Expelled Moriscos remained culturally Spanish and doubted their belonging anywhere

Evidence

The Morisco refugees who arrived in various countries outside Spain were Muslims (or at least most of them were), but they were also Spaniards of the early seventeenth century, attached to many features of Spanish life and culture. After the trauma of the Expulsion and the stresses of their search for a place to live, faced with the unending struggle of finding the means to survive in a new society that they did not always understand and that did not understand them, it is not surprising that at times some were visited by desires to return, to be Europeans again. Some of them looked into possible ways of converting those desires into reality; and a few did actually manage to slip back. They had been rejected by Spain, but did they belong in Morocco? Some of them were in doubt about their true identity: it would be astounding if they were not. At the heart of the tragedy of the Moriscos was a choice that was forced on them that many of them would have preferred never to make; a choice that was conceptually beyond them. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1676

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The forced ‘choice’ that was ‘conceptually beyond them’ condenses the tragedy of double exile — belonging nowhere, able to be neither Spanish nor Moroccan — in a dense, sit-with-it reflection.
• XREF: Connects to The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s theme of identity torn between cultures and forced to choose sides, and to home-nation exclusion themes in The Namesake.