Faith as an instrument of integration among islamic immigrants:

This manuscript has been peer-reviewed, accepted, and endorsed by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) as a significant contribution to the scholarship and practice of education administration. In addition to publication in the Connexions Content Commons, this module is published in the International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, Volume 5, Number 1 (January – March 2010). Formatted and edited in Connexions by Julia Stanka, Texas A&M University.

Faith as an instrument of integration in islamic immigrants: the case of extremadura (spain), a new civilization

Domingo Barbolla Camarero

The present investigation is about the basic support–from the standpoint of religiosity—that Islamic immigrants who arrive to the Independent Community of Extremadura, along with Latin Americans, contribute to the newly arrived workers in Extremadura. The selected theoretical model is different from the one presented by Samuel Huntington, with his mythical book: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). In the mentioned text, Latin American countries are considered as their own civilization and “confronted” with the west –fundamentally as a danger to the U.S. The greatest differences between nations are now cultural rather than political, economic, or ideological. It is still manifested in his text, that the cultures and cultural identities would be shaping the levels of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War period of the world. My position would be more in consonance with authors –like professor Tomás Calvo Buezas–who understand that a new civilization is dawning. The religious contribution of the Latin-American immigrants and the religious experience of Islamic immigrants reinforce Claude Levi-Strauss’ (1973) position—that civilization implies the coexistence of culture—because of the almost 15 years of coexistence of all of them. The sample population will be Islamic immigrants who live in Extremadura—national Moroccans who came from the countryside of Oujda (province in north Morocco—and that as of 1991, were settled in the orography that conforms the Tietar River, which irrigates the cultivation of tobacco in the zone of Talayuela, and the Latin American immigrants who also work in that locality. In Extremadura, 57% of the immigrant population is of Moroccan nationality, concreting a nucleus (more than 50% in the Talayuela zone). The religious experience is deeply marked by the rural surroundings that are similar to their place of origin. This substantively marks their actions; and for that reason, the analysis is centered on these groups which are fervent believers in Allah.