"Spain is the model." An imam says Islam will return, "without mistakes"
From California, the imam sends a clear message: Spain was the beginning. The next step is the return of Islam with more strength than ever.
The cleric Iyad Hilal
YouTube / Memri.org
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On 9 January 2024, the Al-Arqam Institute's YouTube channel published a sermon by Iyad Hilal. He is an Islamic preacher active at the Islamic Center of Inland Valley in Pomona, California. The MEMRI.org portal also disseminated its content. Despite its religious tone, the sermon's message conveyed a strong ideological and political component.
According to Iyad Hilal, The conquest of Spain was not an invasion, but an entry agreed with its inhabitants.. From California, this Islamic preacher argues that the next Muslim generation will impose the power of Allah on a global scale. He claims that «The next generation of Muslims will do well.«.
Spain wasn't conquered, we were let in.
In a recent sermon published on YouTube by the Al-Arqam Institute channel, the Islamist Iyad Hilal — based in California — delivered a forceful message: Muslims have never invaded any territory, nor Spain.. According to him, the Muslim entry into the peninsula in 711 was not a conquest, but rather… a collaboration with the Spanish indigenous population.
To reinforce this version, Hilal asserted that «the Muslims, when they entered Spain, did not invade it. They entered with the help of the indigenous people.» This account, completely at odds with historiographical consensus, It seeks to dismantle the idea of an invasion and present Islam as a liberating and peaceful force..This reinterpretation is not innocent. Spain is used as a symbol of what it was and what it could become again.
From Spain's surrender to the loss of Palestine: two historical “errors”
Hilal did not limit himself to reviewing the history of Al-Andalus. He directly compared the fall of Spain into Christian hands in 1492 with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, by situating both events within the same narrative of the decline of the Islamic world.
According to the preacher, Islam has been too weak, divided and indecisive., both in medieval Spain and in the twentieth-century Near East. And that is why he asserts that The Muslim nation is still looking for a way out of these defeats..
But his vision for the future is clear: “God willing, one day the Muslim nation will lead.”, he said. Although he admits that this is unlikely to happen in his own generation, he insists that “The second generation will indeed have it.”. And when that moment arrives, he says, The same mistakes cannot be repeated..
“This time we won't make a mistake.”
What Hilal proposes is not just a religious restoration, but A political project with a global vocation. The next Muslim generation, according to him, It will have to impose Islamic power on the whole world.. But it will need to be done with more strategic intelligence than in the past.
That is why he insists that we must “understand what went wrong” when Spain was lost, or when the Arab countries “handed over territories” to Israel. The aim is to literally build, mechanisms of “checks and balances” within the Islamic world so as not to fail again.
Hilal is clear when he states that What is intended is not any form of nationalism, but to impose the “superiority of the word of Allah.”. This discourse leaves no room for pluralism or for coexistence between religions or cultures. It is a proposal for total domination.
Islamism is projected onto the West… and recalls Spain
The fact that this speech was delivered in California is no small detail. Hilal speaks from the United States, but directs his message to the entire Islamic world.. And it does so with a frightening clarity: The glorious past of Al-Andalus must be the precedent for an even more powerful future..
Spain thus becomes, the test case of a “well-received” Islam that was allowed to be lost through a lack of religious leadership and strategic vision. And Palestine represents the second chapter of this Islamic “tragedy” which, according to him, must be redeemed.
Thus, Entry into Spain was not a conquest, but a pact. The exit, an avoidable defeat. And the future, an opportunity that cannot be missed.
The narrative gains strength
It's all part of a An Islamist narrative that is gaining ground in certain radical circles.. A narrative that seeks to present Islam as a historical victim, but also as an actor ready to reclaim leadership. This narrative It does not call for integration, but for the restoration of a global religious order.. And it does so by using symbolic references such as Spain, Al-Andalus and Palestine, with an emotional charge that connects with young people who feel uprooted or humiliated.
When an imam proclaims that “Spain is the model” and “this time we won't get it wrong”, is not doing a simple historical analysis. It is Outlining an ideological strategy for the future. And silence in the face of these discourses only contributes to their expansion.
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