With Islamic State threat, Moorish past haunts Spain

The mosque in Cordoba, in southern Spain was an Islamic cultural centre in the middle ages. A 1600s Catholic cathedral now occupies the centre of the mosque. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

The rhetoric could hardly be more menacing. “Spain is the land of our forefathers, and we are going to take it back with the power of Allah,” it declares.

Since the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, it adds, “Spain has done everything to ­destroy the Koran ... Spain is a criminal state that usurps our land.” It goes on to claim Muslims have been “burned alive” in the Iberian nation and demands that faithful jihadists should set out to kill Spanish “infidels” by “reconnoitring airline and train routes for attacks” and “poisoning food and water with insecticides”.

The source for this demented diatribe is of course Islamic State. Thankfully, there is most of the time a great gap between what the evil Islamist terrorist organisation’s monstrous propaganda machine churns out and what it actually succeeds in doing.

But, after the appalling attack carried out by Islamic State militants on Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas, it puts into context why Spain is now emerging, ahead of virtually any other European nation, as the focus for an intensified jihadist onslaught as the terrorists, having lost Mosul and facing ­defeat in Raqqa, seek to show they are an undiminished threat.

“We will recover al-Andalus, Allah willing,” a recent Islamic State video in Spanish (one of many recently produced in the language) boasts. “Al-Andalus” is the Arabic name given to those parts of Spain, Portugal and France that formed the caliphate established and governed by the conquering Muslim Moors ­between 711 and 1492.

It would be easy to dismiss such mindless blather. And, indeed, it is to the credit of successive Spanish governments since the immediate post 9/11 period that, apart from the massive al-Qa’ida attack that devastated the Madrid rail system in 2004, killing 192 people and leaving hundreds more injured, Spain has been mostly free from the sort of persistent Islamist terrorism that has targeted France, Belgium and Britain.

Cannily, while much of the rest of Europe, led by Germany — initially, at least — rolled out the red carpet for refugees arriving from Syria and North Africa, Spain has, until now, been deliberately far more circumspect and determined to hold the line. When the original flood of 1.26 million mainly Syrian refugees made their way across the Mediterranean in 2016, and countries across Europe were being asked to absorb them, Spain ended up with only 1.3 per cent of the total.

This was in line with a trend dating back to Madrid’s accession to membership of the EU in 1985 which has seen the inflow of ­migrants arriving in the country come mainly from the Catholic countries of Latin America and Europe. As the Elcano Royal Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Madrid has noted, Muslim immigration — and integration — in Spain is “not assured”.

The carnage after a train bombing in Madrid in 2004 that killed 192 people.

Officials may deny it, but well-placed sources familiar with government processes in Madrid indicate that successive governments have deliberately sought to discriminate in favour of migrants from Catholic countries rather than Muslim states.

This makes sense in an Catholic country. But Elcano has also reported “Muslim immigrants in Spain continue to encounter obstacles to the practice of their religion on a range of fronts, including the building of mosques and the practice of burials”.

Spain, like other countries across Europe, is facing increasing levels of radicalisation among its 1.6 million Muslims. This is frequently spurred on — as was seen in the Barcelona outrage — by the insidious activities of radical imams operating in small, isolated communities as well as by Spanish jihadists returning from the so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq determined, it seems, to avenge the defeat of the Moors and re-­establish al-Andalus, wacky though that looks as a concept.

In recent years, Spanish authorities have arrested hundreds of suspected Islamist radicals and there seems little doubt that the ­jihadists are likely to confront a fierce response to their actions from Spain’s security forces. The rapid and deadly reaction by police to the Barcelona attack showed the exceptional competence of the Spanish security forces, which are highly rated throughout Europe.

They have a long history of confronting terrorism dating back to the 1960s when Spain was faced with attacks by the ruthless ETA Basque separatist movement. For almost 50 years, from 1961 to 2011, Spanish security authorities dealt with almost 3500 ETA terrorist ­attacks that claimed more than 800 lives and left 3300 people wounded. The one on Christmas Eve, 1973, on which I reported at the time as an Iberia-based correspondent — the spectacular blowing up of the car carrying then Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco in the heart of Madrid — was a political assassination that shocked the world and raised serious questions about Spain’s ability to deal with terrorism.

The protracted but ultimately highly successful battle against ETA, however, provided Spanish security forces with invaluable ­experience that they have successfully used since the 2004 Madrid train bombing to keep a tight rein on the development of Islamist terrorism (ETA gave up the fight in the face of insurmountable ­security force pressure on the terrorists in 2011).

Despite this success and prolonged absence of any significant Islamist terrorism in Spain before the Barcelona attack, Islamic State’s overheated propaganda increasingly shows that the Iberian nation has remained firmly in the jihadist crosshairs. After 9/11, then conservative prime minister Jose Maria Aznar boosted Spain’s international standing by strongly supporting George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. He provided both diplomatic and strategic support for the operation and a photograph of him standing shoulder to shoulder with George Bush and Tony Blair in the Azores in March 2003 is said to have infuriated Osama bin Laden.

Aznar did well to support the fight against terrorism: it subsequently emerged that Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first aircraft that struck the World Trade Centre on 9/11, was in Cambrils, the town linked to the Barcelona ­attack, shortly before 9/11.

After the 2004 bombing of the Madrid railway system, bin Laden declared the attack to be “only part of the settlement of old scores with the Crusader Spain”.

Spain’s participation, too, in the US-led coalition fighting Islamist terrorism in both Afghanistan, post 9/11, and Iraq has enraged ­Islamist leaders. So has its membership of NATO.

Recently, the Spanish government has adopted a less activist role in the Middle East, refusing to join coalition airstrikes in Syria. But the Madrid government remains strongly supportive of its allies so the jihadists continue to see it as a major target for terrorism.

But it is the historical imperative generated by Spain’s Moorish Muslim past and the determination to re-establish the Al-­Andalus caliphate that is now spurring the growth of Islamist radicalism as more Islamic refugees flood into the country after Madrid’s years of maintaining some of the best border security in Europe. Close to 16,000 people from North Africa and Syria ­officially crossed into Spain last year, twice the number that ­arrived in 2015. While official figures show that fewer than half those have been successful in their applications for asylum, the belief is that far more arrived in the country ­illegally, especially from Morocco.

Until recently, Spain was ­regarded as having some of the lowest rates of Islamist radicalisation seen anywhere in Europe, with the Elcano Royal Institute of Strategic and International Studies reporting that “Islamic radicalisation among Arab immigrants is low in Spain compared to what has been observed in Belgium, the UK, France and Germany”.

Barcelona has, however, gone a long way towards upending ­assessments that all is well and untroubled with Spain’s Islamic community, with clear evidence emerging of links to migrant source communities in North ­Africa and indications of how first and second generation Muslims living in Spain have fallen easy prey to the wiles of extremist Salafist imams doing the evil work of Islamic State terrorism.

The CIA has shown increasing signs of concern about the growth of radicalism, reportedly warning Spanish authorities two months before the attack that the city was emerging as a potential target, even highlighting Las Ramblas as the most likely location for a deadly vehicular assault.

Given the torrent of incendiary Islamic State propaganda in Spanish (some security assessments are that in the space of only a few months Islamic State has issued no fewer than 26 new propaganda videos in Spanish — more than for any other country), with its menacing calls for “the recovery of ­al-Andalus”, this is hardly surprising. There is no doubt that, as the Spanish terrorism analyst Florentino Portero has said, “Islamic State is answering military defeats (in the Middle East) with more terror (in Spain)”.

Long-festering issues like the way, in predominantly Catholic Spain, ancient mosques have been converted into cathedrals — most notably the magnificent “mosque-cathedral” in the ancient city of Cordoba, Europe’s most important Islamic heritage site — have come to the fore as a major aspect of Islamic State’s drive to stir up Muslim sentiment and seek the (unlikely) reinstatement of the city as the historic city as the centrepoint of a new Islamic caliphate.

Other mosques of the Moorish caliphate, too, have been converted into cathedrals and churches and are now part of the Islamic State push to highlight what it sees as the evil perpetrated by the infidel “Crusaders” against Islam.

“We will recover al-Andalus, Allah willing,” Islamic State has declared. “Oh, dear Andalus! You thought we forgot about you. I swear by Allah we have never forgotten you. No Muslim can forget Cordoba, Toledo or Xativa. There are many faithful Muslims who swear they will return to al-Andalus ... Spain is the land of our fore­fathers and we are going to take it back with the power of Allah.”

Tony Blair, George W. Bush and Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar stand in unity in 2003.

According to the New York-based Gatestone Institute, a recent Islamic State document includes a list of grievances against Spain for alleged wrongs done against Muslims since the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 when the Christian forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile routed the Almohad Muslim rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. More than 100,000 Muslims were killed in the battle, a key victory in the Catholic Monarchs’ Reconquista of Spain.

This is the currency of Islamic State’s madness. It would be hard to overstate the potential impact of such propaganda on minds corrupted and inflamed by the insidious subversion of imams hellbent on seeing the restoration of al-­Andalus.

Evidence that has emerged following the Barcelona attack has shown the nature and extent of the mass destruction that had been sought by its evil instigators.

As horrifying as the mowing down of innocent men, women and children in the name of Islam on Las Ramblas was intended to be, evidence that has emerged of a major bomb factory in the nearby seaside town of Alcanar and the intention to cause mass casualties, including the destruction of major Barcelona monuments and buildings like Antoni Gaudi’s magnificent La Sagrada Familia, under construction since 1882, showed the extent of the intended evil.

Former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, who did so much when in office between 1996 and 2004 to combat terrorism and ­ensure Spain’s security, got it right in our pages earlier this week when he spoke out against “appeasement” with terrorism and forcefully litigated the argument that “for us not to be defeated, we must ­actually defeat them”.

“We must be conscious of the threat and we must seek to truly quash that threat in all its aspects,” Aznar argued in calling for “all the instruments of the state based on the rule of law that exists (or creating those that do not exist) to ­effectively and irremediably ­defeat the terrorists operatively and ideologically, while also activating all political and civil forces and all diplomatic, technological and even military resources if ­required.”

Spain is far from alone in the terrorist challenge it faces. But its historical past and the extremists’ belief that they can somehow restore the former al-Andalus caliphate to its glory in Cordoba — and in so doing defeat the “Crusaders” — presents it with a challenge, the importance of which to the global war against Islamic ­extremism cannot be overstated.

No other country in Europe presents a similar historical background, and none is more likely to be more purposefully targeted by the insidious evil of the Islamist extremists. All the experience and hard lessons gained in the extraordinarily tough years of fighting the ETA terrorists is going to be put to the test. So, too, most crucially, is the country’s success in maintaining strict border controls on migration and the flow of refugees from jumping-off points, particularly in North Africa’s Sahel region, that are known to fester with Islamist militancy.

On the face of it, the notion so fiercely espoused by Islamic State — “We will recover al-Andalus” — looks crazy. But the trouble is that the mad men who perpetrated the unutterable evil wrought in Barcelona, and the scheming radical Salafist imams who sent them on their way, believe it, and will undoubtedly — through their manipulation of those they convince — cause many more innocent casualties in pursuit of that goal.

Spain has an extraordinarily tough fight on its hands to rein in the madmen. The world must do what it can to help because it is a fight that matters greatly to us all.