Islam versus Europe

The Moroccan government has reportedly developed "a strategy of great magnitude" to retain its influence on Moroccan residents living in Spain by using Islam as a binding factor, a confidential report by Spanish intelligence sources concludes.

"Designed and developed by the regime, the objective is to extend its influence and increase its control over Moroccan communities by using Islam as an excuse," reads the report signed in May by the director of the Center for National Intelligence (CNI), Félix Sanz Roldán.

The Spanish Justice and Interior Ministries also agreed with the CNI that the Rabat government wants to control its 760,000 Moroccan citizens "to detect movements opposed to the regime," according to another report that was signed in 2009.

The reports, accessed by EL PAÍS, also cite the importance of the Morocco government in keeping any fundamental Islamist movements from gaining ground in the North African nation.

In the report, entitled Muslims and Muslim Communities in Spain , both the Justice and Interior Ministries are highly critical about the Moroccan-language and cultural classes given in hundreds of schools and paid for by the Hassan II Foundation.

The classes, according to the report, obstruct the integration of the children of Moroccan immigrants into Spanish society. "It is a tool to teach the children of immigrants how to become a Moroccan and not a Spaniard."

Source: El Pais

This article was published in English on El Pais. Note the translation they use is "communities". The original Spanish report says not communities, but "colonies":

Diseñada y desarrollada por el régimen, su objetivo es extender su influencia e incrementar el control sobre las colonias marroquíes utilizando la excusa de la religión.

Designed and developed by the regime, its objective is to extend its influence and increase its control over the Moroccan colonies, using religion as the excuse.

In November 2008, the Moroccan government financed a summit in Marrakesh, to which were summoned Moroccan imams from around Europe. They were promised money for their associations and mosques as long as they obeyed the directives of the Moroccan government.

The Dutch government protested officially about this interference in its domestic affairs but the Spanish government declined to do the same.

The report criticises the schooling for Moroccan immigrants in Spain that is sponsored by the Moroccan state:

"The peripheral character of the classes (outside school hours and with pupils consisting entirely of the sons of Moroccan immigrants), teachers who are exclusively Moroccan and the use of materials and education that is typical of Morocco, but very different from what is used in Spain, are elements that contribute to these young people profoundly internalising a sense of difference" from the Spanish population.

Source: El Pais