Portuguese Muslims

Portugal has been assumed since its foundation as a nation of Christian matrix, a nature it has never abandoned, even for some difficult periods in its history, when the church was persecuted by carbonaries infiltrated by the high structures of the state and betting on silencing those who profess Catholicism.

However, with the discoveries the Portuguese have known themselves to other earthly latitudes, hitherto unknown to Western peoples, living with people of different races and practitioners of diametrically different religions to Christianity embraced since the beginnings, namely with Muslims.

These religious disparities were not impeding that many Islamists root in our country and, even continuing to profess their faith, integrate into our society, respecting our values, beliefs and customs and without seeking to impose their own.

Until to the recent invasion of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Central Asian countries, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, and also from North Africa, Christians and Islamis have lived in peace and respect each other, without their disparities at the time of praying to their God were the subject of any kind of discord and conflict.

During the Overseas War, thousands of Portuguese soldiers born in Guinea, and most of them were believers in Allah, fought alongside their Christian compatriots, defending, enough with the sacrifice of life itself, the homeland that was also yours.

About six thousand of these brave military man losing their lives, shot indiscriminately by the new lords of Bissau, when power in Guinea was treacherously handed over to the Paigc, by the hands of the regime that was then installed in Lisbon.

They died for Portugal, although abandoned by those who had an obligation to cherish them and ensure their lives.

In his veins, it was Portuguese blood, but pure blood, as pure as those who returned to the metropolitan lands from which they were natural and of those who were not lucky, because they also fell into the war they surrendered, hence on the day of Portugal, at the ceremony of honoring the combatants, their memory is also evoked.

And because their biggest percentage has professed Islam, it has been practical for at least thirty years that the Lisbon Central Mosque magnet is associated with this ceremonial and, in communion with a Catholic priest, pray for the memory of those who departed in the defense of Portuguese.

In addition, this Muslim cleric was born in Portugal, in the then province of Mozambique, son of parents also Portuguese, being, for this reason, as Portuguese as any of us.

Moreover, he always lived in what is his country and fully integrated into Lusa society, not having, at any time, to be influenced by any kind of behavior contrary to the way of living the overwhelming majority of his countrymen.

Accordingly, the offenses directed to him on June 10 were absolutely disproportionate and, above all, unfair, only finding some justification in the ignorance of the utterance of those who gave them.

Similarly, only the complete ignorance of reality can lead to the theory that the presence of the magnet in honor of the combatants was a provocation!

It has precisely the same legitimacy to appear on that symbolic act as that of the Catholic priest who accompanied him in the prayers then delivered.

Encouraged immigration, which is opening deep wounds within the Portuguese society, cannot serve as a motto for all Muslims resident in the national territory to be cataloged equally.

On the one hand, we have the Islamic mob that in recent years has occupied a significant part of Portuguese soil, coming from stops that have nothing in common with us, which does not want to integrate in the communities with which it has been rooted, that nothing produces for the enrichment of our economic fabric, which lives at the expense of the Portuguese taxpayer through the granted state subsidies and that does not respect our way of life, quite the contrary, to export to us, to export to us, to export to the opposite, to export to us the style. of violent experience in which it has grown and the religion to which it is given.

On the other hand, we have the Muslims who were born Portuguese, of families, many of them secular, who have always embraced the values ​​and principles of Lusitanian man, living in harmony with their neighbors and scrupulously fulfilling the obligations to which they are linked to the quality of national citizens.

Portugal, since the time of the discoveries, has been cultivating racial and religious diversity, not in question, obviously, its intrinsically Christian matrix, gathering, for this purpose, various peoples in a single community that has in common language and the historical past.

Several races and creeds integrated into one nation!

Anyone who cannot understand this purpose also does not realize what Portuguese is, so everything they say in the opposite direction will have the sole consequence of providing the weapons of the enemies who want to destroy our entire past and the memory of the generations that have preceded us and whom we inherit the homeland by which we are willing to give our lives if necessary!

Pedro Ochôa