About Secret History

Commentary on Latin America.
Mostly about Mexico - but not always.
Designed to encourage readers to learn about
the apparently "secret history" of 500 million people
spread across two continents
- but not always.
You can always count on a little snark.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Random Islamic Post

Got this the other day from Richard at Mexfiles:

I get an occasional email or comment on my site from someone who has returned to Judaism (I once posted on the "secret Jews" of Tijuana), but have seen very little (other than inflamatory "THE AY-RABS ARE TAKIN' OVER") on Latino Muslims... which is also a sort of return to the Iberian roots (or, at least those of AL-Andaluz).

I caught this on U.S. "Hispanic" Muslims: Brooklyn Rail, "The Latino Crescent" . I don't run into a lot of Mexican Muslims... there's a small community of Mayans who adopted Islam (basically as a way of opting out of the wars between the Catholics, Traditionalists, Pentacostals and JWs) and some recent immigrants from the middle east, but very little in the Mexican press on this. Seems to be more a U.S. phenonoma.
One of the things I enjoyed about living in Guadalajara was the Middle Eastern food. Mexican yogurt is disgusting (sorry, folks) and we enjoyed giant buckets of fantastic yogurt from local Lebanese restaurants - and not one of the owners was Muslim. All the restaurants dripped with Christian imagery and at least two of the four we regularly visited were well intermarried with Tapatios. The only Muslim's I've met in Mexico have generally been African refugees from the horn in DF when staying at the Quaker house.

For now, I suggest folks grab Jose Reis's wonderful Slave Rebellion in Brazil on Muslim slaves involved in a, well, Slave Rebellion in Bahia in the early nineteenth century.

No comments: