The proposal mainly aims to treat major religions on equal footing

CAIRO, July 26, (IslamOnline.net) - Spain is discussing a bill to subsidize mosques in the country, in a bid to control financing from radical groups abroad, according a US daily Monday, July 26.

The bill reflects a rife convention among Spanish counterterrorism officials that the mosques are more open to the influences of fundamentalist groups, the International Herald Tribune said.

The proposal is mainly aimed at treating major religions in Spain on equal footing with the Catholic Church, which receives state funding upon an agreement reached with the Vatican in 1979, the paper said.

The funding of the Catholic Church has caused constitutional controversy in Spain , because it is theoretically temporary and originally dedicated to help the church only until it could support itself, according to legal scholars.

Extensions have been repeatedly granted to go on with the funding. The current extension expires at the end of 2005.

Last year, the Catholic Church received about $170 million from the government, according to the daily.

Foreign Funding

The proposal is also meant to seal off mosques from the influence of groups Spain see as extremists in other countries.

“It's about keeping them from having to look outside for financing because the state does not, in a way, support their activities,” Antonio Camacho, the secretary of state security, told the paper.

Jesús Nuñez Villaverde, director of the Institute for the Study of Conflicts and Humanitarian Action, for his part, urged the government to exert more efforts to restrict religious expression, that is funded through government channels.

“The state must do more to dilute the presence of fundamentalist religious expression that is financed through its own channels, and for which we have not one single instrument of influence, contact, or association.”

Most of financing for the Spanish mosques comes from Saudi Arabia and Morocco , but the money is difficult to be tracked, according to the newspaper.

“Significant financing for Spanish mosques comes from Saudi Arabia and Morocco , but the money trails are difficult to track”, a Justice official said.

For his part, Riay Tatary, secretary general of the Islamic Commission of Spain, questioned whether mosques relied on money from extremist groups abroad.

“Normally, they are financed by the worshipers,” he said.

“Saudi Arabia had financed the construction of some of the mosques in Spain, but that it no longer provided them with money," a spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy, Brigitte Scheffer, told the paper.

Criticism

The proposal had drawn a storm of criticism from Islamic leaders and civil liberties groups when was put forward by the Spanish government in last May.

The bill suggested that the Spanish laws needed to be changed to allow the government to monitor the religious sermons.

“As we are in Spain , it would be recommendable that they preach in Spanish,” a Justice official said.

“Not the prayers, which should be in Arabic in accordance with the norms of the religion,” he said. “But the sermons, yes.”

Morocco had offered to help Spain monitor mosques and pick imams in a bid to end "internal problems of extremism" in Spain .

Spain has a Muslim community of about 500,000 people out of a total population of 42 million.

Europe has recently seen a wave of expelling imams for allegedly adopting a "radical" religious discourse.