Aznar's speech was dismissed as carrying a "crusade tone and spirit."

CAIRO — Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar was criticized Sunday, September 24, for trying to strain already tense relations between Islam and the West after he openly backed Pope Benedict XVI in associating Islam with violence.

"Aznar's remarks are pouring oil on troubled waters," Ali Al-Raisouni, the head of the Islamic Dawa organization and Secretary General of the UN-backed and Spanish-sponsored Alliance of Civilizations, told IslamOnline.net.

The pope sparked outrage across the Muslim world with a speech in his native Germany on September 12, in which he quoted a medieval Christian emperor as saying some of the Prophet Muhammad's teachings were "evil and inhuman."

"Aznar's remarks stir up hatreds," Raisouni added. "They also showed how Aznar and his right-wing party that ruled Spain viewed Islam."

Aznar defended Pope Benedict XVI's offensive comments, saying the pontiff had no need to apologize and asking why Muslims never did.

"Why do we always have to say sorry and they never do?" Aznar told the Hudson Institute, an American conservative think-tank based in Washington, D.C., Friday, September 22.

"It is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologize for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries."

Aznar was referring to the Moorish conquest of much of the Iberian Peninsula, which lasted from the eighth to the 15th century.

In 1236, the Spanish Reconquista led to the subjugation of the last Islamic stronghold of Granada under Mohammed Ibn Alhamar to the Christian forces of Ferdinand III of Castile.

In 1492, the last Muslim leader Boabdil of Granada surrendered complete control of the remnants of the last Moorish strongholds to Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.

The Moriscos, the name given to Muslims who were living in Spain after the fall of Granada, were subjected to an array of persecution, torture, mass killings, forced conversions to Christianity, the notorious Spanish Inquisition and mass exodus that started in February 1502.

Aznar, Spain's right-wing prime minister from 1996 to 2004, took the country into the US-led war in Iraq, despite overwhelming public opposition. His government was voted out of office following a terrorist attack in Madrid in March 2004 because of fears that his policies had made Spain more vulnerable to terrorists.

Crusade Tone

Raisouni said Aznar's speech reflected a "crusade tone and spirit."

"The speech brought to the surface the grudges harbored by Aznar towards Islam, which has been a message of peace and love throughout the centuries," he said.

He said Muslims neither invaded nor colonized Spain.

"But the Islamic conquest of Al-Andalus (Spain) had given momentum to human civilization and brought human beings closer as manifested in the historic collections left by the Muslims of Al-Andalus," he explained.

At his Friday's speech, Aznar said: "We are living in a time of war... It's them or us. The West did not attack Islam, it was they who attacked us."

"We must face up to an Islam that is ambitious, that is radical and that influences the Muslim world, a fundamentalist Islam that we must confront because we don't have any choice.

"We are constantly under attack and we must defend ourselves," he said. "I support Ferdinand and Isabella," he proclaimed.

Raisouni said Aznar's remarks came while a galaxy of Arab and Spanish intellectuals were planning from now to throw a huge ceremony in 2011 to mark the 1300th anniversary of the Islamic conquest of Al-Andalus in appreciation of Islam's contributions to Spain.

Orientalists and civilization experts have contended that the West owed much to Muslim intellectuals and scientists at earlier centuries.

Britain's the Guardian newspaper said in a March report that the Islamic civilization has made an enormous but largely neglected contribution to the way people live in the west.

"It [the Islamic civilization] is the thread that links cars, carpets and cameras and is also responsible for three-course meals, bookshops and modern medicine," the paper said.

Muslim organizations in the West have been recently active in organizing a series of exhibitions to dust off Islam's contributions to the West.

The "1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World" exhibition, which opened in London on March 8 and ran through June, uncovered the Islamic civilization's overlooked contribution to science, technology and art during the dark ages in European history.