MADRID: The vast majority of Muslim immigrants to Spain are well integrated in the country even if 27 per cent of them are currently unemployed, according to a government study published on Wednesday.
Fully 70 per cent said they felt “good or very good” in Spain while 81 per cent said they felt they were “well adapted to Spanish life and customs”, the investigation carried out by the Metroscopia social studies institute found.
Of the 2,000 Muslim immigrants polled, 84 said they faced no obstacles to practicing their religion in Spain while 94 per cent said they opposed the use of any of violence to defend religious beliefs. The institute has carried out the study for the government each year since 2006 and the most findings did not differ significantly from the results in other years.
Speaking at a news conference to unveil the results of the study, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said “the recession seems to not to have affected the opinions expressed in this annual survey.”
Spain plunged into its longest and deepest recession at the end of 2008 as the global credit crisis hastened a correction which was already underway in its key property sector.
The downturn caused Spain’s overall unemployment rate to soar to 19 per cent in February, nearly twice the 10 per cent rate of the entire 16-nation euro zone.
The unemployment rate is higher amongst immigrants as they are primarily employed in areas such as construction and the services sector which have been especially hard hit by the recession.
Spain has around 767,000 Muslim immigrants out of a total population of 46 million people. Most Muslim immigrants are from Morocco.
Concern over the beliefs of Spain Muslim immigrants was heightened after the March 11, 2004 train bombings, Europe’s worst Islamist attack, which killed 191 people and injured nearly 2,000 others.
A Spanish court in October 2007 convicted 21 of the 28 defendants, mostly from North Africa, who stood trial in connection with the bombings. They were found guilty on charges ranging from weapons possession to mass murder. The following year Spain’s Supreme Court acquitted four of the 21 on appeal.
Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=233388
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