The Muslim Brotherhood in Spain

This is the sixth in a  series of translations I have done concerning the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe-country by country. This one concerns Spain and is written by Maria Lozano Alia in 2019 for European Eye on Radicalization.


https://eeradicalization.com/es/los-hermanos-musulmanes-en-espana/


The Muslim Brotherhood in Spain
-Maria Lozano Alia

"It is nature that Islam dominates, not is dominated, imposes its law on all nations and extends its power over the entire planet".
Hassan al Banna


The Muslim Brothers (Muslim Brotherhood have been the object of curiosity, study, tracking and fear in equal parts as long as its history.

As is well known, they were born in 1928 in Egypt, its leader being Hassan al-Banna, to whom belongs the introductory quote and who is considered as  the father of modern Islamism and inspiration of the badly named "Arab Springs".

And it is this paternity and its influence over extremists and violent groups (like Hamas or Hezbollah) since their beginnings until today, that has generated a rejection in a large part of the West and also for current moderate Muslims.

Broadly speaking, and to establish an ideological framework, the Muslim Brotherhood can be defined as an organization which seeks the implantation of Islamic traditional values and sharia as a fundamental regulation of the human being to confront the deterioration of Islamic societies begun by the contamination of the West and colonialism. The Islamic faith, therefore, appears as a nexus, guide and norm among all the members of the Islamic faith, beyond national, political and geographical structures.

For the achievement of these objectives, political participation is articulated as the principal tool, though throughout their history, they have maintained violence and terror on more than a few occasions, this fact being the determinant factor in motivating the split of the Brothers in some countries.

As a distinctive feature of this group, it is worth underlining the permanent creation of structures, organizations, and support services to the community, in a parallel manner to administrations, such as schools, hospitals, and mosques with the aim of winning (over) society.

The first expansion beyond Egypt was realized in Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon in the 1940s. The conquest of Europe had to wait a few years longer, the first Brothers arriving  in Spain in the 1960s, as will be seen later.

We should first analyze the common patterns of all of the processes of expansion of the Brothers.

 1 The first of them is the complete adaptation of the organization to the environment, to the nation receiving them and to its structures. Full liberty exists for the nascent organizations with full communication with the structure of origin.

2 Winning (over) society by means of support services to the community. As already mentioned, their objective is to approach society through help to the most unfortunate and construction of schools, hospitals, civic centers, etc

3 There is, on the part of all the organizations, an "official" rejection of violence.  Nevertheless, this is not an obstacle because the movement is the inspiration of of terrorist groups and the creation of violent cells in the receiving nations.

4 The deep secrecy of its members in Europe, mainly in Spain, and the lack of official data in relation to the actual and current membership of the leaders of the principle Islamic organizations to the Muslim Brotherhood.

So we move on to briefly analyze the evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood in Spain and its current situation.

The presence of active members in Spain began in the 1960s. The educational and cultural policy in Spain in those years, together with the lower cost of living in comparison with other Southern European countries, attracted a large number of students from the Near East.

In the same way, repression against the MB in Syria during these years caused many of them to seek refuge in Spain.

Formally, and in the wake of the Law of Associations of 1964 and the Law of Religious Liberty of 1967, the first Muslim associations were created in Spain. Among them, the most important (is) the Islamic Center of Granada created in 1966 for Syrian, Jordanian and Palestinian students. The direction of this center, in a large number of occasions, was led by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The principal activities of the center in those years was the coordination of religious education and proselytizing for non-Arabs. In any case, what caused the increase in its members was the erecting as a place of meeting and debate on the political situation of the countries of origin.

The existing tensions and divisions in Syria surrounding the Muslim Brotherhood between the most  radical faction, which advocated armed confrontation (Al-Talia al-Muqatila/Combat Vanguard) and the faction of Al-attar (Al-Talia al Islamiya/Islamic Vanguard) which supported political participation, had its reflection in Spain. In 1971, the followers of Al-Attar in Spain, founded the Islamic Association of Spain in 1971, breaking with the Islamic Center of Granada.

The Islamic Association of Spain adapts its internal regulations in order to create centers and mosques. The fruit of this adaptation is the creation of the Abu Bakr Mosque of Madrid, financed in large part, with funds from Saudi Arabia.

Both the Islamic Center of Granada and the Islamic Association of Spain brought together all the followers of the Muslim Brotherhood in Spain, functioning as places of meeting and debate on the group for militants and sympathizers.

It is worth highlighting the figure of Nizar Ahmad al-Sabbagh, who assumed the leadership of the movement in Spain until his death in 1981, and who acted as contact and mediator between the organization in Spain and the World Muslim League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.

Beginning in the 1990s, the project began to be purely Spanish producing the gradual rupture with Syria, result of the divisions and confrontations that the group tried in this country and at the same time, the decay of the Brotherhood in Spain, which thus, lost its opportunity to consolidate itself as a strong organization as occurred in other countries like Germany and the UK.

The Muslim association movement in Spain has much to do with this evolution, being necessary to express themselves as valid interlocutors (dealing with) the State to sign cooperation agreements. The objectives of these associations are more tied to the presence and institutional participation and the management of the growing Muslim population in Spain, the result of  immigration, than following the foundations of the Brotherhood.

However, it is necessary to bring up the existence of figures clearly linked to terrorist acts and (who are) from the circle of the Muslim Brotherhood in Spain.

And it is from the middle of the 90s, the Abu Bakr Mosque began receiving young men from radical circles, who intended to create a terrorist cell linked to Al-Qaeda and who distributed propaganda from Islamic Jihad, Hamas or the Algerian GIA.

Among them, we have to highlight Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri) from the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, who settled in Spain with connections to the Algerian GIA and the Taliban of Afghanistan. His photo appears in 2010 in the first issue of Inspire, bulletin of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in English together with an article published under the name Abu Mu'sab al-Suri.

On the other hand, Abu Dahdah. Born in Syria and also member of the Muslim Brotherhood, for which he had to flee the country. After traveling through multiple countries, he settled in Spain, where he founded the first jihadist networks in Spain. His network is the origin of some of the participants in the attacks of Casablanca in 2003 and Madrid in 2004.

Currently, there is no conclusive data which permits us to confirm the official rebirth of the Muslim Brotherhood in Spain, nor the existence of an organization or structure associated with them.

On the one hand, Riaj Tatary, president of UCIDE, who is said to belong to the Brotherhood, (which) he has denied on several occasions.

On the other hand, it seems that in a discreet manner certain organization have appeared with a possible link to the Brotherhood in Spain: Islamic Relief in Spain, associated with Islamic Relief Worldwide, with members in the leadership connected to the Brotherhood and the discreet Islamic League for Dialogue and Co-existence in Spain (Lidcoe), the association that is the standard bearer and coordinates the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Spain and acts as representative of the movement before the Federation of Islamic Organization of Europe (FIOE, in its initials in English), the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe.

Tracking these organizations, connected to a moderate Islamism is, however, complicated and appears generally to the appearance in the press of social action initiatives (schools and mosques) so well-liked by the Brotherhood.

What seems clear is that its ideology, if not radicalizing itself, could be the ideal breeding ground for facilitating radicalization and preventing integration into Spanish society.

References


José María Blanco Navarro/Óscar Pérez Ventura MOVIMIENTOS ISLAMISTAS EN ESPAÑA. Documento Marco 2012. Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos.
• Los hermanos musulmanes en España. Elena Arigita y Rafael Ortega. Los movimientos islámicos trasnacionales y la emergencia de un “islam europeo”. Frank Peter y Rafael Ortega (eds)
• De la Corte Ibáñez, Luis/Jordán, Javier. La yihad terrorista (Ciencias políticas)
• Carlos Igualada Tolosa, Los hermanos Musulmanes y su presencia en España.
• Hispanomusulmanes.com. El pensamiento muslima de hoy. http://www.hispanomuslim.es/noticias/prensamuslima.htm
• La ideología de los hermanos musulmanes https://hermanosmusulmanes.wordpress.com/ideologia/
• Sergio Castaño Riaño, Los Hermanos Musulmanes.
• Javier Martin, Los Hermanos Musulmanes.