The devastating earthquake that left more than 3,000 dead in Morocco a week ago has mobilized thousands of Moroccan citizens residing in Tenerife. Most of them are located in the south of the Island, where eleven of the thirteen mosques are located, with their corresponding images. Between Granadilla and Adeje there live around 8,000 Moroccans of the 18,000 who legally reside in the Canary Islands, not counting those who are in retention camps or homes for supervised minors after having completed the so-called Canary Islands route by boat.
Not only have Moroccan citizens mobilized to bring aid to the victims of the earthquake, but also other Muslim communities and even many Canarians who share a job or neighborhood with them, as Tijani El Bouji, until 2019, imam of Adeje and president of the Islamic Federation of the Canary Islands for five years.
Specifically, the operations center of solidarity in the south has been located at the El Fraile Islamic Center, in that aronero neighborhood so well known for housing hundreds of immigrants of various nationalities and ethnicities. For a few days now, financial donations and, above all, a lot of warm clothing and bedding material have been arriving there to serve, within modesty, the compatriots who “are having a very bad time, after losing almost all of their homes.” El Bouji tells us, adding: “There are many Moroccans in Tenerife who come from Marrakech or that area of the Atlas, and surely some of them have a relative in need.”
From this center in El Fraile, which houses the Attanba mosque, we are asked to publicize the telephone number 633-730-884 for all those who want to collaborate with the solidarity collection, if possible as soon as possible, given the extreme need of thousands of people. who to this day continue to live in parks and streets of Marrakech or in the camps that the military has set up.
Tijani El Bouji, president of the Islamic Federation of the Canary Islands between 2013 and 2018, left the position of imam of Adeje in 2019, after being accused of jihadism. The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands acquitted him after being prosecuted for spreading messages on Facebook in favor of the Palestinian cause and hatred against Israel and its allies. “My goal was always to bring the Muslim community closer to the Canary Islands population and integrate it, I understood that mosques should be places of prayer and spaces that foster coexistence,” the graduate in Islamic Law and Theology told DIARIO DE AVISOS.
