Institutional support for the Muslim community. Daniel González

Article written by Daniel González, published in ́JOURNALISM 2020 ́.
Both the article and the interview with Khalid Nieto, are part of a university work with which we had the pleasure of collaborating, the work team is made up of; Francisco Javier Barragán, Daniel González, José Manuel Montes, Juan José Pozo and José Ramón Santos.
Our thanks and best wishes to all of them.
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Muslim Collective in Spain, on the Way to Welfare?

Muslims represent 4% of the total population of all Spaniards.
95% of Muslim students cannot take classes in the Islamic religion and not for lack of teachers since 95% of teachers of the Islamic religion are unemployed.
13% of Islamic communities still do not have a mosque or oratory and more than 90% of Islamic communities in Spain do not have a Muslim cemetery.
All of the above are figures from the Demographic Study of the Muslim Population of the Andalusian Observatory (UCIDE).

Why is integration not yet complete in Spain?
How long will it take?

“We will not allow ourselves to be humiliated or defeated by terrorism. Because when they hit us, instead of dividing us, they will find us more united in the incorruptible defense of freedom and democracy from our diversity of cultures and beliefs.” This is a part of the speech by Rosa María Sardà and Miriam Hatibi, after the attack on the Rambla (Barcelona) on August 17, 2017.
We are not going to talk about Islamophobia, but about integration.
The integration of 2 million Spanish Muslims who today are looked at through a magnifying glass because of terrorism. “I have read that in Spain there are already two million Muslims, I don’t know if the figure is real, and there must be many illegals. And apart from what that number means, in their mentality Spain must cease to exist and return to Al Andalus”. In this way, Pío Moa, a Spanish historian, articulates his opinion about the Muslim community in Spain in an interview with La Gaceta, the newspaper of information and analysis of the Intereconomía Group.
If we stick to the report of the Pew Research Center (a laboratory of ideas that seeks reflection on politics, economics, technology, culture) Muslims will represent almost 30% of the world’s population in 2050, some 2.76 million people.
But who cares about what’s beyond a demographic number?

Seville Mosque

Foundation Faced with this type of uncertainty, some groups have proposed to respond and not articulate more questions.
This is the example of the Mosque Foundation of Seville.
This Association was created in 2005 with the following purposes: to give the different practitioners of the Muslim religion a place to process their faith, to help ALL those in need (without distinction of any kind, and much less religious) and to celebrate a series of events for the Muslim community and for all those interested non-Muslims that allow us to know a little more about this culture.

“The only defense against the world is a perfect knowledge of it” John Locke

Awareness campaign with refugees and Muslim minorities.

The Seville City Council offers us another alternative.
The bases of this campaign are offered by EuropaPress.
According to this news agency, the mayor’s office intends for the capital of Seville to be “a diverse, intercultural and multifaceted city, where all people have real, effective and equal access to all the human rights recognised and guaranteed in the city” and to this end it has launched an awareness campaign with refugees and Muslim minorities.
This campaign seeks to ensure that the messages of hatred brought about by Daesh’s terrorism do not break the peace that exists between two of the cultures that coexist in the city today.

WHY THE DEFINITIVE INTEGRATION?

“We have inherited both the reconquering spirit and the inquisitorial spirit. There are many attitudes that have not yet left our social background and many times they are evident and present. We have to get out of those two burdens to be able to enter into a dialogue.” These were some of the words that Jalid Nieto gave us in the interview held on November 22.
What he exposes to us in these sentences is nothing more than the lack of communication of those 2 million Muslims present in our country.
This incommunicado detention is reflected in the statement of Adel Najjar, president of the Islamic Union of Extremadura to El Periódico de Extremadura on August 27, following the attacks in Barcelona: “It is no longer enough for us to lock ourselves in the mosque. We don’t have to be silent and we are not going to be silent.”

Is it this incommunicado detention that turns into violence when the EUROPOL report increases the number of crimes committed on the basis of religion or race by 41% compared to the previous year? Everything points to the fact that what is missing above all is empathy and intercultural communication: empathy because, as Jalid Nieto tells us in the aforementioned interview: “They are people in 95% (or more) who have come due to socioeconomic circumstances (…). People who have come from abroad are in a moment of work to live a dignified life.” And communication because, as Adil El Boubkri points out: “I have brought many people to my land and they tell me that this is not what they sell us.” We cannot say how this integration will take place in the future, or even if it will take place completely.
As long as we continue to see stereotypes, and not people, these data will remain irremediably.
Although the actions of the numerous associations are aimed at promoting integration, the path to it lies in the mental schemes of each one of us.

The interview

Khalid Nieto, patron and current Director of Communication of the Mosque Foundation of Seville, is a Muslim of Sevillian origin (like most of the people we met at the headquarters of the foundation during this visit).
In his youth he has processed other religions such as Catholicism, however he has finally led to the Islamic religion.
And he has not done so as a believer but as an active agent of this religion through the Seville Mosque Foundation.

PREGUNTA_ Khalid, could you shed some light on what the Seville Mosque Foundation consists of and what its objectives are?

ANSWER_ We set up the Seville Mosque Foundation with the aim of building a mosque in Seville in 2005.
The purposes of the Foundation are to serve the population of the Muslim confession of the city without any type of border, that is, our place is open to all Muslims of cultures different from those that Seville has provided with immigration.
We provide an open service to the city with a place of worship such as this space.
We also attend to their needs both in the transits of life and ultimately we help many works of a social nature as well.
Our goal now is to build an Islamic cultural center, which will contain a place of prayer.
We want to have an open dialogue with the city and its institutions.

P_ How does this foundation survive?

R_ Based on very small contributions.
Every Friday after doing the jumu’ah there is a brush on the door where everyone puts what they can.
We also make some trips to ask for help from the Muslims of the world, either to Turkey, or to the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Malaysia or Mali where there is an agreement between what they need and what we need.

P_ We have already seen the social work carried out by the Mezquita de Sevilla Foundation, now it is our turn to reflect on the need for this service.
What do you think is the situation and quality of life of Muslims in Spain?

R_ 95% of them are people who have come due to socio-economic circumstances and are in a process of active incorporation into Spanish society in the productive sense.
In the cultural sense and in the social sense there are ways to go.
There are signs of a second generation of children of Muslims who are accessing university.
An active incorporation into the socio-cultural field and the economic future is taking place.
In our case, people who come from abroad are in a moment of work to live a dignified life and to give the generations that come from the future a new and rich space.

P_ What is the Spanish State and the Spanish people doing for Muslim integration?

R_ There is attention on the part of the State to the Muslim community because it is a religion with notorious roots.
There are some concordats signed to promote the development of Islamic life in the Spanish State and there is an institution called the Islamic Commission of Spain that represents Muslims before the State.
The situation on the socio-political level is a bit difficult because 99.9% of the population does not share at all the events that have recently occurred in Europe that derive from the criminal attitudes of Daesh.
The police are already taking care of them and we are making sure that this does not happen in our spaces.
I don’t think it will happen that there is always an expiratory goat that serves populism to appeal to the masses.
If we have fallen into that situation, we will have to do everything necessary to win the respect of the population that has a healthy heart and an open intellect.

P_ What could you tell us about the Islamic religion?

R_ To summarize Islam in a few words is to have to refer to what the messenger said, peace be upon him, the prophet Muhammad, said: “I have come only to improve the noble qualities of character” that is, he brought a religious practice that, if put into practice, would improve the human being.
This is what is least talked about about Islam and it was the ones that attracted me to it.

P_ Do you think that the current image of her in Spain is stereotyped and this affects the integration of Muslims?

R_ Obviously, there is a great deal of ignorance, not all the principles by which the Muslim acts are truly known, and we do not separate ourselves from the stereotypes that we have inherited from both the reconquering and the inquisitorial spirit.
We have to get out of these two burdens to be able to enter into a dialogue.
We trust that by clearly exposing the message, living day by day, being in the institutions, going out openly to explain our way of seeing things and being far from any attitude that is belligerent or that calls for contempt for the other, I believe that we can build a truly better world in our city.

P_ In your opinion, is Seville Islamophobic?

R_ I don’t think Seville is Islamophobic.
That there may be traces of a negative attitude towards Islam due to misunderstanding or historical militancy is obvious, but in Seville capital we already live more than eight or nine thousand Muslims spread throughout all the popular neighborhoods.
When people see the daily practice of these families and when there are many direct neighbors who have to speak, opinions change a lot.

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Memory

First, before any in-depth research on the subject, we decided to specify the approach that should be given to this space.
It was stipulated that the perspective that this journalistic blog was going to carry was not going to delve into Islamophobia but into the integration of Muslims in Spain.
Having said this, we contacted the Fundación Mezquita de Sevilla to take a guided tour of the headquarters itself.
In this first visit we collected useful information for this work prior to the interview carried out later.
So to all the links that we will add at the end it is necessary to add the testimonies of the people present at the headquarters of said foundation (and not only those present but other Muslims with whom we were able to contact and from whom we asked for their opinion on the matter).
Once this work was done, we arranged an interview with Jalid Nieto that would be held last Wednesday, November 22.
I would like to highlight and above all thank all these people (especially Khalid) for their kindness and willingness to dialogue in a friendly and very calm way on a topic that is very controversial today.
They have allowed us to get a different point of view about what Islam means while observing (and we were even able to record) one of the typical prayers of this religion, an extremely intimate moment that they shared with us without any qualms.
To add more information, these were the portals visited for documentary purposes for this journalistic work: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/31/worlds-muslim-population-more-widespread-than-you-might-think/ https://gaceta.es/opinion/islam-democracia-espana-i-20170831-1009/ http://andaluciainformacion.es/sevilla/714714/campana-de-sensibilizacion-con-refugiados-ante-el-aumento-del-odio/http://www.europapress.es/andalucia/sevilla-00357/noticia-ayuntamiento-sevilla-lanza-campana-sensibilizacion-refugiados-minorias-musulmanas-20171111110332.htmlhttp://www.elperiodicoextremadura.com/noticias/extremadura/musulmanes-extremenos-alzan-voz_1036212.htmlhttp://mezquitadesevilla.comhttp://www.europapress.es/sociedad/noticia-numero-musulmanes-viven-espana-acerca-millones-42-son-espanoles-20170209192430.htmlhttp://plataformaciudadanacontralaislamofobia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Informe-sobre-la-islamofobia-en-Espa%C3%B1a-2016.pdfhttps://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/08/24/ratio/1503575717_082628.htmlhttps://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/grandes-historias/20170113/185732293_0.htmlhttps://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/08/22/actualidad/1503428186_516127.htmlhttps://www.webislam.com/articulos/37037-el_vaticano_llama_a_cristianos_y_musulmanes_a_luchar_contra_la_pobreza.htmlhttp://observatorio.hispanomuslim.es/estademograf.pdfhttp://xyzdiario.com/portada/mezquita-sevilla/