This article explores the efforts of Muslims, particularly European converts and Moroccan immigrants, to represent Islam in southern Spain. It examines Muslims' different representational strategies; their debates about representation; and related tensions between converts and immigrants regarding religious authenticity, representational authority, and social inequalities. The article contributes to understandings of Islam in Europe by examining how Muslims' representational practices unfold in Andalusia, a social context shaped by both pan-European, secular concerns about Islam, and a longstanding local tradition that both shuns and celebrates Spain's Muslim heritage. The author argues that converts' and immigrants' different placement in Spanish racialized imaginaries of Islam, uneven access to romantic historical narratives of Muslim Spain, and distinct structural positions in Spain's political economy converge to produce an unequal multiculturalism. This is expressed in converts' and immigrants' racial, gendered, and class-based anxieties about representing Islam in Spain. [immigration, conversion, Islam, Europe, minorities, representation]ABSTRACTO Este artículo investiga las diferentes motivaciones y estrategías utilizadas por musulmanes, tanto conversos Europeos como inmigrantes Marroquíes, para dar una buena imágen del Islam en la ciudad de Granada, España. A través de una descripción etnográfica de sus diversas prácticas de representación, el autor analiza varias cuestiones que dividen la población musulmana en Granada, sobre quiénes protegen la autenticidad religiosa y quiénes tienen la autoridad de representar el Islam en Andalucía. Estas discusiones entre musulmanes conversos e inmigrantes reflejan las desigualdades entre ellos, y sus diferentes posiciones dentro de las estructuras políticas, sociales, y económicas en Granada. Además, resultan de las distintas maneras en las que los conversos y los inmigrantes son vistos y tratados en Granada, una ciudad en que opiniones sobre el Islam han sido siempre influidos por una dualidad de la memoria histórica local, en la que se celebra y se huye a la vez del pasado musulmán de Granada.
This article explores encounters between Andalusian NGO workers and immigrant clients in southern Spain. It traces how local ambivalence about pluralism, rooted in long‐standing debates about the legacy of Andalusia's medieval Muslim past, produces both inclusion and exclusion of migrants. On the one hand, Andalusian NGO staff have developed a discourse of anti‐racism in which care for immigrants is a means of constructing a modern, progressive identity for a historically marginalized European region. On the other hand, widely circulating racialized and gendered discourses about immigrants also result in the exclusion of those deemed undeserving, particularly Muslim, Moroccan men. The Andalusian case thus highlights the vagaries of social life that complicate implementation of policies and programmes for migrant incorporation. In the process, it demonstrates that modes of immigrant inclusion and exclusion in Europe are deeply intertwined with regionally particular anxieties about social difference. Résumé L'auteure examine ici les rencontres entre les employés d'ONG en Andalousie et les bénéficiaires de leur action, immigrés dans le sud de l'Espagne. Elle montre comment l'ambivalence locale sur le pluralisme, ancrée dans de vieux débats sur l'héritage de l'Andalousie musulmane du Moyen Âge, entraîne à la fois l'inclusion et l'exclusion des migrants. D'un côté, le personnel des ONG andalouses a élaboré un discours d'antiracisme présentant l'accueil des immigrés comme un moyen de construire une identité moderne et progressiste pour une région de l'Europe qui a été de tout temps marginalisée. De l'autre, les discours racialisés et genrés très répandus à propos des immigrés entraînent l'exclusion de ceux qui ne sont pas jugés méritants, en particulier des hommes musulmans marocains. Le cas de l'Andalousie met ainsi en lumière les aléas de la vie sociale qui compliquent l'application des politiques et programmes d'intégration des immigrés. Il montre dans le même temps que les modes d'inclusion et d'exclusion des migrants en Europe sont intimement entremêlés avec des inquiétudes sur la différence sociale qui varient d'une région à l'autre.
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