Muslim Converts In Mexico Make Up A Diverse, Fast-Growing Community
By Bernd Debusmann
Published
July 29, 2013
Fox News
Latino
Many
Mexicans ended up converting to Islam after the 9-11 attacks drew their
attention to the religion, piquing their interest. According to the
Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, today there are
approximately 110,000 Muslims living in Mexico.
MEXICO CITY
– When Moroccan national Said Louahabi arrived in Mexico City in 1994, he
and fellow Muslims had to attend religious services at the Pakistani embassy
because there were no mosques or Islamic centers.
“I started
looking for Muslims and a mosque when I first arrived,” Louahabi, an English
teacher, told Fox News Latino. “At the time, we met at the Pakistani embassy,
and there were only about 80 people — most of us were foreigners.”
Now,
Louahabi prays alongside hundreds of other Muslims — foreigners and Mexicans
alike — at the three-story Muslim Community Educational Center in the city’s
upscale Anzures neighborhood.
Friday
prayers at the Islamic Center are given in Arabic and Spanish. The crowd is
diverse: Mexican converts to Islam, expatriates, embassy staff from the Middle
East, Africa, Pakistan and Central Asia. The Islamic Center even fields a
soccer team.
The mosque
was packed at a service just before the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy
month, this year falling in July.
Many
Mexicans who converted to Islam say they’ve been impressed with the religion’s
growth in Mexico.
“I used the
Internet and books to learn about Islam,” said Mexican convert Alexander
Huttanos, an airline pilot who goes by his Islamic name, Ahmed Abbas. “Islam
has come a long way in Mexico.”
He actually
spent quite a bit of time researching different beliefs and faiths before
making a final decision.
“I studied
many religions, from Christianity to Judaism, Buddhism, African religions,
until I found Islam,” he added.
“Allah’s
path is very mysterious,” said Omar Remy, a Mexican who adopted Islam after a
visit to Egypt in 1979 and now works for the Community Educational Center. “The
Internet has helped. It allows people to communicate and investigate the
religion.”
According to
Louahabi, many Mexicans actually ended up converting after the 9-11 attacks
drew their attention to the religion, piquing their interest.
“I think
Islam is expanding mostly because of the Internet, and what happened on
September 11,” he explained. “People were waking up, digging and searching to
see whether we are really terrorists.”
And many
realized that’s not the case, Louahabi said.
“We are just
the opposite of what the media proclaim,” he added. “Islam is against
terrorism.”
Estimates of
the number of Muslims in Mexico vary widely. The Mexican government, for
example, said there are about 3,700 Muslims in the country, while the
Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life estimated there are
approximately 110,000.
Numbers
aside, among Muslims in the country, there is little doubt that the community
is already robust.
“It’s
growing fast, incredibly fast,” Louahabi said of the community, pointing to his
own experience.
“There are a
lot of similarities with Christianity and Judaism, so it’s not difficult for
people to grasp,” said Eduardo Luis Leajos Frias, a Mexican convert who adopted
the Islamic name Lokman Idris.
“It will
keep growing,” he added. “It will be comparable to the growth of evangelicals
we’ve seen in recent years.”
Among the
most prominent members of Mexico’s Muslim community is British-born convert
Mark Omar Weston. Formerly a world-class professional water-skier, he runs an
Islamic Center and hotel in the Mexican state of Morelos. The hotel serves food
prepared in accordance with Islamic dietary practices, known as halal.
“Most
Mexican converts to Islam discover the religion via the Internet,” he said in
an interview with Fox News Latino. “It may become like evangelicals, or any of
the many other Bible reading traditions that now exist in the country.”
According to
Zidane Zeraoui al Awad, a professor of international relations at the
Technological Institute of Monterrey, Islam in Mexico dates back to the Spanish
conquest. “In all of Latin America, not just Mexico, Islam arrived with Spanish
colonialism.”
But it was
an Islam practiced covertly, he noted, by camp followers who had been forcibly
converted to Catholicism.
Zeraoui
added that while the children of many Muslim immigrants in Mexico have lost
their religion, the number continues to grow because of Mexican converts.
“On one
hand, the children of (immigrant) Muslims in Mexico tend to be non-Muslims,” he
said. “But Islam is growing through converts. They are compensating for the
loss of Islam among those with Muslim origins.”
“There is a
bit of a cultural divide between immigrants that already came as Muslims and
have taken their religion seriously and Mexicans converts who are curious,”
noted Omar Weston.
“But
generally speaking, teenagers and people in their 20’s have been around and see
that there are other options,” he added. “I think that education as a whole
helps people be more open to it (Islam).”
Although
still a small community in comparison to other Latin American countries, the
Muslim community in Mexico is extremely diverse. In Mexico City alone, there
exists a Shi’ite Muslim women’s organization, a Sufi organization headed by two
women, and a fundamentalist Salafi organization run by Muhammed Ruiz al-Mekisi,
a Mexican convert to Islam.
Additionally,
in the southern state of Chiapas, there exists a small community of indigenous
Mayans who have been persuaded to convert to Islam by members of the
Spain-based Murabitun World Movement. The Mayans have blended Islam with
traditional practices.
“Here, we
see a form of Islam that has been adapted to an indigenous culture,” Zeraoui
said. “They are putting an indigenous angle on the religion, like they did with
the Catholicism that was introduced during the colonial period.”
Percentage-wise,
the largest Muslim population in the Americas is in Suriname, where nearly one
out of five people are Muslims, according to the 2013 CIA World Factbook.
Significant Muslim communities also exist in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago,
Argentina and Brazil.
Bernd
Debusmann Jr. is a freelance journalist in Mexico City.
Comments
Post a Comment