Is It a Muslim's Duty to Reconquer Spain? (Al-Andalus)

[Jesus_Mohammed]

(Since I'm talking about war-making and occupation, I posted this in the Politics Forum instead of the Religion Forum.)





I pose this narrow question because I think it has ramifications in other parts of the world besides the Iberian Peninsula.



The Muslims conquered Spain. Spain became Dar al-Islam. Then the Muslim forces, after 8 centuries, were driven out of Spain.



Is it correct that Spain forever belongs to Islam?



And, if so, isn't it every Muslim's duty to retake Spain? Doesn't this fit one of the criteria for a military jihad?



There were reports that this was an aim of the March 11th Madrid bombings.



Does Spain belong to Islamdom and should Muslims be meeting Catholics on the battlefields of Al-Andalus to regain what they had claimed for Allah?





Interesting, though long and wide-ranging, article: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040802fa_fact" target="_blank">http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040802fa_fact</a>

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[Jesus_Mohammed]

The "Reconquista" is what the Spaniards called their anti-Moor jihad.

While your post certainly has a strong point of view, I hope it doesn't steer readers away from the original question.

Rather than a response you provided a strong reaction. I hope others do not simply "react" to you. I hope they rather address the question.

Thanks.

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[Panoramic]

Re: Is It a Muslim's Duty to Reconquer Spain? (Al-Andalus)

im a muslim and its not my duty..
question addressed.

[Jesus_Mohammed]

Panoramic, is that a personal position or is it upheld by Islamic doctrain?

[Panoramic]

J_M
your question was: is it a muslim's duty?
I being a muslim can say that it is not my duty, in other words i was told what my duties are and no one ever told me that it is my duty to reconquer Spain.
read the Quran and Sunna and again nothing there says I should reconquer Spain.

The question: is this upheld by islamic doctrain, is similar to asking: is invading Iraq part of the American contitution.

however it becomes my duty to Defend my fellow muslims if it turned out that they are being opressed.
so if you take Kosovo as an example where thousands of muslims were being killed for their religion then yes it was every capeable muslim's duty to go and Defend his brothers and sisters.

[marianna]

As a direct descendant from Spainards I would say that there would be no factual basis for reconquoring Spain and think if anyone would toy with the idea of doing so would be on a suicide mission because the Spanish are very patrotic and passionate about their country and customs.

[Jesus_Mohammed]

Has Spain (al-Andalus) lost its status as "Dar al-Islam"?

I have no doubt that when you "read the Quran and Sunna" that there is "nothing there says I should reconquer Spain" per se, as those texts came in being before the Reconqista.

But "when you read the Quran and Sunna" does iot tell you that once land has been conquered for Islam that it belongs forever to Islam and military jihad should be waged to regain it if challenged or lost?


Perhaps the context of my question has been unclear. The following is a five-paragraph quotation from the article I linked my original post to:

In the ruins, police found twenty-two pounds of Goma-2 and two hundred copper detonators that were similar to those used in the train bombings. They also found the shredded remains of a videotape. These fragments were painstakingly reassembled, to the point where police could view the final statement of Fakhet and two other members of the cell, which called itself “the brigade situated in Al Andalus.” Unless Spanish troops left Iraq within a week, the men had declared, “we will continue our jihad until martyrdom in the land of Tariq ibn Ziyad.”

Al Andalus is the Arabic name for the portion of Spain that fell to Muslim armies after the invasion by the Berber general Tariq ibn Ziyad in 711. It includes not only the southern region of Andalusia, but most of the Iberian Peninsula. For the next eight hundred years, Al Andalus remained in Islamic hands. “You know of the Spanish crusade against Muslims, and that not much time has passed since the expulsion from Al Andalus and the tribunals of the Inquisition,” Fakhet says on the tape. He is referring to 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella completed the reconquest of Spain, forcing Jews and Muslims to convert to Catholicism or leave the Iberian Peninsula. “Blood for blood!” he shouts. “Destruction for destruction!”

Were these the true goals of Al Qaeda? Were the besieged terrorists in Leganés simply struggling to get Spain out of Iraq, or were they also battling to regain the lost colonies of Islam? In other words, were these terrorists who might respond to negotiation or appeasement, or were they soldiers in a religious fight to the finish that had merely been paused for five hundred years?

Less than a month after 9/11, Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, had appeared on Al Jazeera. “We will not accept that the tragedy of Al Andalus will be repeated in Palestine,” Zawahiri said, drawing an analogy between the expulsion of the Moors from Iberia and the present-day plight of the Palestinians. The use of the archaic name Al Andalus left most Spaniards nonplussed. “We took it as a folkloric thing,” Ramón Pérez-Maura, an editor at ABC, told me. “We probably actually laughed.” This January, bin Laden issued a “Message to the Muslim People,” which was broadcast on Al Jazeera. He lamented the decline of the Islamic world: “It is enough to know that the economy of all Arab countries is weaker than the economy of one country that had once been part of our world when we used to truly adhere to Islam. That country is the lost Al Andalus.”

[...]

Imams sometimes invoke the glory of Al Andalus in Friday prayers as a reminder of the price that Muslims paid for turning away from the true faith. When I asked Moneir el-Messery, of the M-30 mosque, if the Madrid bombers could have been motivated by the desire to recapture Al Andalus, he looked up sharply and said, “I can speak of the feeling of all Muslims. It was a part of history. We were here for eight centuries. You can’t forget it, ever.”

<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040802fa_fact" target="_blank">http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040802fa_fact</a>

[allahdas]

It was a duty of Muslims of that era. Now history is history.

Linking Alkaida & other terrorist activities on this account is part of propoganda war to create hatred among Europens to achieve their greater goal of alienating Muslims from West.

But Muslims cannote forget their glorious past & humaliating defeat, masscre & explusion by the Crusaders from Andulus.

When you think of European culture, one of the first things that may come to your mind is the renaissance. Many of the roots of European culture can be traced back to that glorious time of art, science, commerce and architecture. But did you know that long before the renaissance there was a place of humanistic beauty in Muslim Spain? Not only was it artistic, scientific and commercial, but it also exhibited incredible tolerance, imagination and poetry. Moors, as the Spaniards call the Muslims, populated Spain for nearly 700 years. As you'll see, it was their civilization that enlightened Europe and brought it out of the dark ages to usher in the renaissance. Many of their cultural and intellectual influences still live with us today.

Way back during the eighth century, Europe was still knee-deep in the Medieval period. That's not the only thing they were knee-deep in. In his book, "The Day The Universe Changed," the historian James Burke describes how the typical European townspeople lived

[Jesus_Mohammed]

"It was a duty of Muslims of that era. Now history is history."

So the concept of holding and regaining "Dar al-Islam" is no longer applicable today?


"Linking Alkaida & other terrorist activities on this account is part of propoganda war..."

Whose propaganda war? Who is doing the linking? I get the impression you're saying the Spaniards are doing the linking but in this case I believe it is the other way around. Please refer to the article I quoted.


"...masscre & explusion by the Crusaders from Andulus."

I think that would be "crusaders" with a small "c." They were not THE Crusaders. There were the native people pushing out the foreigners, the Muslim Moors, right?


Inspiration for the Renaissance are profoundly misunderstood - maybe covered up? - in the West. However, it is not the question I am enquiring about here. (It is also discussed in teh full text of the article I quoted.)

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[allahdas]

Muslims-Moors- are not foreigners, they are in fact Spanish Muslims consist of Arabs, Berbers & native Spanish people.

We have to blame themselves for their failure , as they divided in small kingdoms & fought each other. Even some of them supported to their Christina rivals to defeat to their Muslim rival.

Fore the example of their rivalry, please read :

“ In the year, 1276, the Castilian armies were again twice defeated, in February at Alcoy and in the following July at Lucena. To add to their troubles, King James of Aragon died at Valencia in 1276. Sancho of Castile sought to depose his father Alfonso, at Valladolid. All was in confusion among the Christians; and had it not been for the defection of Yusuf of Morocco, the tide of fortune might have turned in favor of Islam. As it was, the African monarch not only abandoned his cousin of Granada, but he was actually persuaded to send one hundred thousand ducats to his Christian rival at Seville in 1280.

The value of this assistance was soon felt. Tarifa was taken in 1292, and the progress of the Moor was checked forever in Southern Spain. Mohammed II. died in 1332, and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed III., who was usually considered by the Moslem historians to have been the ablest monarch of his house. But he reigned for only seven years, and he was unable to defend Gibraltar from the assaults of his Christian rivals.”

[Jesus_Mohammed]

I'm sorry, but Arabs and Berbers were foreigners in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire there when the Muslim Empire swept in and filled the power vacuum.



History refers to them as the "Moors," perhaps deriving from "Mauritania" linguistrs have claimed, though there is also the suggestion of Morocco, though we have to consider which words existed at that time, not now.



Please give at least a link for your quotation. I am assuming that it is excerpted from Archibald Wilberforce, Spain and Her Colonies (New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1898), pp. 28-57.



Yes, that is eighteen-ninety-eight.