IS released a new propaganda video where it says it wants to restore “al-Andalus” – a word for Muslim-ruled areas of Spain and Portugal in the Middle Ages.
This video emerged a week after the fatal attack in Barcelona.
According to a report by Public Radio International (
PRI), the video combines excerpts from news reports with music and comments from IS fighters speaking in Arabic and — for the first time — in Spanish.
A Spanish speaker in combat fatigues says: "With God's permission, al-Andalus will once again be the land of the caliphate."
Al-Andalus
Less than 80 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Muslim invasion of Spain began at Gibraltar in 711 AD. Prior to this, Muslim armies overthrew Christian and pagan kingdoms and territories in North Africa.
Spain and Portugal were no different. The emirs gained control over Portugal and most of Spain, leaving a few mountainous districts of the far north. They later invaded France until “famously checked at Poitiers” in 732 AD.
Politics, arts and culture
Under the Muslim rule, the people of any territory were “more or less allowed to continue to practice their faith.”
However, non-Muslims had to pay additional taxes and were treated “as second-class citizens and often denied civil rights.”
A list of other things happen during that time: conversion was encouraged but not forced, wholesale massacres and forced displacement were not widespread after the conquest.
Christianity was allowed, and a significant immigration of Jewish people from elsewhere in the Mediterranean was also encouraged.
Local politics were often more important than faith, and Christian lords could serve Muslim emirs when their interests coincided, and vice versa, PRI says.
According to PRI: “Córdoba in southern Spain became the capital of its own state, initially an emirate, and then its own caliphate ruled by a family dynasty known as the Umayyads. The city thrived and became a locus of art, literature, architecture, science and culture, while the rest of Europe was struggling through what is popularly known as the Dark Ages. Much of the science and literature of ancient Rome was preserved thanks to the efforts of scholars in Córdoba, Seville and Granada.”
This era is considered “a golden age for Islam” – when similar transformations in civilization also took place in Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo.
Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times said: “It’s this golden age that ISIS is trying to re-create. So, they often harken back to the old words that were used by the early Muslims for these territories.”
Rukimini added: “It goes to this idea that they are bringing back an old Islamic era, a golden age, and that they are going to restore the dignity of Muslims — at least in their eyes.”
For the Iberian Peninsula, the golden age was challenged by Christian kingdoms in the north aggressively “seeking to gain ground, and then by internal differences.”
By 1031, the Umayyad dynasty collapsed, and eventually, the local emirs gained power in smaller successor states.
This was also the era of the crusades.
The smaller Muslim states were “less able to contain their Christian rivals” in the north.
Christians gained control over Córdoba in 1236. By 1249 the emirs only controlled Granada.
Granada later fell in 1492 which was the same year Christopher Columbus sailed to America for the first time.
End of La Reconquista, beginning of Spanish Inquisition
The Spanish has a name for the 700-year struggle to fight Muslim rule “La Reconquista” (The Reconquest). It is still remembered in re-enactments and ceremonies by the southerners.
Later the Spanish Inquisition took place. This is when the tolerance in the region faded, and the persecution of non-Catholics began. This event is mainly remembered in Europe and the West for the persecution of Jews and not Muslims who were also as vulnerable.
Persecution took place sporadically till the early 1600s when the Spanish authorities enforced a policy of “absolute intolerance.”
Vicious cycle of 'victimhood'
The new policy brought about the ban of Arabic. Moriscos were ordered to be deported, and their properties were seized.
Scores of people were driven out. However, many opted to remain – while others who had to leave, returned later.
After this point in time, anyone caught to be practising any faith other than Catholic Christianity – in the region – faced “the risk of torture, imprisonment and death.”
Ironically, slaves were not obliged to convert.
By 1727, sentences were less severe and it was also when the last mass prosecution for “crypto-Muslim” practices took place.
These persecutions along with more recent ones around the world are used by IS and jihadis in their propaganda.
Rukimini said: “They play that up so they can have a narrative of victimhood, which draws people to their cause.”
Spanish social media users, however, took it on themselves to react to the IS video that threatens their country – with a multitude of derisive memes and cartoons.
