The Government loses its interlocutor with the Muslim community

The death by COVID-19 of the president of the Islamic Commission of Spain (ICE), Riay Tatary Bakry, leaves the Spanish Government without a voice in the eyes of the two million Muslims in Spain. Tatary, a doctor of Syrian origin, represented to the Administration a moderate, dialogic and pragmatic Islam. 

The Islamic Commission of Spain, situated at the top of the pyramid of organisations representing the followers of this religious belief, has for years been a mutual society responsible for distributing goods and benefits granted by the Spanish Government to meet the socio-economic needs of its members, while at the same time it has been a retaining wall against the most demanding currents of Islam, radical or otherwise, to which the vast majority of Muslims living in Spain adhere. 

According to the statistics handled by the Spanish Administration, the vast majority of Muslims living in Spain are of Moroccan origin, many with Spanish nationality and others only resident. Within this majority of believers, there are two main currents: the followers of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) that governs in Morocco and the Justice and Charity movement (Ahl ual Ihsan), which is tolerated in Morocco and has massive support from activists and the faithful. The Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities (FEERI), led by Mounir Benjelloune, who represents them, was at the head of the Islamic Commission of Spain for a time, together with the UCIDE of Riay Tatary, until the government intervened to marginalise the Moroccan representatives, who were uncomfortable for Madrid because of their critical attitude towards the Moroccan monarchy, and indomitable. 

The attitude of the Spanish Executive to privilege Tatary's followers to the detriment of Benjelloune’s supporters was, however, not well seen by the Spanish anti-terrorist services, since the Imam of the Madrid mosque, Riay Tatary, was suspected of links with Al-Qaeda cells, while the position of the Moroccan Islamist followers of Justice and Charity was clearly one of condemnation of terrorism.

In some Spanish intelligence circles, it is believed that the best formula for the future of the Islamic Commission of Spain is to return to co-chairmanship between its two subsidiary organizations: the FEERI of Benjelloune’s and the UCIDE, Tatary's heir. 

Because the current question is: what will be the role that the organization of Spanish Muslims will play in the post-COVID-19? Once the state of health emergency is over, the pending questions will be rethought: the future of the immigrants without papers, of which a great part are Muslims; the undocumented minors; the socio-professional participation of the Muslims in the reconstruction after the crisis, and the role of the religious organizations in the necessary changes that will be introduced in the legislation and in the Constitution that will be reformulated after the crisis. If the Government chooses to continue with the marginalisation of the Moroccans of Justice and Charity, who are in the majority in Catalonia and the Spanish Levant, only independence supporters would benefit. Interestingly, the Muslims of Spain, a little less than 5% of the population, can be a factor of cohesion of the nation, and not a source of divergence.