From NewAmericaMedia.org courtesy of Hispanicon:
El Diario/La Prensa, Nov 29, 2005
NEW YORK, New York -- Islam, the religion with the most followers after Christianity, is growing rapidly in the United States – and the majority of new followers are minorities, especially Hispanics, according to New York’s El Diario/La Prensa. In 1997 the American Muslim Council counted approximately 40,000 Hispanic Muslims. Recent studies estimate there are 75,000 followers most of them in big cities like New York and Miami.According to Juan Galván, vicepresident of the Latin American Dawah Organization and Census Bureau, the majority of Hispanics practicing Islam in the New York metropolitan area are Puerto Rican and Dominican.
9 comments:
It's true. I'm one of them and I meet more and more Latino/Hispanic Muslims everday.
salaams y bienvenidos, you will be on my blog roll immediately...lol..
Maybe this mainly passes up Tucson...It's about a 45%/45% split between Whites and Latinos, mostly Mexicans with a few South and Central Americans thrown in. I've only met a couple Latino brothers, but to be fair I dislike our main masjid and its possible I'm just missing these guys. One brother used to bang with the Bloods, but gave it up to become a Muslim. I really wanna meet this guy, but so far I've just heard of him.
Incidently, I didn't realize until recently how much Spanish comes from Arabic. I studied Latin for 3 years in school and saw a lot of HUGE similarities there, so I figured that was about it.
I'm pretty sure Sayyed Muttaqi, the shia brother who founded the (now defunct) groups Ahl-l-allah and Taliyah-al-Mahdi, was Latin. Don't quote me on that though. There was also a Taliyah-al-Mahdi chapter in Brazil, which was apparently pretty large, had it's own portugese-language magazine and everything called "Islamo Puro".
salaams da,
wow, interesting info. I definitely want to follow and learn more. I looked a little at Taliyah al-Mahdi and they seemed relatively positive (although I guess I've heard criticisms as well). I had no idea the founder was Latin.
And it is also interesting about Tucson.
The original news story said in NY most Muslims were Dominican and Puerto Rican so I wondered if all ethnic/national groups of Latino/Hispanics were being attracted to Islam. I was mainly wondering if there was any difference in Indo-Hispanics and Afro-Hispanics.
Of course, that's just out of "academic" curiosity.
That is good news. Slowly more of us whites coming into the picture as well.
Wa salaam
Well, I think the Taliyah started off with good intentions and were bringing up issues that needed to be talked about (and acted on) in the Ummah. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people involved got a little crazy, and started considering the co-founder, Issa Adam Naziri, as some kind of messianic figure. Muttaqi actually left several months before it all ended, along with maybe half the membership. I'm in touch with some ex-members, they say it got really cultish after Muttaqi left. Also, they went from being really inclusive to being very aggressively shia, without much respect for sunnis. Inshallah when I update Thursday night I'm going to talk about them a bit, since it relates to the subjecs I'm writing on.
Anyway, Muttaqi still runs Uprising Communications, which put out a CD by Ricanstruction, a Nuyorican political band.
I really have no idea how many indo-hispanics become Muslims. I doesn't seem entirely unkown though :-)
Salaam 'Alaikum
da:
I look fwd. to reading your post. I knew Issa Adam via e-mail and had some interesting discussions w/ him and his wife on issues of social justice, vegetarianism / veganism, etc. when they were under the banner of Ahl i Allah. We had "met" via a general interest "Sufi" mailing list (ie one that was for non Muslims, Muslims, everyone just talking about any aspect of Sufism). -- UZ
To respond to Dave, the Taliy`ah got really cultish when there was centralized leadership (as any cult necessitates). When Sean left we IMMEDIATELY decentralized and agreed that decisions would be made by group discussion and compromise (rather than a central authority declaring what should and shouldn't be done).
Those who left did so to join up with Sean Muttaqi under the banner of yet ANOTHER centralized group of his creation, where his self-appointed leadership is unchecked and propped up by his popularity as a hardcore icon.
As for his ethnicity, he is half Italian, and part Latin of some sort mixed with German. He once mentioned being 1/16 Cherokee, but i couldn't tell you which side that was from.
Assalamu alaikum,
Right. We've been in touch with many new latin Muslims in USA. We realized that since many of them wrote to our webpage in Peru and because our contact with them.
May Allah bless all of you
Que Allah les bendiga y nos de incesante apertura de corazon.
Abu Hassan Riad, from Peru (currently in Malaysia)
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