Observing Islam In Spain

Observing Islam in Spain pools multidisciplinary research experiences on Islam, providing original and explanatory findings on the social processes that have developed in recent decades around the so-called new presence of Islam in Spain.

In Muslims in Spain, 1492-1814: Living and Negotiating in the Land of the Infidel, Eloy Martín-Corrales surveys Hispano-Muslim relations from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, a period of chronic hostilities. Nonetheless there were thousands of Muslims in Spain at that time: ambassadors, exiles, merchants, converts, and travelers. Their negotiating strategies, and the necessary support they found on both shores of the Mediterranean prove that relations between Spaniards and Muslims were based on reasons of state and on a pragmatism that generated intense political and economic ties.These increased enormously after the peace treaties that Spain signed with Muslim countries between 1767 and 1791.

A magisterial, myth-dispelling history of Islamic Spain spanning the millennium between the founding of Islam in the seventh century and the final expulsion of Spain's Muslims in the seventeenth In Kingdoms of Faith, award-winning historian Brian A. Catlos rewrites the history of Islamic Spain from the ground up, evoking the cultural splendor of al-Andalus, while offering an authoritative new interpretation of the forces that shaped it. Prior accounts have portrayed Islamic Spain as a paradise of enlightened tolerance or the site where civilizations clashed. Catlos taps a wide array of primary sources to paint a more complex portrait, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews together built a sophisticated civilization that transformed the Western world, even as they waged relentless war against each other and their coreligionists. Religion was often the language of conflict, but seldom its cause -- a lesson we would do well to learn in our own time.

The book analyzes the place of religious difference in late modernity through a study of the role played by Jews and Muslims in the construction of contemporary Spanish national identity. The focus is on the transition from an exclusive, homogeneous sense of collective Self toward a more pluralistic, open and tolerant one in an European context. This process is approached from different dimensions. At the national level, it follows the changes in nationalist historiography, the education system and the public debates on national identity. At the international level, it tackles the problem from the perspective of Spanish foreign policy towards Israel and the Arab-Muslim states in a changing global context. From the social-communicational point of view, the emphasis is on the construction of the Self–Other dichotomy (with Jewish and Muslim others) as reflected in the three leading Spanish newspapers.

As Europe’s Muslim communities continue to grow, so does their impact on electoral politics and the potential for inclusion dilemmas. In vote-rich enclaves, Muslim views on religion, tradition, and gender roles can deviate sharply from those of the majority electorate, generating severe trade-offs for parties seeking to broaden their coalitions. Dilemmas of Inclusion explains when and why European political parties include Muslim candidates and voters, revealing that the ways in which parties recruit this new electorate can have lasting consequences. Drawing on original evidence from thousands of electoral contests in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain, Rafaela Dancygier sheds new light on when minority recruitment will match up with existing party positions and uphold electoral alignments and when it will undermine party brands and shake up party systems. She demonstrates that when parties are seduced by the quick delivery of ethno-religious bloc votes, they undercut their ideological coherence, fail to establish programmatic linkages with Muslim voters, and miss their opportunity to build cross-ethnic, class-based coalitions. Dancygier highlights how the politics of minority inclusion can become a testing ground for parties, showing just how far their commitments to equality and diversity will take them when push comes to electoral shove. Providing a unified theoretical framework for understanding the causes and consequences of minority political incorporation, and especially as these pertain to European Muslim populations, Dilemmas of Inclusion advances our knowledge about how ethnic and religious diversity reshapes domestic politics in today’s democracies.

Spain is no longer exclusively identified with Catholicism. This book sets out to understand the social dynamics of twenty-first century Spain through the perspective of religion and religious pluralism. Divided into three parts, Part I, Secularization in Spain, frames the analysis of this secularization process throughout the twentieth century and beyond, with particular attention to the process during the Second Republic and the quiet secularization of society that began under Franco's regime. Part II, Religious Change in Spain, establishes the broad framework of the process, addressing the changes that have taken place within Catholicism and the reaction of the Protestant minority as social mores became increasingly fast moving. Part III, Islam in Spain, addresses both its history (including colonial management) and current dynamics (how Islam is viewed by other religions; the impact of the March 11, 2004, attacks; and Islamophobic discourse). Religious Landscapes in Contemporary Spain is essential reading for scholars and students in History and Contemporary Affairs.

Music and Encounter at the Mediterranean Crossroads: A Sea of Voices explores the musical practices that circulate the Mediterranean Sea. Collectively, the authors relate this musical flow to broader transnational flows of people and power that generate complex encounters, bringing the diverse cultures of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East into new and challenging forms of contact. Individually, the chapters offer detailed ethnographic and historiographic studies of music’s multifaceted roles in such interactions. From collaborations between Moroccan migrant and Spanish Muslim convert musicians in Granada, to the incorporation of West African sonorities and Hasidic melodies in the musical liturgy of Abu Ghosh Abbey, Jerusalem, these communities sing, play, dance, listen, and record their diverse experiences of encounter at the Mediterranean crossroads.