The conundrum of beauty and religion is a particularly salient one for the community of Western Islamic converts who have settled in Granada, Spain.1 Known as the Morabitun – the Arab word for the Almoravids who ruled most of Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries – this group of converts came to Granada in the 1980s where most of them have lived in the neighbourhood of Albaicin, located opposite the Alhambra with a view of the Sierra Nevada. Aiming to revive the Islamic culture of Al- Andaluz, they chose as their home a place of objective beauty, even despite the fact that Albaicin was a run-down, neglected and romantically dangerous part of the city in the 1980s that has been gentrifi ed, tamed and renovated since the infl ux of the converts from all over Spain, from other European countries, the us and Latin America. Many of these new Granadinos mention the architectural splendour of the Alhambra and the natural beauty of the Sierra Nevada as an essential part of their lives as Muslims in Andalusia. Living in the shadow of the Alhambra, the former centre of what they perceive as European Islam, is part of their religious identity as converts. Yet, they are also concerned with the notion of Islam as primarily an ethical tradition and an inward form of spirituality that is cultivated by the believer's personal worship of God and his or her submission to the religious tradition. From this perspective, one is apprehensive of too much emphasis on aesthetic delight. If piety needs to be evoked by the outward beauty of architectural ornamentation, well-designed gardens or even snow-capped mountains, there is apparently something lacking inside. As the founder of the Morabitun community Sheikh Abdalqadir as-Sufi – born Ian Dallas – writes in one of his books, the doctrine of the oneness of God leads to a radical transcendence in which God cannot even be compared to all the beauty in the world (As-Sufi 2009: 33-47). How, then, should one reconcile this interpretation of Islamic doctrine with the aesthetic pleasure of living in the heart of Andalusian heritage?

This is not the only enigma Granada Muslim converts have to deal with.