Catholic bishops and Evangelical leaders in Spain are backing Islamists in their battle to conduct prayer meetings in public venues after a local council banned Islamic gatherings in municipal civic centers and gyms.
We support the position of the Islamic Commission of Spain.
“Municipal sports facilities cannot be used for religious, cultural, or social activities alien to our identity unless organized by the local authority,” the Jumilla City Council, a municipality in the region of Murcia that Muslims colonized for five hundred thirty years (713–1243), has ruled. Murcia is a stronghold of Justice and Charity (Al-Adl wal-Ihssan aka “AWI”), Morocco’s largest Islamist movement that is officially banned by the government of Morocco. AWI has recently challenged the legitimacy of the nation’s monarchy.
The controversy in Jumilla has erupted against the backdrop of anti-immigrant protests that erupted in response to the assault of a sixty-eight-year-old Spaniard by three Moroccan men in Torre Pacheco, approximately 60 miles from Jumilla, in mid-July.
While Muslims constitute 7.5 percent of Jumilla’s population of around 27,000, over 18 percent of the 35,000 residents of Torre Pacheco are Muslims of African origin. Torre Pacheco “has been a hotbed of radical Islamism for decades,” the Spanish newspaper Libertad Digital reported.
The motion, proposed by the conservative Vox Party in Jumilla on June 6, was passed with an amendment by the People’s Party, another conservative political party, on July 28—almost two weeks after the riots in Torre Pacheco. The amendment removed all references to Islam present in the original Vox Party proposal which prohibited the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha (which involves sacrificing a lamb). The final resolution, as amended by the People’s Party, makes no reference to Islam or Muslims.
The resolution sparked outrage from three Muslim organizations: the Islamic Federation of the Region of Murcia (FIRM), the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Organizations (FEERI), and the Islamic Commission of Spain (CIE).
In a press release, the Islamic Commission of Spain said that the Jumilla ban constitutes “a serious violation of the Spanish Constitution (which in Article 16 recognizes and protects religious freedom as a fundamental right).”
Catholics Side With Islamists
Bishop Lorca Planes.
(Photo by Spanish Episcopal Conference via Wikimedia)
“We support the position of the Islamic Commission of Spain,” a statement from the Spanish Episcopal Conference, a Catholic institution which did not respond to a request for comment from Focus on Western Islamism (FWI). The conference stated that the ban was unconstitutional and “constitutes discrimination that cannot exist in democratic societies.” The statement came a month after Bishop José Manuel Lorca Planes of the diocese of Cartagena, a city in Murcia, slammed the riots in Torre Pacheco.
Spanish Muslim Bodies Have Islamist Links
FIRM and FEERI, the two Muslim organizations that have taken the lead in the protests against the new law in Jumilla, appear to have strong ties to the cause of Islamism.
Cartagena’s imam, Said Mehdi—a radical Islamist who resides in Torre Pacheco—leads FIRM. He is also married to the daughter of Mohamed Abbadi, a key leader in the AWI. In 2006, the Moroccan government warned Spain that Abbadi’s radical Islamism made him a danger to his host country.
In 2008, ABC Spain News reported that Mehdi was part of a group of “radical Islamists” organizing “indoctrination workshops for imams in Murcia” and was receiving “significant sums of money” from Abbadi in Morocco.
Later that year, FIRM launched a campaign in its mosques and religious centers to demand the inclusion of Islamic education in schools throughout Murcia. FIRM controls 45 of the estimated 120 mosques in Murcia and recognizes a “strictly spiritual” connection with Justice and Charity, the organization banned by the Spanish government and which has sought to overthrow King Mohammed VI of Morocco.
FEERI President Denied Citizenship
In 2023, police launched an investigation into Mounir Benjelloun al-Andaloussi, president of FEERI and a leading member of AWI, on charges of enabling illegal immigration and employing illegal Moroccan immigrants, according to Moroccan Arabic newspaper Din Presse. He was released on bail of €20,000. Benjelloun denied the allegations and threatened to sue Din Presse claiming the report was false.
Benjelloun was denied Spanish nationality in 2010 after the Ministry of Justice linked him to AWI, noting: “He appears linked to associations, groups, or movements known for their irregular or radicalized activities, in their programs and procedures, from a political or religious perspective....”
The Ministry of Justice explained that “the expansion of the radical message of AWI among the Muslim community residing in Spain poses a risk of radicalization of these communities and hinders the integration of Muslims into Spanish society.”
Islamic Commission of Spain Tied to Islamist Movement
The Islamic Commission of Spain also has strong Islamist links. Aiman Adlbi, who was re-elected as president of the organization in 2024 and presides over the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain (UCIDE), was part of a network that financed Al Qaeda in Syria, according to Spanish police, El País reported.
According to the report, Adlbi recommends to his students at the Central Mosque in Madrid, texts by the Muslim Brotherhood cleric and professor of Islamic Law, Umar Sulaiman Al-Ashqar. In a chapter in the book Reclaiming Islamic Tradition: Modern Interpretations of the Classical Heritage, Islamic scholar Christian Lange describes how Al-Ashqar was jailed for several months and later expelled from Saudi Arabia for suspected membership of the Islamist organization Hizb al-Tahrir, which aspires to establish a global Islamic caliphate. Al-Ashqar’s extremism is tied to his affirmation of an obscure hadith which claims that there are seventy-three confessional groups (firaq) in Islam, of which only one goes to paradise.
“Adlbi has among his religious figures radical Salafi-Wahhabi preachers,” a 102-page police report obtained by the Spanish newspaper stated.
Police arrested Adlbi in March 2021 for raising thousands of euros for al-Qaeda militants in Syria from the Central Mosque of Madrid. The Operation WAMOR investigation is the largest jihadist terrorist financing network in Spain, according to a 2022 report on the Muslim Brotherhood in Spain, published by the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.
The funds, disguised as donations to orphans, were routed through the Turkish NGO Al Bashaer. The money intended for orphans went to martyrs, detainees, and widows of jihadist fighters in the Syrian region of Ghouta. The cash came from CIE and other Islamic associations based in the Madrid Mosque, including the Muslim Association of Spain (AME).
The report revealed that former CIE president Riay Tatary also maintained close ideological ties to Syria’s Islamic Vanguard and was among the first Brotherhood members who founded the Muslim Association of Spain.
Evangelicals Support Muslim Right to Public Worship Spaces
Catholic leaders were not the only Christians who allied themselves with Islamists against the Jumilla resolution. Writing for Evangelical Focus, X. Manuel Suárez, secretary general of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance, argued that “there is nothing to prevent any municipal government from taking such a decision, provided that it is implemented in an objective and non-discriminatory manner.”
Suárez, however, objected to the motion, urging the government to promote activities that “defend our identity and protect the traditional religious values and expressions in our country,” because “it assumes that there is only one church, the Roman Catholic Church.”
The Muslims “now have an opportunity to prove that their complaint is not pure opportunism: they should publicly present the same complaints in their Muslim-culture countries, demanding the same freedoms and use of public facilities for evangelicals, Jews, and Catholics,” he stressed.
Speaking to FWI, Duane Alexander Miller, an Islamic scholar who is a professor at the Evangelical Faculty of Theology in Spain, observed that “many Catholics and Evangelicals in Spain have a romanticized, unrealistic vision of the history of Islam in Spain.”
“They focus on the time of la Convivencia (coexistence), which is an idealized time when Muslims and Christians are supposed to have gotten on together well, but historically it is not correct. I think this is the only way I can explain why Catholics and Evangelicals would support these Islamist groups,” Miller remarked.
National Government Objects
On August 11, the Spanish government announced that it had “sent a request to the Jumilla City Council in Murcia to annul the motion that prevents the holding of events that the Muslim community has been carrying out for years.” Judging from the response of Vox, one of the parties that supported the measure, an annulment is unlikely.
“Jumilla makes history. Thanks to @vox_es, the first measure in Spain is approved that prevents the celebration of Islamic festivals in public spaces. Spain is and will always be a land of Christian roots!” Vox posted on X.
