Spanish Muslim calls for debate on same-sex marriages :: Islam Online

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The shock was not due to the call itself, but rather to the identity of the caller. Abdel Nour Brado, Secretary of the Islamic Commission of Spain, a body created by the Spanish government in 1991 to be the representative of the country’s Muslim minority, made the controversial call.

“Such weird calls for allowing same-sex marriages run counter to Islamic tenets,” Omar Reibas, Secretary of the Catalonian Association for Islamic Studies, told IslamOnline.net Wednesday, April 6, commenting on Brado’s call.

Brado, on the other hand, defended his call to open a debate around the issue among the Muslim minority in Spain, claiming that the call was a direct result to the Spanish law allowing same-sex marriages in the European country.

He also denied he was calling for same-sex marriages among Muslims. “What I’m aiming for is to open dialogue on the issue.”

“My stance on same-sex marriages is a personal viewpoint and has nothing to do with the Islamic Commission of Spain, whose Secretary General Mansur Escudero is against same-sex marriages,” Brado told IOL.
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The Spanish law allowing same-sex marriages was adopted after the Socialist government under Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who held the helm of power in March 2004. The controversial law drew fierce opposition and rebuke from the Spanish rightist opposition parties as well as the Spanish people, according to IOL Correspondent. The law was also condemned by the Spanish writers and journalists as running counter to the human nature. It also caused deterioration in relations between the ruling Socialist Party and the Catholic Church.

According to IOL Correspondent, Brado's call for allowing the same-sex marriage among the Spanish Muslims was part of efforts of the western governments to support what it names "liberal drives among the European Muslims, or what the mass media term as “European Islam”.

Spain has a Muslim community of about 600,000 people out of a total population of 40 million. Some 94 percent of its population are Christian Catholics. The country has recognized Islam through the law of religious freedom, issued in July 1967.