By Tito Drago
MADRID, Mar 4 2002 (IPS)

Spain’s Muslim community, bolstered by the rising inflow of Muslim immigrants, is demanding enforcement of an agreement with the government that would allow their children to receive Islamic religious instruction in public schools.

The Union of Islamic Communities of Spain (UCIDE), which represents more than 400,000 people, sent a letter to the government of José María Aznar requesting that Muslim students be granted access to religious instruction, a possibility already enjoyed by the children of Roman Catholics.

UCIDE, which argues that Spain’s constitution guarantees that right, cited a cooperation agreement signed in 1992 by the Islamic Commission and the government – headed at that time by socialist prime minister Felipe González – which regulates the hiring of high school teachers qualified to provide instruction in the Islamic religion.

Since the accord was signed, authorities have argued that there are not enough qualified teachers to live up to the terms of the agreement. However, UCIDE reported Monday that there are 180 teachers who meet all of the requirements – that is to say, they are licenced teachers who speak Arabic and whose knowledge of Islam is recognised by Muslim community leaders.

Education Minister Pilar del Castillo responded that the issue was not on her agenda.

Spain’s Muslims are demanding that the Education Ministry finance the teaching of Islam, just as it funds instruction in Roman Catholicism.

Muslim immigrants are also demanding an end to the discrimination they face in private schools that are partly financed by the state.

According to Education Ministry estimates, only 22.3 percent of immigrant children or adolescents who attend school in Spain go to private schools. Half of that 22.3 percent comprises immigrants from other European countries or North America.

By contrast, 71.6 percent of immigrant youngsters attend public schools, and only 28.4 percent of them are Europeans or North Americans.

A congress of Muslim women held over the weekend and the refusal of security guards to allow Muslims to pray in a Catholic church that was historically a mosque in the southern city of Cordoba also threw the situation of Spain’s Muslim community into the limelight.

The third Congress of Muslim Women, which was also attended by men in Cordoba, 400 kms southwest of Madrid, demanded “the construction of a just, egalitarian and plural society,” and demanded that Spain’s authorities provide opportunities for Muslims to practice their religion.

According to the congress, the use of the head scarf, which in some interpretations of Islam is mandatory for women, “is a voluntary expression of the fundamental right to determine one’s own image,” and has religious significance but “does not impede the acceptance of Muslim women” who do not cover their heads.

However, Attorney-General Jesús Cardenal told the Madrid newspaper ABC that since the female foreign journalists who covered the war in Afghanistan were forced to wear a veil, Muslim women who come to Spain should be made to remove theirs.

“Cardenal is ignorant, because he has no idea of what his country is,” said Jadicha Candela, one of the organisers of last weekend’s congress and a member of the socialist party bloc in parliament. “The religious dictatorship ended with the transition, when the lay state was adopted.”

The parliamentarian was referring to the process that began in November 1975 with the death of dictator Francisco Franco (1939- 75) and to the transition that led to the adoption of a democratic constitution in December 1978, which consecrated a lay state and freedom of religion.

Another participant, Sudanese sociologist Omaima Sheij al Din, said it was a waste of time to talk about the veil or the head scarf, which she said was not only ugly but also an aggression against women.

The congress was attended by women with bare heads as well as women wearing scarves of all sizes and shapes.

The veil should not take up so much discussion time, agreed Micaela Navarro, the head of the Secretariat for Equal Opportunities of the main opposition force, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, at the end of the congress.

What should be fought instead, she argued, is “the discrimination that Spanish women and women who live in Spain continue to suffer, such as lower wages for the same work, which is an even bigger problem in the case of immigrant women.”

The climate of tolerance and pluralism that reigned in the congress was offset by the reaction suffered by a group of Muslims who visited a Catholic Church in Cordoba that was converted from a mosque 500 years ago.

When over 100 of the participants in the congress entered the temple of worship, and 15 of them knelt down to pray, they were pushed out by the guards.

Candela told IPS Monday that the Muslims were hit and shoved out of the building. UCIDE has filed a lawsuit.

Only once in the past 500 years – in 1980 – did the bishops of Cordoba grant permission for Muslims to pray in the church.

But sources from the Catholic Church pointed out that on this occasion, permission to pray was not requested. The iman or Muslim religious leader of one of the city’s two functioning mosques said that was true, and questioned the conduct of those who went to the church to pray.

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