To the Editor:
Re “Seeking to Renew Balance in a Site’s Dual History” (Córdoba Journal, June 10):
As the director of “Out of Córdoba,” a documentary film about the religious coexistence of medieval Muslim Spain and Catholic Spain, I had the privilege of filming for several hours in the Great Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba when it was empty of tourists.
It was a transcendent experience, and walking among its forest of columns and under its canopy of arches, one is easily transported back to a time when Muslim Córdoba was the most advanced city in all Europe, and visitors referred to the city as “the ornament of the world.”
While in Córdoba, I interviewed Dr. Mansur Escudero, the author of a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda after the Madrid train bombing in 2004, and a leader of Spain’s growing Muslim community. Dr. Escudero’s dream was to be able to pray in the Great Mosque (which the Catholic authorities still forbid Muslims to do), not as a sign of some fictional “Islamist triumphalism,” but as a symbol of the values of tolerance, pluralism and compassion that Dr. Escudero believed were central to Islam.
The Great Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba is a symbol of an amazing time in human history that can still inspire us today with its multicultural and interfaith legacy.
JACOB BENDER
Exec. Director, Philadelphia Chapter
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Philadelphia, June 11, 2014
