Muslims fear anti-Islam backlash in tolerant Barcelona
BARCELONA: Prayer time is approaching but Raja Miah, an imam at a tiny mosque in the heart of Barcelona, does not expect a big turnout.
Since the twin attacks in Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils claimed by the Daesh group, the Muslim community in central Barcelona’s neighborhood of Raval fears an antiIslam backlash.
“People are very scared,” said Miah, 23, as he sat in a small room at the mosque in Raval as a small group of children in an adjoining room studied the Qur’an.
Raval — whose name derives from the Arabic word for neighborhood — is located just west of Barcelona’s bustling Las Ramblas boulevard, where a van plowed into pedestrians on Thursday, killing 13 and injuring dozens of others. Just hours later, another person died in a similar attack in the holiday town of Cambrils, where police shot five suspects dead.
“There is a lot of fear, people don’t go out. Very few people 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 Muslim community has until now been spared from the Islamophobia that has swept parts of Europe.
Far-right parties remain barely visible and just 4 percent of Spaniards consider immigration to be a problem, according to a survey by the government’s Center for Sociological Research (CIS).
But the string of attacks in Europe, claimed by Daesh, has sparked a rise in hate incidents.
The number of recorded cases jumped from just 48 in 2014 to 534 in 2015, according to a campaign group, the Citizens’ Platform Against Islamophobia.
And Muslims fear it will get worse following the twin attacks.
The narrow and normally noisy streets of Raval were silent on Saturday morning.
Immigrants account for roughly half of the densely-populated neighborhood’s population, with a huge number of people from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Morocco.
“(The) 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 and they stopped me. But you feel bad,” he said.
“We fear that the same will happen here as in France, Britain or other places” where far-right parties have grown strongly in recent years, said Islam Zahid, 22, who runs a small supermarket in the back streets of Raval. Children could be heard playing football in the background.