Barcelona’s Muslims deliver unequivocal message: not in my name
The countless tapas bars and souvenir shops that make up Barcelona’s most famous street start to disappear and are replaced with kebab restaurants and tiny bodega stores. Mosques and Islamic centres begin to outnumber churches and women with uncovered heads become the minority.This is El Raval, a gritty district right in the centre of the city which is home to most of Barcelona’s Muslim community. Its name comes from the Arabic word for neighbourhood and it has been referred to by some in the right-wing press as Barcelona’s Molenbeek, after the district in Brussels which has become synonymous with Islamist terrorism.Even a short visit shows this to be inaccurate and unfair. As well as hosting a large immigrant community (nearly 50 per cent), El Raval is also home to hipster clothes shops and art galleries. Some outlying parts are becoming quickly gentrified, and rents are rising rapidly, much to the annoyance of the families living there.Residents also point out that this Muslim community is well integrated into Catalan life and that none of the suspects in last week’s terror attacks came from the district despite it being located less than a kilometre from the site of most of the killing.“Everywhere you look there are Muslims and non-Muslims. We live together, there is no other choice,” said Tahir, a waiter in a Tandoori restaurant in the area.Of course, there are others who believe this is a rose-tinted view of the situation in Catalonia, a region home to a quarter of Spain’s 1.9 million Muslims. At the weekend the right-wing newspaper La Razon carried an opinion piece calling Catalonia “the capital of Salafism in Spain”. It also accused local Muslims of being blasé in the face of terrorism from their co-religionists.
allah