occurred in the south of the Iberian Peninsula between the years 711 and 1492 (and later) as “al-Andalus,” which entails diverse phenomena (from social behaviour, political entities to artistic manifestations) belonging to entirely different historical moments and contextual circum-stances, from the moment of conquest, the scientific and literary glory of ‘Abd al-Rahman III’s caliphate, the social mobility enjoyed by Jews during the period of the taifa rulers, the fall of Granada and the subsequent expulsion of the Moriscos.8

This miscellany of historical events has often been analysed with reference to two main opposing historiographical positions,9 which can be broadly char-acterised as those who defend the notion of a Spanish identity which is based purely on European Christian traditions and those who do not. On the one hand, a position originally defended by Americo Castro10 was that the identity we depict as “Spanish” results from the interaction of Muslims, Christians, and Jews from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries. Those who follow this line of thought emphasise the long-lasting and profound impact of al-Andalus, and

7 Garcia-Arenal, Mercedes, “Moriscos and Jewish Converts: Religion as Cultural Identity,” in Intercultural Dialogue between Europe and the Mediterranean, (Barcelona: Institut Europeu de la Mediterranea, 2010).

8 Stearns, Justin, “Representing and Remembering al-Andalus: Some Historical Considerations Regarding the End of Time and the Making of Nostalgia,” in Medieval Encounters, 15, (2009), 355-374.

9 The complex range of positions has been somewhat simplified here for the sake of clarity. The resulting categorisation nevertheless gives a fair indication of the majority of historiographical opinions on al-Andalus. For a further exploration on how scholarly debates on the matter evolved in Spanish academic circles up to the end of Francoist rule see Monroe, James., Islam and the Arabs in Spanish scholarship, sixteenth century to the present, (Leiden: Brill, 1970).

10 Castro, Américo, España en su historia; cristianos, moros y judios (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1948).


are inclined to underline trends of cultural continuity between the Andalusian legacy and subsequent periods of Spanish history and identity-formation. Cen-tral to this understanding of history is the notion of Convivencia, a state of cul-tural mélange characterised by religious tolerance and the flourishing of the arts and sciences. According to this view, the coexistence of Muslims, Jews and Christians implies that by virtue of living together in political entities that did not persecute them, mutual appreciation logically occurred and naturally resulted in a period of artistic and scientific glory.11

By contrast, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz12 suggested that the extent and nature of the interaction between Muslims and Christians was rather limited, because the nature of such relations was merely conflictual, and therefore not conducive to cultural mixing. For him, “Spanish” culture was mainly the result of Roman, Gothic or ulterior elements of Christian provenance. For those who follow Sánchez-Albornoz’ ideas, al-Andalus has to be understood as the result of a foreign invasion, with any Andalusian heritage consequently forming an element alien to the indigenous culture and having a merely transient impact—or even no impact at all—on Spain’s present day identity. Of importance to this view is the notion of Reconquista, the effort exerted by the Christian king-doms of the north to expel the “Moors.” They tend to portray this as a moment which was decisive in shaping the future national identity, a moment in which Spaniards decided to be Christian and European, rather than Muslim and oriental.13

Most present-day scholarship on al-Andalus seems to be moving away from such essentialising tendencies and to espousing a more subtle understanding.14 Burgeoning criticism of the simplistic twofold perspective suggests that the debate needs to be disentangled from the development of nationalist myths, and that it does not make sense to attempt to elucidate the medieval situation in terms of modern ideas concerning national and religious identity. Moreover,

11 Fairchild Ruggles, D., “Mothers of a Hybrid Dynasty: Race, Genealogy, and Acculturation in al-Andalus,” in Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 34 (1) (2004), 65-94.

12 Sánchez-Albornoz, Claudio. España, un enigma histórico (Buenos Aires: Editorial Suda-mericana, 1956).

13 Flesler, Daniela, The Return of the Moor: Spanish Responses to Contemporary Moroccan Immigration (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2008) and Rogozen-Soltar, Mikaela, “Al-Andalus in Andalusia: Negotiating Moorish History and Regional Identity in Southern Spain,” in Anthropological Quarterly, 80(3) (2007), 863-886.

14 A good and recent example of a more nuanced academic discourse can be found in Menocal, Maria Rosa, “Visions of al-Andalus,” in The Literature of Al-Andalus, Maria Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindl and Michael Sells (eds.) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 1-24.


the tolerance/persecution dichotomy (glorifying/depreciating) has the effect of conferring an aura of uniqueness upon al-Andalus that recent comparative studies of medieval Iberia and other political entities in the medieval Mediter-ranean have come to question.15

Discussions concerning the treatment of religion in historical representa-tions of al-Andalus have in many instances conveyed a straightforward identi-fication between al-Andalus and Islam. The result is that al-Andalus is portrayed as a “Muslim” phenomenon. I shall not, of course, claim that it was not, but at the same time I would contend that conferring upon Islam an unequivocal role in fostering, for example, more tolerant government and higher literacy rates than the rest of Europe, simply because al-Andalus was ruled by Muslims would be misleading.

Various insights have certainly contributed to a fuller understanding of medieval Iberia, yet the increasingly sophisticated scholarly perspective has not yet been applied to the social and political levels. In these domains, as in Spain itself, al-Andalus does not seem to be worthy of scholarly erudition, but simply a subject about which almost everybody has an (often heated) opinion. But how and why has this long (albeit distant) chapter in the Peninsula’s his-tory come to be so important to the people of Spain today? This article suggests that this is directly due to the fact that the “al-Andalus myth” in its various forms has been used to legitimise ideas concerning the nature of Spanish iden-tity and that this has had important repercussions on the building of national-ist discourses. The next section deals with the genealogy of these ideologies.

Political Genealogies of the al-Andalus MythThose who are aware of the strong association between Catholicism and the Franco regime (1939-75) will not be surprised to hear that the stereotypical portrayal of Muslims as “the other,” the invader, the barbaric infidel, the enemy and so on was an everyday occurrence during this period. This was not a bot-tom-up enterprise, but a state initiative: the Spanish government was keen to reinforce a conception of nationhood that had been evoked previously by the 1812 Cádiz Constitution (which declared Roman Catholicism to be the official

15 See for example, Soifer, Maya, “Beyond Convivencia: Critical Reflections on the Histo-riography of Interfaith Relations in Christian Spain,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 1(1) (2009) pp. 19-35.


religion and prohibited all others)16 and by the “traditionalist” regime of Primo de Rivera (1923-30).17 Contemporary with German ethnic nationalism, Franco’s idea of national belonging promoted an “ethno-patriotic identity”—to borrow Jauregui and Ruiz Jimenez’s term18—articulated via Catholic mores. Other identities were portrayed negatively as the religious other—Franco frequently presented Masons and Jews, for example, as Spain’s real enemies in his speeches.19 In Franco’s ideology of National Catholicism, the ideal of Hispani-dad symbolised the authentic values of Europe and his “moral crusade” implied a struggle for the preservation of Europe’s core Christian civilizational values.20 The “al-Andalus myth,” with one of its oldest national foundational fables, that of the Reconquista, was recurrently used to attempt to provide “scientific” legitimacy to this politico-religious agenda. After almost forty years of dicta-torial rule (1936-1975), a reinvigorated uniform idea of Spanish national iden-tity framed in terms of a dual loyalty to monarchy and church had been consolidated.

Regarding the “Moorish question” however, Franco’s position fluctuated and was often ambiguous. His attitude has to be understood in the context of Spain’s colonial policies in North Africa and with reference to the central role that Morocco had played in 20th century Spanish politics. The presence of Spain along the coast of northwest Africa was initially manifested during the 1400s and 1500s. The Mediterranean ports of Melilla and Ceuta came under Spanish rule in 1496 and 1578, respectively, and remained so, up to today. In the late nineteenth century, Spain joined the European thirst for overseas con-quering. In 1884, a Spanish protectorate was declared along the Saharan coast, a claim recognised by the Berlin Conference in 1885, territorial holdings that were expanded by three treaties between Spain and France, the last in 1912. Spain then nominally held full sovereignty over today’s Western Sahara, and

16 For further analysis of the creation of Spain’s national identity during the 19th century see Alvarez Junco, Jose, “The Nation-Building Process in Nineteenth-Century Spain” in Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula: Competing and Conflicting Identities, pp. 89-106.

17 Muro, Diego, “Spanish nationalism: Ethnic or civic?,” in Ethnicities, 5(1) (2005), 9-29. 18 Jauregui, Pablo and Ruiz Jimenez, Antonia, “A European Spain, the Recovery of Spanish

Self-Esteem and International Prestige,” p. 81.19 How anti-Semitism and prejudice against Freemasons unfolded during Francoist times is

the subject of Rohr’s interesting book. Rohr, Isabelle, The Spanish Right and the Jews, 1898-1945: Antisemitism and Opportunism (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2007).

20 Jauregui, Pablo and Ruiz Jimenez, Antonia, “A European Spain, the Recovery of Spanish Self-Esteem and International Prestige” in Entangled Identities: Nations and Europe, Atsuko Ichijo and Willfred Spohn (eds.) (Hampshire: Ashgate Publications, 2005), p. 81.


it also established a protectorate in the north in 1912 that was small, only one-twentieth the size of the French zone. 1956 marks the end of Spain’s rule in Morocco, when both France and Spain recognised Moroccan independence.

Before that, between 1909 and 1927 Spain had sent troops to North Africa in an attempt to put down a Berber-led revolt against Spanish rule. The Rif Wars, which resulted in numerous losses amongst the Spaniards, provided an oppor-tunity to earn military promotion, and Franco quickly rose to the rank of gen-eral. This would prove to be crucially important for his career and have enormous consequences for Spain. Years later, the Spanish colonial occupa-tion of North Africa helped Franco to successfully mobilise a special army unit made up of Moroccans against the Second Republic government of Manuel Azaña, a move which proved to be a key factor in Franco’s victory in the Span-ish Civil War (1936-39). Los Regulares unit, which during the War became pop-ularly known as the ‘Moorish Guard’ (La Guardia Mora), was composed of locally recruited Moroccan infantry and cavalry and became one of the most effective fighting forces in Franco’s files. Recognising the role Moroccan troops had played in his victory, and based on his first-hand knowledge of the unit from his years in Melilla, Franco was aware of how important religious praxis was for the North Africans. Thence, the Regulares were barracked in com-pounds which contained hospitals with prayer rooms. There were also imams for leading prayers, Islamic cemeteries, a diet which observed Islamic norms and Arabic interpreters. Troops were allowed to observe fasting during Ram-adan and celebrate Eid al-Fiṭr and al-’Aḍḥá.21 This tolerant governance did not sit comfortably with National Catholicism and the Hispanidad’s ideal of the nation. When Morocco gained its independence in 1956, relations between the two countries started to worsen and the atmosphere of amicability towards “the Moor” soon waned.

Between 1945 and 1953 Spain underwent a period of political, economic and cultural isolation. This followed a UN resolution against Franco’s dictatorial rule that encouraged countries to suspend relations with Spain.22 Most Euro-pean nations respected the political and economic embargo. It was mainly during these years that those who opposed Franco began to build an idealised notion of Europe, one in which the continent epitomised ideas of modernity,

21 Madariaga, María Rosa, Los Moros que trajo Franco, la intervención de la tropas coloniales en la guerra civil española (Barcelona: Martínez Roca, 2002).

22 For further information on Spain’s period of economic autarchy see, Prados de la Escosura, Leandro, Joan R. Rosés, and Isabel Sanz Villarroya. Stabilization and Growth under Dictatorship The Experience of Franco’s Spain. (London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2010).


tolerance, freedom, economic growth and political openness. This ideal motivated overwhelming popular support in favour of joining the EU in 1986 and it is still alive today despite the on-going crisis. As was the case with Fran-co’s National Catholic Project, the Europeanising ideology also had precursors in 18th and 19th centuries amongst Liberal intellectual circles.23 This body of Europeanising thought emerged simultaneously with the idea of an internal-ised ‘Other’ epitomised in the figure of the “Spaniard.” In this archetypal construction, Spain was portrayed as a fervently religious backward country stricken by underdevelopment and poverty and unable to bring about a system of political freedom and democratic rights. Spain’s capacity to be European and to behave as such was questioned. Europe, on the other hand, was repre-sented as having advanced ideas of secularity, democracy and the forward-thinking currents of French intellectual life.24 This was in essence an inversion of the Francoist discourse. France, which was seen by the supporters of La Hispanidad as the cradle of immorality, became for the liberals a model of intellectual enlightenment. Spain, which in the estimation of National Catholi-cism was the epitome of moral sophistication, was for the liberals a “Moorish” blot on Europe, proof of this being its inability to create a democratic society and its general backwardness. This idea was not forged exclusively by clandes-tine Spanish intellectual groups; it actually reflected widespread European views in which Spain was portrayed as a “close-to-home Orient.” Charnon-Deutsch, in his study on Spanish Gypsy culture identifies this trend among European intellectuals that saw in Spain the antithetical image of what Europe represented:

. . . there is a long history of accusing Spain of being ‘impure’ in racial, cultural and reli-gious terms because of its connection to oriental and African elements and the min-gling of Christians with Jews and Arabs . . . This negative image of Spain as barbaric, uncivilised, and more akin to Africa than to Europe, encompassed in the French saying ‘Africa begins at the Pyrenees,’25 became for European Romantic travellers an object of unending fascination. They saw in Spain, and especially in Andalusia, a reservoir of exotic culture, ‘a dream world where time could be slowed, life savoured to its fullest, and the disturbances and hypocrisy of the modern, “civilised” world of large European capitals avoided.26

23 Alvarez Junco, Jose, “The Nation-Building Process in Nineteenth-Century Spain.”24 Ibid.25 The saying has been translated into Spanish and repeatedly crops up in popular parlance.26 Charnon-Deutsch, Lou, The Spanish Gypsy: the history of a European obsession, (University

Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), p. 59.


The exotic, Oriental character of Spain, as Flesler suggests was mainly attrib-uted to its “Moorish” component: “Spain’s cultural diversity, and especially its Moorish heritage, became a main attraction in a time of orientalist taste, when Spain was perceived as a ‘close-to-home Orient.’ ”27

The genealogies of “the al-Andalus myth” culminated in Spain’s democratic transition (1975-1982) when a newly emergent public opinion developed cer-tain positions on the “Moorish question,” perspectives that largely coincide with the ideological views espoused by Spaniards today. At the risk of being overly simplistic if not adequately understood as what it is, i.e. a simplified model of the more complex actual picture of Spaniards’ views on identity, it is worth identifying characteristic key ideological standpoints in today’s Spain that correspond to the culmination of the historical ideological trajectories outlined in this article. Today these views can be epitomised in a threefold prototype: a) those who are heirs of the Franco political tradition, preserving an Hispanidad stance which often involves a xenophobic discourse critical of the newly consolidated pluralistic map of national, cultural and religious iden-tities within the country; b) those who form part of the bourgeoisie’s tradi-tional left and have inherited the Europeanising tradition which orientalises Spain with the aim of censuring the political culture of the country. For these, the al-Andalus heritage functions negatively, impeding Spain’s progress towards a laic societal model, and for this reason it should be eradicated; and c) those who are part of a popular, younger, post-democratic leftist trend which is supportive of a pluralistic, multicultural society that revisits the al-Andalus myth, presenting it as a romanticised ideal of Muslim Spain, a cultural mélange of Jews, Muslims and Christians coexisting peacefully. It evokes this historical icon in order to revive it, so that al-Andalus becomes a symbol of good practice in the management of diversity, and a nationalist emblem for future genera-tions of Andalusians.28 To this third group belong the narratives which we will now scrutinise.

27 Flesler, Daniela, The Return of the Moor: Spanish Responses to Contemporary Moroccan Immigration, p. 20.

28 The analysis of historical and social phenomena to further articulate particular stances on national identity is something that converts themselves often purport. Some of them, for example, base their views in Stallaert’s analysis of the historical development of ethnicity in Spain. See, Stallaert, C. Etnogénesis y etnicidad en España: Una aproximación histórico-antropológica al casticismo (Barcelona: Proyecto A, 1998).


Conversion to Islam, Political Involvement and the ‘Morisco’ CauseIn the years of transition towards democracy (1975-1982) Spain understood that one of the most important steps in its political transformation had to be the culmination of the process of separating church and state and the ensuing recognition of religious minorities, a process that had been initiated following Vatican II.29 Islam was to be legally authorised on the grounds that the Muslim legacy was “among the spiritual beliefs that have formed the historic character of Spain.”30 Public opinion during this period held that religious liberty ought to be valued, as it was emblematic of the new egalitarian political system.

A significant number of people converted to Islam during the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, most of them university students or young intellectuals who turned to Islam because of an interest in Sufism—the Mura-bitun movement in particular played a central role in these conversions.31 The phenomenon of conversion during this period should perhaps be looked at as the social embodiment, and a consequence, of this unique ideological aper-ture. Under other political circumstances some converts prefer to keep their decision to convert private32 but during this period religious conversion was distinguished by the fact that it was publicly vindicated. This overt approval may have derived not only from a general sense of new-found religious liberty, but also from an awareness of the distinctive political conditions of the time; such conversions were the fruit of a particular socio-political milieu.33

29 The Francoist regime prohibited any religion other than Catholicism, which was held in law to be the “one true religion, inseparable from national conscience.” However, the Vatican II Council in 1965 began to promote a view within the Catholic Church which sought to proclaim respect for human rights and religious freedom. In Spain this new agenda pressurised the regime into granting the legal recognition of religious freedoms. For further analysis see Souto Paz, José Antonio, “Perspectives on Religious Freedom in Spain” in Brigham Young University Law Review, (Provo, Utah: Brigham University Press, 2001).

30 Jiménez-Aybar, Ivan, El Islam en España: Aspectos institucionales de su estatuto jurídico (Pamplona: Navarra Gráfica Ediciones, 2004), p. 68.

31 For more information on the Murabitun, see Geaves, Ron, The Sufis of Britain: an Exploration of Muslim Identity (Cardiff, Cardiff Academic Press, 2000).

32 This is true, for example, of some of the converts to the Būdshīshiyya Order; for further information see Dominguez Diaz, Marta. “Revisiting Moroccan Sufism and Re-Islamisizing Secular Audiences: Female Religious Narratives in the ṭarīqa Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya in Morocco and Western Europe Today,” Unpublished PhD thesis (London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2010).

33 Olmo Pintado, Manuel, “Un efecto in esperado de la globalizacion: los conversos espanoles al Islam,” in La ciudad es para ti: nuevas y viejas tradiciones en ámbito surbanos, Carmen Ortiz Garcia (ed.) (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2004), pp. 119-134.


The sanctioning of religious difference was common among these genera-tions of converts—in a society that had not yet fully adjusted to the Catholic Church’s loss of its monopoly over public morality. Hashim Ibrahim Cabrera, in his book entitled Paragraphs of a New Moorish34—the title itself appealing to the potential reader via its referencing of the al-Andalus myth—clearly avows the association between conversion to Islam and the defence of Spain’s religious liberties. He states a similar position in an interview given to WebIslam:

Being a Muslim today in Andalusia is to vindicate and express a de facto alternative [advocating] pluralism, multiculturalism, religious freedom, and in general, a con-scious alternative and an open path towards the moral and intellectual growth of society.35

Implicit in this generation of converts’ defence of religious liberties is a criti-cism of what is seen as an incomplete process of separation of church and state. For example, some converts have been critical of the fact that a Catholic state mass was held for the 2004 Madrid bombings’ victims, pointing out that there were Muslims too among the victims.36 More widely, some Muslim lead-ers have overtly criticised the government for actions that are seen to attest to the incomplete secularisation of the state. An example of those critics is Riay Tatary, the Syrian-born President of the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain (UCIDE), who was open about his disagreement with the celebration of a Catholic mass for the victims of the Madrid Bombings. Converts, in particu-lar, however have been significantly outspoken on this debate. For example, Spanish intellectual and convert to Islam Abdennur Prado says:

I am referring to the public involvement of politicians in [Catholic] religious events while in office, the positive discriminatory state funding of the Catholic Church, and above all the state breaking with the legal agreements it signed with the Islamic com-mission. These elements put into question the state’s neutrality in religious matters,

34 Cabrera, Hashim. Párrafos de moro nuevo. (Almodóvar del Rio: Junta Islámica, Centro Documentacion y Publicaciones Islamicas, 2002).

35 Cabrera, Hashim. “El mito de la conversión al islam en la Andalucía contemporánea: una reflexión personal.” WebIslam, 11th October 2005, available online at: www.webislam.com/articulos/27970-el_mito_de_la_conversion_al_islam_en_la_andalucia_contemporanea_una_reflexion_pe.html, accessed 26 December 2012.

36 See for example, n.a. ‘Riay Tatary exije un funeral pluriconfesional,’ Alianza de Civilizaciones Blogspot, 22 August 2012, available at http://alianzacivilizaciones.blogspot.ch/2008/08/riay-tatary-exije-un-funeral.html, accessed 24 November 2012.


and we refer to a painful but undeniable social reality: the return of Islam to Spain generates resistance among broad sectors of the population.37

Again, the al-Andalus myth is evoked: Prado sees resistance to secularisation as a legacy of al-Andalus, apprehending it as the continuation of an ideological perspective on history which serves to legitimise the preservation of the Catho-lic character of the nation—note the use of the verb “to return”.

In a similar vein, WebIslam, one of the most visited internet sites dedicated to Islam in the Spanish language and created and managed by converts, has on various occasions posted articles discussing the incomplete secularisation of the state. For example, it raises the question of the legal vacuum that surrounds the state’s financial support of the Catholic Church, levels of which support far exceed any aid received by other religious communities.38 The outspoken political voices that Spanish converts to Islam that were once evinced are diminishing nowadays, particularly since the growth in Islamophobia after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. A younger generation of Spaniards attracted to Islam seems to be much less interested in politics than their predecessors.39 Nevertheless, there still are mature converts highly involved in the running and leadership of

37 Author’s translation of a talk entitled “Social Cohesion and the Return of Islam to Spain,” given by Abdennur Prado on 8 March 2007 at the Centre for Scientific Research (CSIC), Madrid. Prado, Abdennur. 2007. ‘Retorno del islam y cohesión social en España,’ available online at http://abdennurprado.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/, accessed 24 November 2012.

38 Examples of this type of article can be seen Tamayo, Juan Jose. “Estado laico, ¿misión imposible? No vamos por buen camino en la construcción del Estado laico,” El Pais, 31 December 2006, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/30533-estado_laico_mision_imposible.html and Bedoya, Juan. “La financiación de la Iglesia católica: el pacto carece de rango legal,” WebIslam, 9 January 2007, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/30593-la_financiacion_de_la_iglesia_catolica_el_pacto_carece_de_rango_legal.html, both accessed 24 November 2012. The left has always been at the forefront of those critical of the incomplete secularisation of church and state. It has been a long-standing complaint of the Communist Party and more recently of the centre-left Socialist Party. The latter has promised to finally abolish the financial “privileges” that the church still has in an attempt to regain some of the popularity it has lost during the economic crisis. A common criticism is that while Spaniards are subjected to restrictive economic measures, the financial privileges of the church have been left untouched. See Aduriz, Inigo. “El PSOE incorpora a su agenda el fin de los privilegios de la Iglesia,” Diario Publico, 27 May 2012, available at www.publico.es/espana/434621/el-psoe-incorpora-a-su-agenda-el-fin-de-los-privilegios-de-la-iglesia, accessed 24 November 2012.

39 This is a claim based on my own overall perception and attested only by the very limited number of youngsters that have been consulted for this study. Further research would be needed to reach a more definite conclusive statement.


most of Spain’s Muslim umbrella organisations.40 For example, although Web-Islam is critical of what it perceives as the non-secular character of the govern-ment, particularly when the right-wing Partido Popular is in power, some of the converts that I have spoken with during my research are careful not to appear as the authors of those articles. Some assert that because of the Islamophobic climate and the suspicion directed towards any convert for presumed involve-ment in terrorism since 9/11, anyone is welcome to know their views but they are no longer interested in being at the forefront of political debate in Spain. A generational shift is to be noted; younger converts seem less interested in getting involved in politics and tend to emphasise instead conversion con-nected to individual agency, understanding it as a matter of personal choice without collective, societal implications.

Despite such attempts for those more involved to become less visible, Anda-lusian converts are still frequently associated by the general public with the political left. This is not simply because some of their political objectives coin-cide with some left-wing objectives (such as the total separation of church and state, mentioned above), it is also because, since the 1980s, a significant part of the trends involving conversion to Islam in Andalusia seemingly developed alongside what was, at times, a very clear political agenda. The myth of al-Andalus has played a central role in the articulation of these political aims. For example, there have been Andalusian converts positioning themselves as defenders of the rights of jornaleros (the agricultural day labourers) in a region where historically—and still today—very few wealthy people own vast amounts of land. Converts may have adopted the Jornaleros cause follow-ing the ideas of the politician and convert to Islam Blas Infante, that saw in the Jornaleros those who best embody his vision of Andalusian identity and cause:

the Jornaleros are today’s Moriscos. They are the authentic Andalusians deprived of their land by the feudal conqueror. We do not want to be Europe only because we are not Europe only, despite the barbarian colonisation, we are Andalusia, and we have never ceased to be Andalusians, Euro-Africans, Euro-Orientals, Universalist men.41

40 For further analysis of the central role converts play in the leadership of Muslim communities in Spain see Arigita, Elena, “Representing Islam in Spain: Muslim Identities and the Contestation of Leadership,” The Muslim World, 96(4) (2006), pp. 563-584.

41 My own translation from an excerpt by Blas Infante contained in La Verdad Sobre el Complot de Tablada y el Estado libre de Andalucía, written in 1931 and available online at www.nacionandaluza .info/biblioteca%20andaluza/La+revoluci$C3$B3n+andaluza.pdf, accessed 15 March 2013.


The socially deprived peasant class of the jornaleros was, up to the 2000s, com-posed primarily of local Andalusians and a few Moroccans from the north of the Rif who used to cross the border illegally to get seasonal work. Due to the economic boom of the last decade, however, these labourers, sometimes working under extremely harsh conditions, are mostly foreigners. Economic prosperity had translated into better conditions for Andalusians and the aban-donment of agricultural labour by the local populace. Agriculture, though, has been one of the main industries in the region and the figure of the jornalero is still central in the imaginary of Andalusia’s identity. There are today converts that will defend the jornalero legacy and the rights of the jornaleros, portraying them as descendants of the Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus who were left with no lands by the Castilian conquerors. Ali Manzano, for example, states: “[We] embrace the Jornaleros’ cause, descendants of those Moriscos that the terrible Castilian conquest left without lands.”42

The term Morisco refers to those Muslims who did not leave during the expulsion but instead converted to Christianity in order to be able to stay. It seems that many of them lost their property to the conquerors, or their land was redistributed among people who were sent from other parts of the Penin-sula to repopulate areas which were now depleted. Though the Moriscos had converted to Christianity, the term Morisco is an indication of how they were suspected of remaining Muslims at heart. From the middle ages up until mod-ern times, it was used in Spanish popular parlance to refer to anyone whose devotion to the Catholic religion was deemed to be questionable. Such a per-son might be a secret adherent of Islam. It is generally accepted that a signifi-cant proportion of Moriscos finally left the Peninsula. Their descendants can be found in present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Libya, Egypt and Turkey. But some stayed. In the kingdom of Granada alone, it is estimated that about 10,000-15,000 people remained after the general expulsion of 1609. These figures, though, are the subject of intense historiographical debate.43

42 My own translation of Manzano, Ali. “Blas Infante y el Islam,” Identidad Andaluza, 5 May 2012 available at http://identidadandaluza.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/blas-infante-y-el-islam/, accessed 24 November 2012.

43 See for example the contributions to this debate of Casey, J. “Moriscos and the population of Valencia.” In Past and Present 50 (1971): pp.19–40; Clissold, Stephen. “The Expulsion of the Moriscos, 1609–1614.” History Today 28, no. 12 (1978): pp.817–824; Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio, and Bernard Vincent. Historia de los moriscos. Vida y tragedia de una minoría. (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1978); Epalza, Miguel de. Los moriscos antes y después de la expulsion. (Madrid: Mapfre, 1992).


There have also been some Muslim converts who developed a nostalgic lit-erature to do with the Morisco exile. A 2011 conference that gathered together Andalusian nationalists, converts to Islam and other members of the general public, was conducted in Frigiliana (Málaga) under the title The Exile of the Andalusian Soul.44 One of the talks attests to the melancholic quality that often characterises converts’ narratives regarding the Morisco diaspora:

[the Andalusian] is a soul hardened and purified by [the experience] of exile, by a dis-tance that is not only intellectual or ethical but existential and spiritual. This is a soul dispersed in many corners of the world [. . .] in the shores of the Mediterranean, in the Maghreb and the Mashrek, in European cities and in the American continent and also in the souls’ pleats of those who stayed up to the present [in the Iberian Peninsula].45

Some converts are involved in tracing the genealogical connections between North Africans and Andalusians. Through toponymy and studying dialectal variations in surnames, some of them have established connections with Mor-iscos in other Mediterranean countries, and this has nourished the Morisco “cause”—the sense of nostalgia and “the will to return to their homeland” of those with Morisco ancestry. In a text entitled Dreams of my Andalusian Grand-father, published in Spanish, Moumen, a young Moroccan, says:

While sitting by the seashore at Tangiers, with eyes full of pain and lament as he looked across the sea, and with a feeling of sadness, my grandfather Fennich told me about the tragedy of his Andalusian ancestors, about the hell they lived in, the torments and threats [they suffered] and their final expulsion from their homeland towards the unknown [. . .] he then uttered the hope that we may go back to our home as soon as possible [. . .] we must now achieve this dream.46

And in this attempt to return after four centuries of exile they have joined forces with Andalusians, some of whom espouse Andalusian nationalism, and converts to Islam, to call for citizenship for those considered to be descend-ants of the Moriscos. In October 2006, in fact, the Andalusian Parliament asked the three groups which form the parliamentary majority to support an

44 The Andalusian town of Frigiliana embarked in 2007 on a collaborative project with the Moroccan town of Chefchauen to “recover the historical links that connect the two countries” via cultural activities; the project appears to have been suspended recently due to lack of funding.

45 Cabrera, Hashim. “El exilio Andalusi,” paper given at the 2011 conference on Morisco exile celebrated in Frigiliana (Malaga).

46 See original text at Moumen, Niama. “El sueño de mi abuelo andalusí”, Almeria 24h, 26 December 2011, www.almeria24h.com/noticia.php?noticia=5880, accessed 23 November 2012.


amendment that would ease the way for descendants of Moriscos to gain Span-ish citizenship.47 This measure—which could affect as many as five million Moroccans as well as other people in neighbouring countries—is pending approval at the General Court and has not yet been made law. So we see that the Morisco narrative is often treated with a sense of nostalgia. The two themes which seem to be recurrently referred to by converts to Islam in Andalusia are, on the one hand, the Morisco diaspora and its longing to return, and on the other, the phenomenon of those Moriscos who converted to Christianity in order to be able to remain in Spain after the expulsion.48

A motif that is central to the search for local “rootedness” in the identity nar-ratives of converts is the theme of the crypto-Muslims. Various studies have looked into this, for example they have scrutinised literary works left by the crypto-Islamic (i.e. secret adherence to Islam while publicly professing to be of another faith) tradition in early modern Spanish history,49 but so far there has been little evidence to suggest a continuous trend of secret affiliation to Islam in Spain up to the present. There has been converts however, who have some-times used historical studies that refer to the persistence of a crypto-Muslim community in the seventeenth century to suggest a much longer-term Islamic presence. In an article by the Muslim Andalusian intellectual Molina (1998), that has circulated widely among converts, the writer asks himself “Did al-Andalus really disappear or are we still Moriscos?” After compiling the evidence provided by certain historical studies about the existence of a Morisco com-munity some decades after their expulsion in 1609 he concludes that though

47 See the event in the news at: n.a. ‘Un encuentro internacional sobre “Alianza de Civilizaciones” pide la nacionalidad española para los descendientes de los moriscos,’ available online at: www .libertaddigital.com/sociedad/un-encuentro-internacional-sobre-alianza-de-civilizaciones-pide-la-nacionalidad-espanola-para-los-descendientes-de-los-moriscos-1276292025/, accessed 26 Decem- ber 2012. More recently, Antonio Manuel, Professor of Law at the University of Cordoba and member of the Partido Andalucista, the most sizeable Andalusian Nationalist Party today has re-opened the debate by strongly arguing in favor of the acquiring of citizenship by Moriscos’ descendants in his book The Morisco vestige, the Al-Andalus that we carry within. See, Manuel, Antonio, La huella Morisca, el Al-Andalus que llevamos dentro (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2010).

48 See, for example, n.a. “Miles de moriscos se quedaron en España a pesar del exilio Los orígenes de la Andalucía Multicultural. Integración y rechazo de los moriscos,” WebIslam, 25th Novem- ber 2010, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/40453-miles_de_moriscos_se_quedaron_en_espana_a_pesar_del_exilio.html, accessed 23 October 2012.

49 See for example, Barletta, Vincent, Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern Spain (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).


“the ‘official’ version suggests that there are no more Moriscos in Spain, there are numerous accounts and realities that point to the contrary.”50

Cervantes, a Contested Emblem of Religious IdentityThe issue of the Moriscos even arose in one of the most important books of Spanish literature, Don Quixote (1605-1615), with the appearance of Ricote, a Morisco shopkeeper who is a friend of Sancho Panza.51 Cervantes’ masterpiece is often mentioned by some of those who have turned to Islam in their search for their Morisco “roots.”52 They sometimes claim that Cervantes, who as a sol-dier in the Spanish Navy was captured by Algerian corsairs in 1575, converted to Islam during his years in North Africa: “Cervantes, whose family was of Morisco origin, re-encountered Andalusian culture as a captive in Algiers, where he recognised himself as a Muslim and strengthened his relationship to Sufism” (Medina, 2005).53 The notion that embracing Islam was not the adoption of a “foreign” religious ethos, but a reunion with Cervantes’ actual past—his Morisco ancestry—should be noted.

However, it is not only converts who have used the figure of Cervantes to formulate notions of identity. On the contrary, he is frequently appropriated by the Spanish right and by popular discourses which aim to emphasise the Catholic fervour of the country. Perhaps the most conspicuous of Catholic

50 Translation by the author. See the original: Molina, Manuel. “Desaparecio Realmente Al-Andalus o somos aun Moriscos?” Islam Andaluz, 28 December 2011, available at http://islam-alandalus.blogspot.ch/2011/12/desaparecio-realmente-al-andalus-o.html; the article has recently been re-posted by the Organizacion Mundial del Pueblo Andaluz, see http://andalus.dbzworld .org/t534-topic, both accessed 23 October 2012.

51 For further analysis of the appearance of Muslim characters in Cervantes’ work, see Márquez Villanueva, Francisco, Moros, moriscos y turcos de Cervantes: ensayoscriticos (Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra, 2010).

52 See for example, Medina Molera, Abd al-Rahman. “Cervantes, el Quijote: frontera de identidad,” WebIslam, 6 September 2000, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/18512-cervantes_el_quijote_frontera_de_identidad.html, accessed 23 October 2012.

53 Medina’s book Cervantes y el Islam has been extensively read among Andalusian Muslims, and its publication was widely publicised on convert sites, see for example, n.a. “Antonio Medina: Cervantes se convirtió al Islam durante su cautiverio en Argel,” WebIslam, 9 December 2005, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/28175-antonio_medina_cervantes_se_convirtio_al_islam_ durante_su_cautiverio_en_argel.html, and Islamic Newsagency, “Cervantes y el Islam. El Quijote a cielo abierto,” WebIslam, 4 November 2005, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/28055-cervantes_y_el_islam_el_quijote_a_cielo_abierto.html, both accessed 23 October 2012. The reference of his book is Medina Molera, Antonio. 2005. Cervantes y el Islam: El Quijote a cielo abierto. (Barcelona: Ediciones carena, 2005).


Spain’s rituals are the Romerias. These are pilgrimages during which the figure of a saint is carried amongst the multitudes on a journey that ends in a sanctuary.54 The Romería celebrated annually in Andújar ( Jaén) in honour of la Virgen de la Cabeza and believed to be the oldest annual celebration of its kind, performed since the 13th century, is attended by more than 100,000 peo-ple. It is held to be emblematic of national culture and the role Trinitarians played in rescuing Catholics from the Moors constitutes a central aspect of the celebration. Regarding the issue of Cervantes, the pilgrimage organisers state on their website:

Historically, the Santísima Virgen de la Cabeza and the Order of the Trinitarians have been closely connected [. . .] Miguel de Cervantes de Saavedra was rescued from the dungeons of Algiers by the Trinitarian Father Juan Gil, and thereafter he [Cervantes] wrote the sweetest sonnets in honour of our Virgin.55

54 A wide array of folkloristic practices and religious rituals have their origins in the attempt to represent the supposed superiority of Christianity over the “Moorish” and defend the Catholic aspect of the Spanish identity. For example up to 2006, one of the most famous Spanish public celebrations was the “Annual Festival of Moors and Christians” in which Muslim figures were burned in effigy and a turbaned puppet called Mahoma (the Spanish name for the Prophet of Islam) was set ablaze with a cigar and made to explode. Although the most Islamophobic parts of these celebrations have been suspended for fear of “Muslim anger,” the costumed re-enactments of historical battles between Christians and Muslims are still held. Spain’s Muslim communities have repeatedly condemned these celebrations and argue that they go against the respect for religious minorities which is supposed to be guaranteed by law. It is worth noticing that the organisers, however, did never refer to the possibility of offending local Muslim communities, but instead invoked the threat of Islamic radicalism. The fears of retaliation from Muslim extremists, were set to follow the then recent cartoons’ controversy in Denmark, yet the linkage to the international arena rather than to the more immediate geographical context makes of this an illustrative case of how festivals of this kind play a significant symbolic role in shaping national identities in Spain, “in the codifying of certain historical narratives of identity, and the ways that Muslim immigrants are viewed and treated in the context of Southern Spain’s dominant regional identity narrative” (Rogozen-Soltar, 2007, 864). She has developed an interesting anthropological analysis of the festival, see, Rogozen-Soltar, Mikaela, “Al-Andalus in Andalusia: Negotiating Moorish History and Regional Identity in Southern Spain” (2007), pp. 863-886.

55 Translation by the author, see the original text at n.a. “Los Padres Trinitarios y el Real Santuario de la Virgen de la Cabeza,” Canal Romero, 29 July 2011, available at http://canalromero .blogspot.ch/2011/07/los-padres-trinitarios-y-el-real.html, accessed 23 October 2012. Another example of this kind can be found on the site of the Trinitarians themselves, in which their exemplary role in freeing Cervantes is also glorified: “Thanks to the intervention of the redeeming Trinitarians, Miguel de Cervantes, forefather of Spanish literature was rescued” see n.a “Quienes Somos. San Juan de Mata,” Trinitarios Provincia Espana Sur, available at www.trinitarios.net/quienes_somos/san_juan, accessed 23 October 2012.


Proponents of both the “Muslim Cervantes” and the “Catholic Cervantes” agree that Cervantes is a central icon of Spanish culture. The former stress the Islamic elements in the work of Cervantes and adduce his descriptions of Morisco culture as evidence of an allegiance to Islam, arguing that Spanish culture is intimately pervaded by Muslim connotations. The latter emphasise the heroic character of the Catholic Church in rescuing one of the forefathers of Spanish culture, and they underline the Catholic character of the work Cervantes produced after his years in captivity. Whereas the former never mention Cervantes’ later works, the latter never pay any attention to the centrality of the Morisco theme in El Quijote.

The assertion by some converts that Cervantes is an icon belonging to both Muslim and Spanish identities is a key element of the identity disputes, which are elaborated around the al-Andalus myth. Whereas those who support the Hispanidad narrative consider al-Andalus to be an Arab invasion, the potential effects of which on local culture were eradicated by the Reconquista, their opponents stress the Iberian character of medieval Andalusian culture:

Our ancestors were Andalusians, not Arabs! And they were socially and scientifically advanced. There were Trinitarians among them [. . .] but the majority of them were Unitarians [i.e. non-Trinitarian monotheists] Arian Christians and Jews but primarily Muslims.56

The nostalgic depiction of a glorious al-Andalus civilisation which contrasts with a somewhat caricatured portrayal of the war-torn, intolerant kingdoms of the north is a recurrent motif in these converts’ discourse:

A peaceful society that did not witness a war for almost a thousand years, a civilisation of poets, of lovers of culture and of the arts, an open community in constant struggle against tyranny with a persistent desire to establish social structures which are open to people of all religious and all philosophical, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, believers and atheists.57

56 Al-Andalusi, Ayiba. “El islam de nuestros abuelos,” WebIslam, 20th May 2011, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/61582-el_islam_de_nuestros_abuelos.html, accessed 27 December 2012.

57 See the original text at Cabrera, Hashim. “Exilio del alma andalusí,” WebIslam, 2 September 2011, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/62375-exilio_del_alma_andalusi.html, accessed 23 October 2012.


Andalusian Nationalism and Conversion to IslamThis romantic image of a culturally splendid al-Andalus which appears in some of the converts’ narratives contrasts with the perspective which is widely embraced by the defenders of National Catholicism, for whom al-Andalus rep-resents a “foreign” invasion, a society characterised by cultural backwardness and stagnation. This stance is frequently taken by people who are not necessar-ily on the political right. There are even those who recognise a positive aspect to the medieval Andalusian cultural legacy, yet nevertheless attribute a quality of ‘otherness’ to al-Andalus. Such perceptions often crop up in popular par-lance. O’Dowd (2012) has found evidence of this in the tourist booklets written by the government and distributed at historical sites in Andalusia.58 In these texts Islam in Spain is portrayed as a North African phenomenon, and on the basis of this, al-Andalus is depicted as a society that was not really Spanish in character, but African. In this regard Martos argues:

The singularity of al-Andalus, an Islamic society in European land, is uncomfortable for a country like Spain that prefers to see its roots placed in a Europe ethnically white and religiously Christian. That is why the mere existence of a historical Muslim Spain has been negated and minimised or the historical evidence distorted or ridiculed.59

The counter-narrative to the characterisation of al-Andalus as foreign and backward is one which emphasises its cultural glory and its local character. This constitutes an important strain in how Andalusians think about their identity, and it is even evidenced in Andalusia’s national hymn: “We the Anda-lusians want to go back to what we once were, men of light!” Converts are defi-nitely not the only ones that defend the autochthonous character of Andalusian culture but what seems to be distinctive of the converts’ approach is that by claiming to be direct descendants of Andalusian Muslims, they seem to imply that their embracing of Islam is simply a return to their historical origins, and not the adoption of an alien religiosity:

What we generally refer to as conversion is no such a thing. I have not converted to anything or to anybody. I have not ceased to be who I was to become someone else,

58 O’Dowd, Katherine, United in Diversity? A Discourse Analysis on the Selective Representation of the Islamic Past in Spanish and Portuguese Tourism, Unpublished MA Thesis in European Union Studies at the University of Illinois, 2012.

59 Martos Quesada, Juan, El mundo juridico en Al-Andalus (Las Rozas, Madrid: Delta Publicaciones Universitarias, 2005).


neither have I stopped being from here to become someone from somewhere else. This would be science fiction. On the contrary, in my gradual discovery of Islam I encounter ideas and visions that are an intrinsic part of my childhood and adolescence. Thus I have come to realise that many attitudes that survive today in our society are clearly Islamic.60

The linkage between Andalusian nationalism and Muslim identity is somehow complex. Whereas converts to Islam represent only a small minority within the political spectrum of Andalusian nationalism, Muslim identity has played a defining role in the shaping of Andalusian Nationalism. Thus, the connection between Andalusian nationalism and conversion to Islam is neither new, nor it did occur by chance. Andalusian nationalism is a political ideology that calls for the emancipation of “al-Andalus” (a region slightly bigger than today’s autonomous region of Andalusia) from the Spanish state.61 Claims for independence are based on an appeal to the cultural distinctiveness of the al-Andalus historical legacy, and, because of its Muslim character, the link between the Andalusian nation and Islam was originally deemed to be funda-mental. Although non-separatist, secularist ideologies have become the most widely followed within Andalusian Nationalism, some groups for which Islam is central to the definition of the nation still argue in favour of independence. Liberación Andaluza, for example, is a separatist political formation which defines itself as a secular entity despite the fact that the majority of its mem-bers are converts to Islam. Though the creation of an independent Andalusian state is the organisation’s final goal, interim objectives include the recognition of the Morisco diaspora and help for its members to gain Spanish citizenship.

60 This idea is somehow connected to Islam’s notion of din al-fitra, which refers to the assumption that Islam is a “natural” state of being human, and that turning to Islam is not really an act of conversion but a mere unveiling of one own true nature. The quote is the author’s translation; the original text can be visited at Cabrera, Hashim. “El mito de la conversión al islam en la Andalucía contemporánea: una reflexión personal,” Revista Ateneo Popular, 11 October 2005, available at www.webislam.com/articulos/27970-el_mito_de_la_conversion_al_islam_en_la_andalucia_contemporanea_una_reflexion_pe.html, accessed 23 October 2012.

61 The Spanish state has historically been noticeably ineffective in building a unitary nation. By the turn of the twentieth century, alternative projects of national belonging had emerged in the northern part of the Peninsula, resulting in two nationalist movements, the Catalan and the Basque that at times have adopted separatist leanings. Andalusia, a southern region of the country, however, had never been a remarkable part of these separatist trends; Andalusian nationalism is a latter phenomenon with a quite limited following, especially if looked in comparison to the Basque or the Catalan cases, which count with a more noticeable historical trajectory and wider popular support. A good introduction into that matter is Keating, Michael. “The minority nations of Spain and European integration: A new framework for autonomy?” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 1 (1) (2000), pp. 29-42.


Equally important is the goal of establishing Arabic as one of the national lan-guages of Andalusia. Liberacion Andaluza guarantees that it is not an Islamist party by virtue of the fact that it does not aspire to build an Islamic state. Never-theless members of this formation frequently cite a connection between their nationalism and Islam.62

Ali Kettani,63 the founder of the Yama’a Islámica de Al-Andalus (the Islamic Society of Andalusia, an umbrella organisation of Muslim communities in Andalusia) and one of the most relevant voices of Andalusian Nationalism, explains his way of understanding Andalusian national identity as closely related to his Muslim identity: “I see Andalusian nationalism as a shared his-torical and cultural experience, and first and foremost as an experience of Islam.”64 The Muslim Andalusian nationalist cause is important to a plethora of small political groups, such as Liberacion Andaluza, and cultural organisations, such as Foro Aben Humeya,65 the aim of the latter being to promote a revisiting of the history of al-Andalus and the “diffusion of a reinterpretation of Andalusia’s Islamic past.” The relationship between national identity and religion is not new though, it was there from the very beginning.

Blas Infante Pérez de Vargas (1885-1936), the father of Andalusian national-ism, was himself a convert to Islam and had no hesitation in calling upon the glories of al-Andalus to legitimise his political position—he even built his own house at Coria del Río (Sevilla) in a style that emulated the architecture of

62 The official website of the party can be accessed at: http://liberacionandaluza.blogcindario.com, accessed 11 March 2013.

63 Professor Ali Kettani was an engineer born in Fez who claimed to be descendant from his mother’s line of Moriscos that settled in Morocco after the expulsion. He was very active in promoting the creation of Islamic centres in various Andalusian cities and was one of the most important intellectual voices of Andalusian Nationalism. He was the author of among other titles The Rebirth of Islam in Al-Andalus (published by the Islamic University of Pakistan in Arabic). He was also the founder of the first Islamic University in Europe, the Averroes Islamic University of Cordoba, which may be seen as indicative of his religious activism and gives us a general glimpse of his agenda to work towards the spread of Islam in the region. He passed away in 2001. The two groups, Yama’a Islámica de Al-Andalus and Liberación Andaluza were originally one but officially separated in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, Liberación Andaluza publicly admits that most of its members are Muslims and share website with the Foro Aben Humeya, a group mainly made up of converts. These liaisons are indicative of the significance Islam plays in shaping the identity of Liberación Andaluza.

64 Cited by Escudero and translated by myself in: Escudero, Mansur Abdussalam. “Pervivencia de la sensibilidad musulmana en la Andalucía del S. XXI,” WebIslam, 20th July 2006, available at www.webislam.com/?idt=5326, accessed 23 October 2012.

65 See their website, Foro Aben Humeya Memoria e identidad de Andalucia, available at http://foroabenhumeya.blogcindario.com/, accessed 23 October 2012.


al-Andalus. In his works, al-Andalus is portrayed as a period of freedom and cultural excellence (“the only lamp turned on in the night of Medieval Europe”) and he was not slow to contrast the perceived glories of the past with the mis-eries of the Andalusia he knew: “Andalusia was then free, today it is enslaved.” Infante was a man of vision, with a clear overall sense of the discourse sur-rounding Andalusia, particularly in its historiographical aspects: “The history of Peninsular Islam has been largely neglected for a long time by professional histo-rians; this may well be the result of the survival in Spanish Modern Nationalism of the old idea of Reconquista, which tended to consider the Islamic presence in the Peninsula as an accident with no acquired rights [to exist] on its own.”66 His political thought is highly influenced by Federalist and Republican ideas—main oppositional trends to those featured in Francoism, which had over-thrown the democratically elected government of the Spanish Republic and replaced it with a centralist dictatorship that would last almost forty years. Blas Infante was assassinated by Francoist troops in 1936.67

Andalusian Nationalism has dramatically transformed since then, it is most widely followed in its secular and non-separatist versions and has for long been part of the Parliamentary life of the country with representatives both at regional and national levels. Parties such as the Partido Andalucista trace back their origins to the thought of Blas Infante, and are supported by Andalusians prone to emphasise the Muslim heritage of the region. But Islamic identity is neither claimed by a significant part of its followers, nor do they place Islam as central to their political narratives and agendas. Parties that do, like Liberación Andaluza subsist, but do represent the views of a minority. The claims for rec-ognition of a Muslim heritage in the region have nonetheless prevailed and long been called upon by most nationalists.

Andalusia did not gain any public acknowledgement of its singularity until the advent of democracy. Certain cultural phenomena which are often claimed by Andalusian nationalists to derive from their Islamic heritage, such as

66 He was part of a larger trend of historiographical revisioning. For further information on this matter see Monroe, James. Islam and the Arabs in Spanish scholarship, sixteenth century to the present.

The quote is my present translation; cited by Manzano, Ali. “Blas Infante y el Islam,” Musulmanes Andaluces, n.d. available at www.musulmanesandaluces.org/hemeroteca/85/Blas%20Infante%20y%20el%20Islam.htm, accessed 23 October 2012.

67 On Blas Infante’s life and Works see Ortiz de Lanzagorta, José Luis. Blas Infante: vida y muerte de un hombre andaluz. (Sevilla: Edición Fernández-Narbona, 1979).


Flamenco music,68 have been re-appropriated by the state with the claim that they are a distinctive aspect of the character of Catholic Spain. Views such as this are still widely held in the country today. As for conversion to Islam in the south of Spain, Andalusia evinces high rates, whilst also serving as a locus of attraction for converts from other parts of the world. The appeal of the al-Andalus myth lies in its ability to evoke deep feelings in those who are searching for a quintessential, romantic ideal of social tolerance and religious spirituality.69 The elevated rates of conversion in Andalusia are frequently in the news and are sometimes the subject of documentaries. The al-Andalus myth has even been fostered in Muslim countries, where nostalgic narratives similar to those examined in this paper are frequently used for proselytising purposes, or simply as a way of illustrating the veracity of the message of Islam.70

ConclusionsBy tracing the origins and development of representations of al-Andalus—what we have termed ‘the al-Andalus myth’—this article reveals the fluid nature of regional, national, and even continental borders. Rather than being comprehended as fixed, non-permeable boundaries, borders instead need to be seen as relatively wide areas of cultural exchange. The article has provided examples of how in modern times the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean have witnessed more interaction than is commonly recog-nised—for example, the involvement of Moroccans in the Civil War, the gen-esis and shaping of Andalusian nationalism, the conversion to Islam of its founding father, the nostalgic appeal of the Moroccan Morisco diaspora and its longing to return to al-Andalus, and so forth. The narratives of some Andalu-sian converts, and, moreover, Hispanidad discourses and popular ritualised expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment, may be better understood as part of this living cultural exchange rather than being viewed as the mere culmination of historical processes. The ideological battle concerning the portrayal of

68 See for example, www.balansiya.com/musica.htm, www.webislam.com/articulos/60618-el_legado_morisco_mas_importante_es_el_flamenco.html, both accessed 23 October 2012.

69 Tarres Chamorro, Sol. “La religiosidad de los inmigrantes magrebíes en Andalucía,” in Antropologicas, 10 (2008), pp. 163-191.

70 See for example the approach of the Iranian Press at http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/162817 .html, accessed 23 October 2012.


al-Andalus and how it is to be incorporated into notions of collective belong-ing, constitute a challenge to the view of borders as self-evident frontiers of national identity.

The article has argued that some trends of conversion to Islam in a singular context which references the al-Andalus myth and the Morisco diaspora can be viewed as a symbolic act that bestows a unique sense of embeddedness in the new identity. Despite their appeals to a particular understanding of the past though, this article contends that present-day discourses cannot be com-prehended unless they are also recognised as eminently modern phenomena that arise out of the societal dynamics of contemporary Spain. The narratives of these converts can be viewed as critiques of particular notions of the nation-state, and of top-down state ideologies which tend to give rise to cultural and religious homogenisation. They do not represent the entire spectrum of ideo-logical stances adopted by Andalusian converts, yet they are illustrative of con-version being a dialogical process between an individual and a society, in which the act of consciously embracing a religion has the aspect of a counter-argument, a reaction to discourses or ideologies of belonging which the con-vert feels unwilling to accept. In this regard the article challenges the view that religious conversion can be explicated solely in terms of individual choice and tries to understand it as also occurring within a dynamic web of social and societal relationships.

From our analysis it is apparent that some of the trends of conversion to Islam are strongly related to the emergence of a discourse on national identity centred on the idea of Hispanidad, an identity project perceived by many as impeding the expression of fundamental aspects of local culture and often associated with political totalitarianism and the cultural suppression of Francoist times. Intricately woven with motifs deriving from political and per-sonal experience, conversion narratives need to be understood as socially sym-bolic acts. The subject of al-Andalus illustrates how representations of the historical past may play a significant role in the way in which individuals think about themselves and about the nation, and it reminds us to not underesti-mate the part that religion plays in the construction of national identities in Europe today.

Overall, the article discusses an illustrative case on how tensions between conflicting narratives on national identity as they occur in Europe are inti-mately linked to particular social and cultural phenomena. We are well aware of the fact that issues related to migration inform the on-going debate on whether Muslims shall be included or excluded from the ways in which


Europeaness is conceptualised. However, little is known about other factors that have contributed to the inclusion/exclusion debate. Thus, the article is a good example to demonstrate that Islam and its contested position as an inner/outer actor has been pivotal in the construction of European identities, and the case of Andalusia is remarkably telling in this regard.

The Islam of “Our” Ancestors: An “Imagined” Morisco Past Evoked in Today’s Andalusian...

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