Here’s an idea that could only have come from the terrorist-appeasing Spanish government. Realizing that the Wahhabi-funded mosques in Spain are breeding grounds for the kind of Muslims who carried out the Madrid train bombings, the Al Qaeda-backed socialists have hit on a scheme to call the Wahhabi bluff—they’ll fund the mosques themselves!

Spain Considers Financing for Major Religions. (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch, where Robert Spencer accurately labels this “protection money.”)

MADRID, Aug. 2 - The Spanish government has begun formal discussions on a proposal to expand financing to religious institutions, and security officials say that one intention is to subsidize mosques to make them less dependent on money from militant groups abroad.

The Justice Ministry proposal, which legal scholars say is likely to test the limits of Spain’s separation of church and state, reflects a widespread belief among counterterrorism officials here that Spanish mosques are vulnerable to the influences of militant groups because they feel the need to turn to the militants for money.

The discussions, led by Juan Fernando López Aguilar, the justice minister, are still in early stages, officials said. The ministry has not decided what form the proposal will take, or if it will be submitted to Parliament for approval, a justice official said. In public, Mr. López Aguilar and his deputies have mainly portrayed the proposal as egalitarian, intended to offer all of Spain’s major religions the same treatment given the Roman Catholic Church, which has received state financing under a supposedly temporary agreement reached with the Vatican in 1979.

But officials in the Interior and Justice Ministries say there is another motive as well. “It’s about keeping them from having to look outside for financing because the state does not, in a way, support their activities,” Antonio Camacho, the secretary of state security at the Interior Ministry, said in an interview.

Spanish investigators said the terrorists who blew up four trains in Madrid on March 11, killing 191 people, attended mosques here that had ties to Wahhabism, a militant form of Islam that is the predominant doctrine in Saudi Arabia.

Spain has six formally established mosques and 220 to 230 small, informal ones, according to the Islamic Commission of Spain, which is recognized by the government as the official voice of Spain’s Muslims.

Why does this remind me of John F. Kerry’s plan to “call Iran’s bluff” by sending them all the nuclear fuel they need?

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