Mosques in Andalucia

Submitted by Frahad Navkhoda (United Kingdom), Apr 17, 2007 at 11:20

Dear Octavio,

You are incorrect, the biggest mosque in Europe is in Kazan (just south of Moscow, built on the site of an ealier Mosque destroyed by Tsar Ivan the terrible in the 1500's). As for the Mosque being built in Andalucia, many of them have been build by ethnic Spaniards rediscovering their Islamic heritage.

Muslims have always been present in Western and Eastern Europe. How else do you think the voyages of Christopher Columbus were funded if not for the Gold and wealth ceased from the coffers of the Sultanate of Granada. Spain was conquered by the Moors on the Battlefield and in the traditional time honoured way. Islam spread through the Iberian peninsula through free choice to the effect that at one point eighty percent of the Iberian- that is combined Spanish and Portugese- populations professed Islam as their faith.

You forgot to mention the introduction of the first tolerant society in Europe where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in peace, the introduction of Universities, street-lighting and waterways, not to mention the translation of Anciet Greek, Persian and Indian texts that would have been lost to civilisation and without which no European Renaissance would have occured.

You fail to mention that during the Reconquest by the Christian Monarchy Isabel and Fernand, the Jews were given the choice of either converting to Christianity of expulsion from Spain without their possessions and their children. You forget to mention that these Jews were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire with open arms. You forget to mention that the Muslims suffered this same fate, despite guarantees and against signed treatise. Where do you think theses Moors went to if not to North Africa nad the Latin America Expeditions? Why do you think the Spanish Inquisition was carried out if not to root out the Muslims and Jews who professed to have converted to Catholicism and practised their tru Religion in private? where does the expression 'Blue-blooded' come from? What religion were African slaves that were shipped hundreds of miles across the Atlantic in appalling conditions to work for Christian Slave Owners and the Church?

Islam today is in Latin America. The indigeneous people (You forget to mention the destruction of the Native south Americans by the Catholic Church) of Chiapas in Mexico the one Million-strong Muslim communities in Argentina and the million in Brazil, the converts in the Carribbean. As for Eastern Europe, there are communities in Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Central Asia and Moscow alone in Russian has a muslim Population of one million. It's not the Muslims in Latin America and Eastern Europe that are missing but your knowlege of them. If it have not been for the Muslims, the Mongol hordes would long have desecrated Europe, both East and West. Your Middle-Age ancestors would never have seen the light.

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