Resilient Souls: Stories of Spanish Muslims

foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] he goes up my name is hadija I became a Muslim in February 1980 when there were very very few Muslims in Spain they were not even immigrants at that time so it was very rare really very rare when people started to know about us they started coming around becoming a Muslim and basically the community was settled by people who came from all over Spain to stay and live with with us here because we understood that Islam was not something that you can take and then go back home and go and live in the same way that you were living then it grew it grew and it grew not only in our families because we are already on the fourth generation but also our commitment since the very beginning was to to show Islam to the society so it means we have a lot of shahadas [Music] foreign [Music] Spanish born Muslim as a second generation my parents are Spanish they became Muslim very young before I born everything started with a man called Ian Dallas Scottish and when he became Muslim in Morocco his name is Sufi he moved to England he started the community in England small one my father he escaped from getting into the military because it was obligatory in that moment so he escaped and he decided to go to England so he went with another two Spanish young men these three men from Spain they were walking through the streets in London and they saw one morning a lot of shoes while they were coming closer they had a singing it was the reciting of the Quran and cassidas it was a night of dick so by that singing they got cut I mean they got they said is something here that we have to see it this is impressive so they knocked the door it was a having a dick with a gathering with another Muslim English Muslims and uh just coming in they saw everything and in that moment they convert into Islam they did shahada that day thank you he's uh he's the one the beginning of the community Ian Dallas Scottish when he went to Morocco he found what he was looking for was the Islam so he met his Morocco this is my father he was one of the first ones in the community every shahada is different because everyone has it in a different circumstances and usually it doesn't happen in one day it's a process and in my case I was happiest convince others after having brought up as Catholic in my family but Catholicism made me just give up everything about religion some people have taken it very very quickly in my case it took over one year to make the decision because to me it was a big commitment that I was going to undertake in every sense and changing in my life and towards my family my society and everything so I needed to be very sure of what it was doing we keep doing the same thing we went to pray at the Alhambra security guards they came and told us not to pay there anymore so after that is when shahada said okay you have to build your own most people started to travel to different countries in order to find a help in order to buy this land one of the trouble was to Libya and gaddafiullah he was the first to contribute and he paid all the money to buy the land after we bought the land of course you have to get the permission to build so the community had to go to the council and ask for the permission to build a mosque and just that week the news was were all over the news this is all the news on the newspapers Madrid Barcelona talking badly about the feeling of of the mosque England so it was all over the newspapers and but alhamdulillah Allah makes everything happen and now is the opposite we have very good relation with all the Neighbors in Ramadan especially for we share food together and we have a list of all the neighbors around this area that is a neat and that's why they they love us because nobody is looking after them even the government they don't find help on the on the local government so they come to us and we help them it's a corporation called Tikka which also has been helping us for the last three years and all the money they give us for food it goes to the all the Muslim communities around Granada and also the neighborhood around this mosque so so turkey is involved in all of that relation we have [Music] thank you my name is Ibrahim Hernandez I'm the president of the Civil most Foundation I'm a second generation Spanish Muslim which means my parents converted to Islam more than 40 years ago and I was born into Islam I was born in Spanish and I was born Muslim so for me I don't have a sort of crisis of identity for me as a European Muslim is something very natural yes I think it's it's more of a question for people that have immigrated especially the second or third generation that still have a link with the with the mother countries with the mother languages how people perceive it or perceive us from uh from overseas there's obviously the the connotation of the romantic view of what alandalus used to be so when people come now to to Andalusia to Spain and they see Muslims they feel very attractive and they want to automatically connect it they say oh you are the The Inheritance or you're the descendants of the Muslims of alhamdulos and we're not there is no connection whatsoever whoever tells you otherwise it's uh it's a complete distorted view [Music] so this is uh called the door of forgiveness is one of the main doors that remains towards the old mosque on the cathedral today of Seville and as you can see here is one of the few places where you still see calligraphy original from the time of the Muslims and the calligraphy says which basically means the kingdom belongs to Allah and continuity belongs to Allah which is a very beautiful thing to say in the door to the old Mosque of civil foreign [Music] 700 years so there's no connection whatsoever between the Muslims then and the Muslims now [Music] so what you see here is the same calligraphy the same description that you saw in the door forgiveness in the old Mosque of civil with just now the cathedral which says but it's the same inscription but in the mosque in civil [Music] foreign we're sitting down here in the headquarters of the Civil Moss Foundation which acts as a musala as well as a mosque is full of activities for the from the five daily prayers to many activities open for Muslims and Muslims thank you for Allah [Music] what could be interesting is to to see how Allah by his Mercy has allowed Islam to Spring again to flourish from within its own people there's hundreds of people that are becoming Muslim taking shahadas that even to myself I'm completely shocked because I was born Muslim but when I see people wanting to become Muslim it does something in my heart because it's like with everything that has been talked outside how can you come what is it that draws you to to Allah and it's it's really uh amazing to see that happening this is the annual newsletter report of 2022 which we do annually for all the activities of the foundation that includes the regular activities that are in the mosque all the people that have taken jahada during this time is actually not all of them we've had more than I think it's 25 here more than this that have become Muslim over the course of the past year which is a huge responsibility because there's a teaching and ongoing activities for these people behind every one of them there's this particular story of how they became Muslim how they approach Islam how they came to us and it's actually very comforting rewarding to see so many people have taken shahada and they're still around and as you can see there's all people young people it does not matter rich people poor people many people that come to Islam [Music] [Music] cuatro [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] Tiempo menoses Sarah [Music] come on we've gone through many different stages and the first stage when the Civil most Foundation was founded I wasn't even around at the time but what they did was to ask the government for land and and the government agreed and it was actually a very Speedy process and they agreed and they gave us land it's lent lended land so basically they give it to you for I don't know if it's 50 or 100 years or something like that it doesn't belong to the Muslims it belongs to the government but they give it to you for a certain amount of time but then the neighbors around it complained officially they would say is because why do why would you give the Muslims a land to build the mosque eventually they took the town hall not as the town hall the the government of Seville they took them to court and the process of building got stopped it never started actually and until the court case came which lasted two years and then after two years the the town hall actually won the court case and they were they would have said continue with the building but then they stood to the higher court and then another two years got lost and then eventually the higher Court overturned the decision took the land back from us because they said that the town hall had made a mistake in the process of giving us the land we decided that we're not going to go through that process again because it's also a process that uh that relies on politicians and relies on politics and politics relies on votes and votes uh and is not very popular to build a mosque for whatever reason for the image the people have of Islam is not something that will draw boats to the whatever government there is in England so we decided to try and do it in our walkathlon which means to purchase land and to do it on the on the land which is the way we did it in in Grenada and it's been standing for many years [Music] my name is madrasa is here's my my little boy videos [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] and don't say ultimately much is [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] families is potentially [Music] Gente is [Music] Allah Allah awake but alone [Music] [Music] espanolas Islam [Music] is they always foreign uh aprender is our Islam entrances foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] General ISM students is foreign foreign [Music] thank you [Music] my name is Muhammad Amin I am a native Spanish born in the east of Spain in Valencia my parents are both Muslims originally also from Spain though they converted to Islam when I was one year old and if I was to raise up Muslim I had to take the decision if I wanted to continue to be Muslim because in Spain is very easy not to be there is always somebody here because it's open to the public but it's not so much a security issue as a as a presence to be present here it's very easy to understand for a Muslim that we will want to try to be here for all the salats and but of course with normal life not one person can can take the job of being here all day solution is easy as we take turns I am not here every day all the months I am here just when I am available in the city we are quite a lot of people we just arranged between ourselves in a way that we make sure that from Fajr to Isha there is there will be always somebody here to to welcome the people to open for the salads and to to help in any way possible [Music] thank you a gift from erdogan when he was visiting us here in Granada it is an example of the Quran calligraphy made in in Turkey Community knew from the beginning that to get a mosque built not easy to to to do it what we had it was the people visiting us and and for us was very special especially erdogan when he came and he gave this to us and and his words among among the people and saying what you're doing is very important what you do it is amazing because it's a in a way of honoring the the Andalusian history where the Muslims were here before and all of this alhamdulillah what we have now is a is a most complete mosque a very big Community a community that is still growing every Friday is such a harder here the community is is going very fast it's already fourth generation coming up so we have to thank erdogan for this visit because it was very very important in that time I feel very grateful to Allah that Allah has guided my children and has allowed me to give them an education which really encourage them to go on with our work as we're getting older and they're taking the steps forward and that's that's very a big relief to see that going on in Generations it's a big gift a very very big gift not only in my children personally but also in the children from the rest of the community because as I say when we became a Muslim we were very young I was 25. and we started marrying and having children so we didn't have a family around so we became like a tribe you know we helped each other a lot and we were involved a lot with others children so they are my kids you know all of them so it's it's a joy to see them like Umar all of them going with strength and Clarity forward it's a gift it's a very big gift and a kind of um continuity is a continuity because if it doesn't have a continuity then what was it Islam parameas um personas [Music] we have something that we feel is important and it feels is valuable which is the Islam No and and we want to to offer it no and that is why we have it open here and from the point of view of of with the meaning that is something that is not coming from outside we are not Outsiders offering a different culture we are locals with our own way of life which we feel is good and we feel is not foreign and that is what we are really offering problem with the people in general is that they don't have the knowledge of what is Islam and that makes people get wrong about it especially when you only hear in news about terrorism and Associated to the to Islam I think we have a great responsibility an opportunity to be able to change the perception that people have of Islam because being in the heart of uh if Europe and in the age that we live in people that cannot claim that what we have the Deen that I have is something that is imported or is something that does not belong to the land is something that is foreign it's something that is temporary they cannot because I'm Spanish and I am Muslim and it's my faith and it's something that I like to transmit to people because I think and I know is the best for society so it's something that we take encourages the gift that we want to transmit to the best of people [Music] plendor [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: TRT World

Views: 644,497

Keywords: spanish muslims, spain muslims, islam in spain, muslims in spain, muslim community, spain, convert to islam, muslim community in spain, granada, spanish converts to islam, convert to islam stories, muslim converts in europe, spanish muslims today, spanish muslim converts, islam documentary, trt world, trt world news, trt documentary english, sevilla, Sevilla Mosque Foundation, islam in spain today, conversion to islam, Fundación Mezquita de Sevilla, taking shahada

Id: syf4vcCwm20

Length: 32min 46sec (1966 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023