More than practical advantages led to the Junta's dominance in Muslim relations, however; its reassuring position on several thorny issues also helped. When an imam in Fuengirola publicly justified wife-beating, for example, the Junta denounced him, establishing itself as a defender of Muslim women's rights. After the Madrid bombings, the government sought to crack down on radicalism even as it extended a hand to Muslims - the vast majority of whom, as Zapatero himself emphasized, were appalled by the killings at Atocha station. The Junta, which condemned violence while adopting progressive attitudes toward integration and women's rights, was an especially welcome ally. It wasn't wholly submissive - when the then minister of the interior, Josˇ Antonio Alonso, proposed in 2004 that mosques and imams be monitored, Escudero led opposition to the measure - but it demonstrated that its goals were complementary to Zapatero's aims.

As secretary general, Escudero took pains to ensure that instructors teaching the new Islam classes to Muslim public-school students (Catholic students had long enjoyed this privilege; only in 2005 did Muslim students in a few regions begin receiving it as well) were, if not native Spaniards, then at least fluent speakers of Spanish who shared the Islamic Commission's interpretation of the faith. And on the first anniversary of the Madrid bombings, the commission, as if to prove its distance from "Arab" Islam, issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden and members of al Qaeda. "We see this as our contribution," Escudero said at the time. "A declaration from the Muslim community that bin Laden and al Qaeda are not Muslims, that they are outside of Islam."

In support of this "Spanish" version of Islam, the Junta received some public funding for its postgraduate course in Islamic civilization and culture at Spain's National Distance Learning University, as well as for the international conference it sponsors on Islamic feminism. The influence was mutual: Zapatero's proposal to the United Nations in September 2004 for an "Alliance of Civilizations" bore clear traces of New Muslim rhetoric. Urging international efforts to foster understanding between Muslim and non-Muslim countries as a defense against international terrorism, Zapatero began his address by calling himself the leader of an "ancient and diverse country, with different languages, different traditions, different cultures."

However, not all of the Junta's activities have been well-received by Spanish non-Muslims. The group's attempts to publicly redefine Cordoba's famous Mezquita, one of al-Andalus's most revered sites, for example, have so far failed. Begun under the Emir Abd ar-Rahman I in 784, the Mezquita was one of the wonders of the Muslim world, an architectural triumph that epitomized the cultural, religious, and educational achievements of the caliphate. In the sixteenth century, Charles V ripped out the Mezquita's centre arches and replaced them with a Catholic nave appropriate to the building's new status as Cordoba's cathedral - a status it retains to this day. Critics have since lamented the loss of the mosque's aesthetic unity, but not even the ornately carved choir stall or florid paintings of saints lining the chapel walls have eradicated the edifice's essential Islamic style. And yet Muslims are not allowed to worship there. Private security guards, hired by Cordoba's bishopric, which owns the Mezquita, follow orders to forcibly eject from the building any Muslim who bends to pray.