I’m Muslim and have relatives in Latin America: plenty live in Brazil (who I have met) and also a few live in Colombia (who I haven’t met, but I have heard from them). Most of them are post-WWII immigrants: during the 1960s and 1970s. However, they are very much assimilated. They are Lebanese - there are more Lebanese people outside of Lebanon than in it.
The existence of a Muslim minority in Latin America is systematically denied by many people - both Catholic Latin Americans and people in the Western world say they don’t exist. And the numbers, when acknowledged, are severely downplayed. Especially with the Lebanese - they act as if only Lebanese Catholics immigrated to Latin America. According to one article I read, about 35 to 40 percent of the Lebanese immigrants to Brazil were not Catholic. While some of the Orthodox Christians could have converted to Catholicism, it would be unlikely for many Muslims to have done so since conversion out of Islam is a huge taboo. It’s the same reason why Jews generally don’t convert to Christianity - keeping the faith is important.
The article implies that Muslims in Latin America, especially women, are almost always converts. Dead wrong - they are primarily descended from Arab immigrants (especially Lebanese and Syrian) coming in for over 100 years. Whole families moved to Latin America, not just single men. My Brazilian relatives are all Muslim by birth and they all continue to practice Islam. And it’s probably the same for my Colombian relatives. Converts do exist in Latin America, but they are not in the majority.
I also hate the word “patriarchy” - I try to avoid it as much as possible, even if it’s an accurate description. Out of the hundreds of Muslims that I’ve met, very few act “patriarchal”.
And the whole focus on Muslim women as victims of domestic violence, while relevant, is kind of cliche by now. Every community has its fair share of domestic violence. Muslims just get the focus because they’re the “acceptable target”, much like black people were over 100 years ago. But at least this article acknowledges that domestic violence doesn’t only happen in Muslim communities, which is a step in the right direction.
I think you mean Samuel. You and I have discussed him before, and he can go fuck himself. The mess that is US foreign policy over the last thirty years is mostly his fault.
ninja’ed. Huntington is no longer able to go fuck himself, unfortunately, since he’s dead. His work is a mess and apparently the man took pride in never having done any field work. It is a shame that by most metrics, he is (well, was) the most successful political scientist. Still, to say that ‘the mess that is US foreign policy over the last thirty years is mostly his fault’ is a ludicrous statement.
Or something. Where the “something” seems to be that the blogger looked at one article about female converts to Islam in Ecuador—where indeed, the Muslim population seems to be very small and largely made up of converts—and with breathtaking assurance decided that this enabled them to generalize about “conversion of women to Islam in Ecuador, and perhaps in many other countries in Latin America” (emphasis added).
If the blogger in question has even a tenth of your awareness of the demographic differences in Muslim populations among different Latin American countries, I’ll eat a hijab.
Not only US, when I found out where had Mr Let’s-All-Be-Good-Friends(1) come up with his notions of “the alliance of civilizations” I almost had a stroke. You don’t propose an “alliance of civilizations” if you don’t start by believing there is a “war between civilizations” in the first place.
Huntington’s basis seems to have been “I’m trying to come up with groups we can be afraid of one after another, and all those Spanish-speaking people south of the Rio seem like a good target.” Calling that fearmonger an ass is an insult to both donkeys and excretive sphincters.
1: former President of Spain Rodríguez Zapatero, alias “el señor buen rollito”.
Now, I’m certainly not one of those “Watch Out for the Eeeeevil Moo-zlimz!” types, but your assertion of equivalency here between believers’ reluctance to leave the Islamic and Judaic faiths, respectively, has me going :dubious:.
From the Wiki article on apostasy*, it is noted that although both Islam and Judaism have traditionally prescribed death for apostates from their respective religions, currently, apostasy from Islam is subject to capital punishment in 11 predominantly Muslim nations (Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, UAE, Somalia, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Qatar, Yemen, and Mauritania), whereas regarding Judaism:
“In practice Judaism does not follow the Torah’s prescription on this point: there is no punishment today for leaving Judaism, other than being excluded from participating in the rituals of the Jewish community, including leading worship, being called to the Torah and being buried in a Jewish cemetery.”
*Yes, I know it’s only a Wiki cite, but I haven’t the time to wade through the potential minefield of those arguing theology on the internet, and the citation is in broad agreement with my admittedly limited understanding of both faiths, in theory and real-world practice.
