Spain's Muslims fear backlash after bomb attacks.
543 words
15 March 2004
Agence France Presse
English
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2004 All reproduction and presentation rights reserved.

In Madrid's Lavapies, where immigrants share a lively old district with working-class Spaniards, fear is on the rise that Muslims will bear the brunt of reprisals for the horrific bombings which appear to have been staged by Islamic extremists linked to the Al-Qaeda network.

"Our living situation got worse after September 11, but this is going to be much worse," Mohammed al-Afifi, the spokesman for the Spanish Islamic Cultural Center, said, referring to the 2001 attacks in the United States.

Afifi's center, opened in 1992, is nestled among typical cafes decorated with traditional Spanish images of bullfighting and flamenco - a sign of a multicultural mix that seems more in danger after the March 11 attacks in the capital.

The bombings, which ripped into commuter rails during morning rush hour, killing 200 and injuring 1,500, have renewed questions among anti-terrorist experts about Islamic radicals operating in Spain and hidden among other Muslim residents of the country.

Only a few steps away from the Islamic center is the trash bin where Spanish officials on Sunday found a videotape on which a man, speaking in Arabic, claimed that Al-Qaeda had carried out the bombings.

It was also in the neighborhood that three Moroccans were arrested on Saturday in connection with the attacks.

A total of 700,000 to 800,000 Arabs or Muslims reside legally in Spain, half of whom are Moroccan, according to data from the Islamic center.

The Lavapies district is a sign of the changing face of the country - with an estimated 27 percent of its population foreign-born, according to El Mundo newspaper.

But frictions are already mounting here, as old residents rail against being elbowed out.

"There are only four Spaniards left, and they want to push us out. All the shops are foreign," one local restaurant owner complained to El Mundo.

The three Moroccans arrested by police ran a "locutorio" - a store where people can make cheap calls to Africa, Asia and Latin America - in Lavapies.

The local branch of the rights group SOS-Racism has issued a warning against a possible backlash against Muslims in the wake of the railway bombings.

"At at time when Arab immigrants have already become an established part of Spanish society - not to speak of the historic presence of a Muslim community in (the Spanish enclaves of) Ceuta and Melilla - these (racist) reactions are extremely serious," SOS-Racism said.

Previous incidents of racist violence have already targeted Muslims in Spain. In February 2000, dozens of seasonal farm workers from Morocco were wounded in attacks deemed by the interior ministry to be "xenophobic, violent and racist".

After the Madrid bombings, the impulse to resent Muslims is "logical", the imam of Madrid's biggest mosque, Moneir Mahmud Aly El Messery, said resignedly.

"But faithful Muslims know that the Koran says one cannot kill, even in the name of God," he told AFP.

Muslims were also among the dead and wounded in the train attacks, he said.

At the entrance of his mosque, Spanish flags adorned by black ribbons were hung in mourning as Muslims shared in the collective grief along with the rest of the country.

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