World Bulletin / News Desk

Spain's first Islamic party is pareparing to run in 2001's local elections in a goal to achieve representation for Muslims in administrations of municipalities, the Spanish media said earlier this week.

The Renaissance and Union of Spain Party, promoted by Mustafa Barrach, a former journalist and Arabic professor in Granada, is close to Rabat, ANSAmed a Spanish newspaper as saying.

Barrach insists he is a moderate and insists that he supports the Constitution and is Spanish national.

"Rebirth and Union is a party for Muslims but also for ethnic minorities and immigrants: "Brother, sister, go one with the rebirth and the liberation, the consideration of what your situation is and meditate about it. You have to trust in yourself first and afterwards in your party to make your voice heard in the higher places,"" he said.

"The moment has come, Spanish Muslim, Arab, African immigrant and non-immigrant to free yourself from humiliation."

Member of the Al Hegira Muslim community and treasurer of the Spanish Islamic Council, Barrak aspires to gathering not only votes from the nearly 1,300,000 Muslim residents in Spain but also from immigrants who represent 10% of the Spanish population.

Moriscos is what the 300,000 Muslims are called who stayed on the Iberian peninsula after the expulsion of the Catholic kings and were forced to convert to Christianity and then banished for good in 1609. In the internal gazette, the organisation expounds a clearly national vocation not only for consolidation in one area or autonomous region and considers Islam the base of its principals in political activities, a determining factor for the moral and ethical regeneration of Spanish society.

In October 2006, the Andalusian Parliament asked the three parliamentary groups that form the majority to support an amendment that would ease the way for morisco descendants to gain Spanish citizenship.

Islam is the second largest religion in Spain, accounting for approximately 2.3% of the total population.

According to conservative ABC newspaper, the government does not hide a certain worry, since there are currently 1,300,000 resident Muslims in the country including Spanish converts and immigrants from Islamic countries of which there are 700,000 from Morocco. But there could be more than two million if illegal immigrants are counted.