Responding to the Migrant Crisis; Latino Converts to Islam

*[tweet_dis]Between 2000 and 2011 the percentage of Latino attendance in U.S. mosques jumped from 6 percent to 12 percent. [/tweet_dis]The majority of the converts were reared in the catholic church. There’s a rarely-reported mutual transformation happening. Islam is changing many Latinos, and Latinos, in a small way, are changing U.S. Islam. VL


religion & ethics newsweekly logoBy Kim Lawton, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

We visit the Islamic Center of Greater Miami to look at the rising number of Latino Muslims in the US—as many as 250,000, according to estimates. Some of the converts say that in Islam they have found theological simplicity and “no intermediaries with God.” [tweet_dis]The Islamic Circle of North America reports that more than half of US Latino converts are women. [/tweet_dis]“I just felt that the minute I put my head down to the ground, “ says Nadia Echevrria, “I was really talking to God.”

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the Islamic Center of Greater Miami, Wilfredo Amr Ruiz and his fellow Muslims are breaking their daily Ramadan fast with water, dates, mangoes and other fruit. Ruiz was born in Puerto Rico and raised a Catholic. But he says in 2002, after the birth of his twins, he began searching for a new spiritual path. The following year, he converted to Islam.

WILFREDO AMR RUIZ: What attracted me the most was the simplicity of its theology. Islam is very simple. God is the creator, that’s it.

[pullquote]I just felt that the minute I put my head down to the ground, I felt like I was really talking to God. – Nadia Echeverria[/pullquote]

LAWTON: Today, Ruiz is an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Miami. And he’s part of one of the fastest growing segments of Islam in the US: Latino Muslims. More and more Hispanics are embracing Islam, in part, Ruiz says, because they find a cultural familiarity that stretches back centuries, to the Moors in Spain.

RUIZ: Latinos soon reconnect with a hidden past. They say, “Islam is not really that foreign to us. Islam is us. It’s part of us.” Four thousand words from Spanish come from Arabic: Camisa, pantalón, tomate, ensalada.

LAWTON: [tweet_dis]Scholars estimate there may be as many as 250,000 Latino Muslims in the US.[/tweet_dis] According to one major study, between the years 2000 and 2011, the percentage of those attending US mosques who were Hispanic jumped from 6 percent to 12 percent. And experts say the numbers are much higher today.

RORAIMA AISHA KANAR: After going to Catholic school for 12 years, my faith needed a little bit more depth in it, and I was able to find it in Islam.

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[Screenshot courtesy of Religion & Ethics Weekly]
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