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Granada
Ethnicizing Islam in Contexts of Religious Pluralism:
the process of ethno-religious community formation in the Albayzín neighbourhood of Granada (Spain)
F. Javier Rosón Lorente & Gunther Dietz,
Universidad de Granada

fjroson@ugr.es & gdietz@ugr.es

Abstract:
In the last years, in the Andalusian city of Granada, formerly home of the Nazarí dynasty and mythical symbol of the Al Andalus experiment of religious coexistence, two different, but converging processes have been perceived inside local public opinion as expression of a "return of Islam": On the one hand, in the last fifteen years, not only Granada, but Spain in general has experienced a remarkable increase in its immigrant population, among which Maghrebien Muslims make up a significant percentage. On the other hand, and parallel to that, a limited, but significant tendency to conversion to the Islamic religion has been observable in Andalusian cities like Granada and Cordoba since the end of the Franco regime. In the face of these two phenomena, anti-Islamic and anti-"Moorish" attitudes prevail in large sectors of local Catholic majority society. We hold that these attitudes in fact are deeply-rooted and nothing else than historically transmitted stigmatisations of "the other". As ethnographic evidence from the historic Albayzín "Arabic neighbourhood" and particularly from the local struggles on its intangible heritage, its visibilization and recognition shows, the process of religious pluralization is increasingly being "ethnicized" both by long established Catholic residents and by new Muslim neighbours: Paradoxically, old, but increasingly open "islamophobia" expressed by neighbourhood associations, Catholic institutions and local politicians coincides with "islamophilic" attempts at "orientalizing" the neighbourhood by emphasizing its tangible as well as intangible Andalusí heritage - both tend to treat the public and visible reappearance of Islam not as an expression of religious diversity, but in ethnically dichotomous terms. "Us" vs. "them" categories start to structure the local community formation process of Moroccan migrant communities, of Spanish Muslim communities and of Catholic albaicinero associations and networks. In this paper, building on ethnographic interviews and participant observations compiled throughout our MedVoices Granada project, this complex process of community formation will be analyzed in relation to self-ascribed and externally ascribed "ethnic markers", which are increasingly structuring inter-group relations in the neighbourhood and their struggles on the definition and "ownership" of their shared cultural heritage - and which in the future will challenge intercultural and interreligious relations inside Granada and Spain, in general

Format: academic paper presentation

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