{"id":15739,"date":"2022-05-08T07:06:19","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T06:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/?p=15739"},"modified":"2022-05-08T07:06:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T06:06:19","slug":"latin-american-muslims-small-growing-minority-within-minority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/15739\/latin-american-muslims-small-growing-minority-within-minority\/","title":{"rendered":"Latin American Muslims: A small but growing minority within a minority"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong>Latin Americans Muslims, a rapidly growing population, struggle to find their place in the Islamic community.<\/p>\n

In 2011, 6% of Muslim Americans identified as Hispanic, according to Pew Research Center; by 2017, it was 8%.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon of Latinos converting to Islam reflects a culturewide shift away from Catholicism. In 2010, 67% of Hispanic American adults identified as Catholic, according to Pew Research Center; by 2013, that number had plummeted 12 percentage points to 55%. Many Latinos who left the Catholic church joined the evangelical movement \u2014 which has made inroads in Latin America in recent decades \u2014 or became part of country\u2019s growing group of \u201cnones\u201d by leaving organized religion behind, but some became Muslims.<\/p>\n

Many Hispanic converts to Islam say that praying directly to God without an intermediary is appealing, as is the unitary aspect of God. Some Latino converts also appreciate that figures from Christianity like the Virgin Mary and Jesus are also part of Islam, says Juan Galvan, author of the book \u201cLatino Muslims: Our Journeys to Islam\u201d who is himself a Latino convert to Islam.<\/p>\n

Pointing to the history of Al-Andalus \u2014 which was, for hundreds of years, Muslim-ruled \u2014 Latino converts say that Islam is a deep-rooted part of the heritage bequeathed by Spain. They also cite cultural and linguistic connections between Arabs and Spanish-speakers, including the fact that the Spanish language absorbed thousands of Arabic words during the Muslim rule of the Iberian peninsula.<\/p>\n

But Latino converts face a number of challenges. For one, they often feel isolated. Although there are fairly large Latino Muslim populations concentrated in Texas and New Jersey, for the most part, they\u2019re scattered. When Latino Muslims go to their local mosques or community centers and meet groups of Muslims speaking Arabic or other languages among themselves, they can feel excluded. Some community leaders are concerned about retaining Latino Muslims in the faith after they\u2019ve made the step of converting.<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, there was a dearth of materials in Spanish. Nowadays, with the internet, that problem has largely been resolved. But, today, Latino converts grapple with another issue: how to find their place in a community.<\/p>\n

While there are some mosques in Texas that offer Friday prayers in both Arabic and Spanish, in general, there is a dearth of Spanish-speaking imams.<\/p>\n

And when Spanish-speakers do seek to become imams themselves, they are encouraged to study overseas, which is often impossible for those with wives and families.<\/p>\n

While new converts are celebrated by the whole community, soon after those people disappear from the convert\u2019s support circle and the new Muslim finds himself or herself alone, adrift between their old community and their new one. Some mosques are trying to organize groups to offer continued support to new converts.<\/p>\n

Additionally, converts sometimes have a hard time learning religious practices like wudu, in a way that those who have grown up in the faith don\u2019t. Converts are sometimes intimidated by other aspects of the culture, like the food.<\/p>\n

But Latino Muslims often end up adapting familiar dishes to halal specifications, says Madelina Nu\u00f1ez, a doctoral fellow at Purdue University who is writing her dissertation on Latino Muslim food and who co-authored a chapter of the book \u201cCyber Muslims: Mapping Islamic Digital Media in the Internet Age.\u201d Nu\u00f1ez offers a quote from from a Latino Muslim, Richard Silva, stating, \u201c\u2018They ask why I want to change my culture. I tell them I\u2019m changing religi\u00f3n, not culture. I still eat tortillas.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Latino Muslims struggles to be accepted by the community, but this group will leave an indelible mark on American Islam.<\/p>\n

\u201cLatinx Muslims are poised to play a more prominent role among their fellow Muslims in the U.S. and to continue to shape the practices and expressions of Islam in the U.S. and the wider Americas,\u201d Ken Chitwood, author of \u201cThe Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean\u201d and a research and journalism fellow at University of Southern California\u2019s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

source:shafaqna<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Latin Americans Muslims, a rapidly growing population, struggle to find their place in the Islamic community. In 2011, 6% of Muslim Americans identified as Hispanic, according to Pew Research Center; by 2017, it was 8%. The phenomenon of Latinos converting to Islam reflects a culturewide shift away from Catholicism. In 2010, 67% of Hispanic American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":15740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7756],"tags":[9546,7563,19669],"class_list":["post-15739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethics","tag-islam","tag-quran","tag-shia-studies-world-assembly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shiastudies.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}