Interview with the Seville Mosque Foundation, Islamie.es

Abdelmalik Mohammed
Islamie.es

There is a maxim that says that where there is chaos, there is order not far away, that is, where there is disorder, there is its opposite.

Within this chaotic universe of federations and associations that exist within the Muslim community in Spain, there are entities that live based on rules and other social foundations, providing useful elements and services to their community and to society in general.

One such case is the Seville Mosque Foundation. An organization that deserves the distinction of a serious, credible and reliable entity. An entity that works by and for the Muslims of Seville and for the society of Seville in general. Its constant effort to build bridges between the different currents, both in thought and in society, gives it a seal of sufficient quality and on its own merits.

The Seville Mosque Foundation was created in 2005 as a legal tool to represent the Muslims of Seville and for the construction of the Mosque and Cultural Center.

Over the years, the Foundation has had different centers in the city. The most representative is the one located in Plaza Ponce de León, in the heart of Seville, which has been open and full of activity for more than 15 years.

The Muslim community in Seville began in the 1970s, when the first Spaniards became Muslims. Since then, it has grown exponentially into one of the largest and most stable Muslim communities in Spain. It is one of the few that can boast of having 4 generations of native Spanish Muslims in their families. Today there are more than 30,000 Muslims in Seville.

Islami.es has interviewed Ibrahim Hernandez, head of the Seville Mosque Foundation.

Ibrahim Hernandez’s intelligence, his great human qualities, his cultural and religious perception and his great capacity for management and administrative management should be highlighted. Also his courage and ability to come out unscathed from difficult and uncomfortable questions. To respond is to participate and strengthen the bonds of understanding and tolerance.

From islami.es we would like to thank the Seville Mosque Foundation for their treatment and attention, as well as to take this opportunity to greet all the members of its Board of Trustees and all the Muslims who use its facilities for the serene practice of their faith.

Interview I Ibrahim Hernández, Seville Mosque Foundation

Question. – Thirty years have passed since the signing of the 1992 Cooperation Agreement, what is your assessment of it and to what extent is it still a valid legal framework for its further development?

Response. – The 1992 Agreement with the State is based on article 16 of the 1978 Constitution, and on the law of religious freedom and worship of July 1980. It was drafted without experience on the real relations and needs of the Muslim community, and based on the principles that governed the concordat Church-State, as the only confession, which was in force in Spain for 40 years.

Any progress made in this regard is both positive and insufficient. I believe that it was a very important advance for its time but that after 30 years it should be open to re-evaluation. And above all to be implemented.

Q.- The Muslim population in Spain is around 2,500,000. Likewise, there are more than 1,800 Muslim religious entities registered, which, translated into numbers, amounts to approximately 1,350 followers per entity. In all this, and taking into account that all excess is irrelevant, Is it necessary to have so many? Is it a necessity or is it a simple uncontained eagerness?

A.- There are two facts that we cannot forget, religious freedom and freedom of association. Yes, we should give a common legal framework, but we cannot eliminate the singularity on which the different entities that are constituted can be based. And the purposes to which they want to dedicate themselves. We cannot go to an Islamic church.

I would like to think that, with the growth of the Muslim population and the opening of mosques, it is normal for more entities to be created; if there are too many or not, it is up to the relevant authorities to decide.

Q.- You have a different perspective that can help a lot in establishing guidelines to know the real situation of the Muslim community in Spain, what is your perception on this issue?

A.- I would love that the Muslim community could be identified, known and recognized not only through their religious actions and institutions, but also through their social, cultural, political, economic, educational actions and institutions…

Q.- Your Foundation is a member of the Islamic Commission of Spain, CIE, by statute,what is the degree of collaboration you maintain?

A.- The case of our Foundation is a particular case. Because of its history and constitutive form. The Seville Mosque Foundation is not a religious entity, but a cultural foundation. The Islamic Community in Spain, founder of the Seville Mosque Foundation, is a statutory member of the CIE, therefore, under the legal protection of the agreements with the State.

When it was registered was by express mandate of the General Direction of Religious Entities, of the Ministry of Justice, because given the bicephaly of the Commission, and the lack of agreement between FEERI and UCIDE to issue the certificate to this community, and given that it was a historical community, one of the first constituted in Spanish territory, and the weight of their actions and relationships, we were registered, so that we could be under the umbrella of the agreements with the State, with voice, but without vote, since we did not belong to any federation.

Q.- You define yourselves as European Muslims who believe in a model of Islam as a developer of civilizations, dynamic and alive, as opposed to the strict religious framework that is being imposed in certain environments. Can you explain to us what all this means and to which religious spheres you refer?

A.- When we talk about Europe we are not talking about the economic and political European Union. We are talking about the Europe of the Euro. We are talking about a cultural tradition whose highest civilizing values touch with values promoted from Islam. And beyond, a Europe that is transformed since the Renaissance, by cultural, scientific and philosophical contributions induced from the knowledge that the great sages and thinkers, very specifically from Al Andalus, had transmitted from the Islamic West.

But even further, we believe that the younger generation should be educated to contribute the best of themselves to the society in which they live. From all fields; medicine, engineering, physics and chemistry, thought and philosophy, literature, sports and those areas where our historical society is rising. Including politics where honesty and ethics are necessary for the development of the common good. And above all to establish truth at the core of human and therefore socio-political relationships.

As for the Din (religion) of Islam, we have to establish a way of life that is proper to us, deepening our economic, organizational, knowledge and education, environmental and social relations that allow us to be closer and closer to the generation of an open and dynamic human being, without abandoning the belief and the way of understanding the world that has given so much light to humanity in its most flourishing moments.

Q.- Do you consider the Islamic religious discourse in Spain to be permeable ? to the influences of foreign countries? Do you have agreements in place with entities in other countries? ?

A.- I believe that it is, or has been inevitable, and that to the extent that a local and independent Islam is established and accepted, there should be less permeability and influence from other countries. This does not mean that there should not be close collaboration with different countries and that this can be enriching at all levels.

The Seville Mosque Foundation has close relationships and agreements with entities in several Muslim-majority countries around the world, such as Malaysia, Turkey, Indonesia, UAE, Morocco, etc.

Q.- Marriage is an agreement between spouses in which both spouses commit themselves to live together according to the norms that emanate from the Koran and the Sunna. Your Foundation participates in it by celebrating marriages, however, they warn the contracting parties that the document they issue lacks legal validity and has no civil effects, what exactly do they do, why do they do it and to what extent is it admissible for a couple to live on the basis of a document that already anticipates its contraposition to the legal order established in Spain?

A.- The first point is that we are not contravening the legal order of the Spanish State.

Marriage, as it is well said, is based on the will of two people to live together and create a family if they wish to do so. From here, the State recognizes different ways of expressing this legal fact. Among them the civil marriage, or the domestic partnership, as well as the constitution of family units through the family book where the children can be registered, generally given to the mother, with or without recognition by the parent, etc.

It should also be known that our community has internally made these contracts since before the signing of the agreements with the State and in order to make it permissible before Allah, the desire of these people to live together and to inform the Muslim community that a new nucleus had been constituted by the contracting persons.

We warn that the contract has no legal value precisely because we recognize the Spanish legal legality. But it does have value as a rite, and it is recognized in the courts, avoiding the civil rite when it comes to accessing a family book.

In fact, we study that there is no documentary incompatibility, on the part of the couple, so that the contract established by law can be processed in the civil registry. And this is what we advise. Although the couple can freely opt for another legal formula admitted by the legality in force.

Q.- Let me continue with this matter of marriages…. Do they have any structure that regulates family law? How do they resolve the differences between spouses who are not on good terms, especially when there is aggravation, and how do they proceed when there is a request for divorce by one of the parties? Who or who decides and resolves these matters?

A.- We do not have any structure that regulates family law, what we do have is a human team with experience, training and very good will and willingness to help, together with the families, to try to solve any problem that may arise within the marriage, to the extent of our possibilities. In the cases in which our mediation is not accepted by any of the parties or does not give positive results, people would go, as it could not be otherwise, to the ordinary justice.

Q.- On your website you exclude Moroccan citizens from possible marriages, referring them to your consulates… What is the reason for this exception?

A.- At the express request of the General Consulate of the Kingdom of Morocco in Seville, in the event that both parties are of Moroccan nationality, given that the consulate already provides this service with an “Adul” (public notary).

Q.- In the Personal Income Tax (IRPF) there is a box to allocate 0.7% of our taxes to social interest purposes and/or to the Catholic Church . What is your opinion about having a similar box so that the support of the Islamic communities would depend exclusively on the contributions of their faithful?

A.- I think it would be good to have this option. Although I do not think that the support of the Muslim communities should depend exclusively on the contributions of their faithful through this box. There are financing formulas in our din, such as the awqaf, for which we should work, study and establish. And I do not believe that the generosity of the people should be limited or structuralized either.

Q.- Many young people and adolescents of Muslim descent dilute the religious beliefs of their parents with the secularist tendency of today’s society, validating that “religiosity is lived in the private space”. Is secularism gaining ground to the detriment of the social and communitarian character of religious expression?

A.- It may be born of a mistaken understanding of the nature of the din, understood as a religion that exclusively affects acts of worship, in private, and not as a complete din, which affects, or should affect, all aspects of our life. And as you say, this is undoubtedly detrimental to the social and communal nature of the reality of our Din.

Q.- In Spain, unlike other countries, especially Anglo-Saxon countries, there are no moderate and intelligent secular movements that seek to harmonize the existence and coexistence of people, believers and non-believers, agnostics and others. Are these types of organizations necessary, among other things, to curb the uncontrolled impetus of religions?

A.- It would be important that in the same way that recently much emphasis is being placed on interreligious dialogue, this should also be done with secular representatives, for the sake of mutual knowledge and coexistence. The uncontrolled and forced impetus of secularization today seems to me more worrisome. I understand that the balance is complicated. I believe that there should be space for vital expression for all.

Q.- The Islamic Cultural Center of Seville places training as a key element to achieve the spiritual development of the individual and the community. Proof of this is the large number of activities you carry out and the constant presence of international lecturers. What are your plans for the future, taking education and culture as axes of rotation, projection and development?

A.- The main project is to have a space where we can focus and promote our activities, the Islamic Cultural Center of Seville. Lacking it, many of our actions are outside our center. This is an aspect that we are not going to stop exercising.

Our presence in the Islamic Culture Conferences of Almonaster la Real in Huelva, and Mértola, Portugal, make us be in continuous approach to the reality that is lived, to create appropriate content in each edition, giving response from our worldview to the issues that are raised socially from various fields of study. Along these lines, we would like to open other conferences where we can express ourselves as a community in an encounter with society in general, at the same time that we favor an understanding of history with our own voice.

In the same way we want the “Andalusian Meetings” held annually in Seville, to acquire notoriety, elevation and value in the culture of the city. And all this in a spirit of service to the Muslim and non-Muslim community.

We have recently created an education group, whose long-term project is to create its own educational space. In the short term, however, we plan to work on community and intergenerational education that will help young people to find shared areas with adults in their own development.

Q.- Muslims and non-Muslims lack a label that informs about the type of slaughter applied to animals for human consumption. Are you in favor of some type of stunning or non-stunning and why is it that in Spain there is no halal standard?

R.- We hope that the health authorities and the entities involved in the development of Halal certification will define what is most convenient for the Halal standard to be implemented.

What does seem important to us is that the slaughter of animals, a religious rite for the Muslim community, can be carried out under a framework of hygienic and legal guarantees.

Q.- The CIE, the entity to which you are attached, has its president and other members of the board of directors incriminated in serious legal cases, however, hardly any voices have been heard asking for clarifications and resignations, what is your opinion on this matter and to what extent does it harm the good name of Muslims?

A.- As I explained before, the Seville Mosque Foundation is not attached to the CIE. It is an entity dependent on the protectorate of foundations of the Ministry of Culture and Sports. In any case, of course, it is something that is detrimental to all Muslims and something that should be solved by the relevant authorities. I do not believe that this situation benefits anyone, and the silence that is being given and allowed by all the parties involved is beginning to be surreal.

Q.- Violence against women, euthanasia, homosexual marriage, gender identity education, loneliness of the elderly, abortion… today’s society is undergoing profound changes of great transcendence while the Islamic communities remain absent, what does this silence mean and why does it occur?

A.- It is very important to emphasize this social involvement on the part of Muslims, at a personal and community level. But it would be unfair to generalize and say that the communities remain absent, it is being done to the extent of the possibilities and priorities of each one, with these and many other transcendent matters. Without falling far from complacency, we must all demand more of ourselves.

It would also be important to try to forge your own discourse, to formulate your own questions and answers, otherwise it is very easy to fall into constantly reacting, instead of acting, to everything that happens around us.

Q.- What procedures and requirements must be followed and fulfilled by any person who wants to request his share of the tithe that you collect and distribute?

A.- To receive the Zakat the only requirement is to be among the 8 categories mentioned in the Koran, although due to the current situation the vast majority is distributed among the poor and the needy. As for procedures, it is done in a personal way and assessing case by case, in most cases it is people whose situation we know personally or who are referred by a third party who knows their situation.

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Interview by Abdelmalik Mohammed
https://www.islami.es/articulo/entrevistas/fundacion-mezquita-sevilla-adscrita-cie-es-entidad-dependiente-protectorado-fundaciones-ministerio-cultura-deporte-ibrahim-fernandez/20221214115422005157.html