The Moslems of Granada, L.A. Times-style

In a story about Moslems in Spain, the Los Angeles Times provides this concise description of liberalism (a.k.a. Western suicide) in action:

Spain today, like most of Europe, is struggling with ways to accommodate its fast-growing Muslim community while keeping tabs on those who might turn to radical violence.

How perfect. The Spanish dutifully “struggle” to welcome, assimilate, and absorb the unappeasable Other, while “keeping tabs on”—not excluding, just taking note of—the “minority” within the population of the unappeasable Other who might actually be violent. How exquisite we must be about these distinctions.

The article focuses on Granada in southern Spain where, near the 700-year-old Alhambra mosque, a huge new mosque financed by Morocco and the United Arab Emirates was completed last year. After many evocations of the “richness” (that favorite relativist buzzword) of Moslem culture, the “glories” and “splendors” of Islamic history (don’t journalists get tired of these clichés? I withdraw the question), the desire of “moderate” Moslems to be accepted in Spain, and their concern that they are being unfairly tarred as jihadists, the reporter finally tells us, in the 43rd paragraph of a 45-paragraph story:

It is not clear, however, that the group behind the mosque, followers of the Murabitun movement, shares that moderate sentiment. The president of the mosque foundation, Malik Ruiz, calls himself the Emir of Spain and has said Granada will return to its “natural origin”—Islam—after a 500-year interruption.

The reporter rapidly turns back from this outburst of politically incorrect truth to the reassuring “moderates,” who, with their claims of Spain’s “debt” to “recognize” Spain’s former Muslim hegemony, don’t seem so reassuring after all. Here’s how the article ends:

Mosque supporters say they are not attempting to launch the reconquest of Al Andalus but want to show that Islam is not an alien faith.

“This country,” Jairudin said, “has a debt to its Muslims: to recognize history.”

In fact, the Times gave its game away with the title and subtitle of the article:

Islam’s Claim on Spain

In Granada, once the center of a rich Muslim culture, adherents are trying to reassert their historic role amid a climate of suspicion.

Now let’s get this straight. Moslems’ historic role in Spain was that they had a sovereign Moslem state in Granada from the early 8th century until 1492. So, if that’s what the Moslems are trying to “reassert,” don’t the Spanish have a right to be suspicious of that, indeed to oppose it with all the force at their command? No, of course not! What a silly question. It’s the Moslems’ role to demand recognition of their historic rule in Spain, and Westerners’ role to accept, step by step, their new (or rather their renewed) status as dhimmis.

[“Islam’s Claim on Spain,” Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, January 18, 2005.]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2005 02:03 AM | Send