Backlash fears
Community fears growth of anti-Islam sentiment after attacks
Since the van attack, Muslims fear anti-Islam sentiment in tolerant Barcelona.
BaRcELONa: Prayer time approaches but Raja Miah, imam to a tiny mosque in the heart of Barcelona, expects no big turnout.
Since the attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils claimed by the Islamic State, the Muslim community in the neighbourhood of Raval fears a backlash.
“People are very scared,” said Miah, 23, as he sat in the mosque in Raval as a group of children studied the Quran.
Raval – whose name derives from the Arabic word for “neighbourhood” – is located just west of Barcelona’s bustling Las Ramblas boulevard where a van ploughed into pedestrians on Thursday, killing 13 and injuring dozens.
Just hours later, another died in a similar attack in the holiday town of Cambrils, where police shot five suspects dead.
“People don’t go out. Very few come to pray. Normally we are about 40 people; last night we weren’t even 15 and this morning 10,” said Miah, who moved to Barcelona nine years ago from Bangladesh.
Spain’s Muslims have until now been spared the Islamophobia that swept parts of Europe.
Far-right parties remain barely visible and only four percent of Spaniards consider immigration to be a problem, according to a survey by the government’s Centre for Sociological Research (CIS).
But the string of attacks in Europe, claimed by the Islamic State, sparked a rise in hate incidents.
The number of cases jumped from just 48 in 2014 to 534 in 2015, according to the Citizens’ Platform Against Islamophobia. Muslims fear it will get worse. “Spaniards treat us well, they help us, they make us feel at home,” said Miah.
But just minutes after the attack in Barcelona, he said he could feel that something was changing.
When he fled the Ramblas area in the wake of the attacks, he was stopped by police.
“It’s normal, they saw me with my beard and robe. But you feel bad,” he said.
“We fear the same will happen here as in France or Britain,” said Islam Zahid, 22, who runs a small supermarket in Raval.
About 100 of Barcelona’s Muslims, many of them tearful, gathered on Las Ramblas on Saturday to demonstrate against the attacks.
Marzouk Rouj, a 39-year-old Moroccan construction worker who went to the demonstration with his daughter, said the bloodshed left him “shattered”.
“My children go to school here and I don’t want people to look at them negatively because of some barbarians,” said Rouj, who moved from Morocco when he was just 16.
“In the end, Muslims are victims, for the deaths as well as for social pressure,” said Xantal Genovart, vice president of the Association of Catalan Muslim women.
But initial signs are encouraging. A small group of anti-Islam protesters in Las Ramblas on Friday left after passers-by began to shout “No racists” at them. — AFP