Islamic March in Repudiation of the insults against the Prophet Mohammed
This is a video of a protest march against insults against Mohammed in São Paulo, followed by a discussion with a Syrian Orthodox Priest and a Protestant minister.
What has to be remembered is that
A) São Paulo has a very large Arab community; and may be the Arab Center of Brazil
B) The parade is relatively small
C) Metro São Paulo has about 30 million people and this is the the best they could do?!
D) If you look carefully, you can see that many of those people in the parade are not even Arab or Muslim, and may be in the parade just to protest a political incorrectness. Many of the women are not wearing hijabs, and I saw at least one Christian monk in the group. I have to wonder how much of this was Islam, and how much was simple Arab solidarity, which reigned in a lot of Chrisitans.
But pay attention:
A (4:01) we see Pastor Khalio Samara of the Arab Evangelical Church.
That should tell you something right there.
I am not denying that Islam is making inroads; but it does not take much effort to triple a community if the original size was very small.
But at some point Islam is going to run up against an Evangelical Church which is growing by millions upon millions every year.
This makes good TV fodder to scare you.
But while YouTube or TV notices a loud protest march, it ignores the millions who are converting in the other direction.
From 2011 – Arab-Argentine Home of Berisso – Islamic Mutual Aid Society of Berisso
At (0:25), the girl in the red dress looks Ukrainian. At (6:40), the girl in the blue dress looks positively Celtic.
How many of these so called Muslim Arabs even look Arabic?
How many are just culturally affiliated, with no religious connection?
How many are Christian non-Arabs, who just wanted to take up Arab dancing?
Argentina is almost unique in Spanish speaking Latin America in that the Arab immigration was so large and stable that it did produce a somewhat noticeable Muslim community. (Brazil to a lesser extent, but it was Portuguese speaking) Yet, even in Argentina and Brazil, the Muslims never rose above a small minority within their Arab ethnic communities.
Even in Argentina, the trend was for the Muslims to assimilate to non-observance, and often intermarry into Christianity.
Most of the other countries Christianized the Muslims who did come in, making for extremely small Muslim communites prone to coversion over time.
The difference is that in Argentina and Brazil, the Muslim communities are small, while elsewhere in South America they are incredibly small.
For ex: Nominally, in Argentina: (Muslims are about 10-20% of the Arab ethnic population. In practice considerably smaller).
In Chile: (Muslims are less than 0.5% of the Arab ethnic population).
Overall, taking the whole nation into account …
About 1½% of Argentina is Muslim (Nominally! In practice, much less).
About 0.025% of Chile is Muslim, and most of those are new arrivals, or converts who may re-convert back out.
Muslims in Argentina are noticeably small. In Chile, they are microscopically small.
However, the Islamic Mutual Aid Society of Berisso is one Islamic group that did put down roots in Argentina. (The link is to their website in Spanish). They were founded in 1917.
This was pre-Iranian Revolution, pre-Saudi funding; and may be one of the few genuine expressions of original cultural preservation not tainted by the Islamic extremism.
The Islamic groups now forming in Latin America are often expressions of Saudi or Iranian manipulation. [For ex: the recently built obscenity of the King Fahd Mosque in Buenos Aires, was financed by the Saudis, and draws very few Argentine Muslims. Almost all attendees are recent immigrants. The Saudi-financed Mosque’s behavior has been very unpopular with Argentine Arabs.]
Berisso is a suburb about 13 miles/20 km southeast of Buenos Aires. Oddly, Berisso has a double s, which is not found in Spanish; and is a name of Italian origin. The town was founded by Italian immigrants.
Berisso is notable for its immigrants with many of it citizens tracing their roots to Italian, German, Portuguese, Arab, East European, Irish, Lithuanian, and Jewish immigrants. [And you though Argentines were primarily Spanish Gauchos! – Actually, Italians may now outnumber the Spanish in Argentina where the Spanish is now spoken with an Italian accent in Buenos Aires.]
How many of these dancers are still practicing Arab Muslims, I do not know.
Please look at the above video in this post. Notice how many of the girls look like pale skinned Slavs or Nordics. At (6:40), the girl in the blue dress looks positively Celtic. How many of the swarthier girls are actually Latin?
As we have seen, in Latin America, Arab culture has broken out of the ethnic envelope, and is now embraced by non-Arabs. Also, the rate of intermarriage is very high.
If you doubt this, the video was posted in 2011, by someone with the Surname of Gonzalez, which is a Spanish name of Visigothic (Ancient Germanic) origin.
I am sure some Islamic aspect survives in the group; but I suspect a lot of it functions as a cultural relic for those who have a Muslim ancestor; but are now either Christian, confused, or unsettled as to what they are.
I included this to show that in Latin America, the Muslim groups, while culturally powerful, are religiously neutered. This is not a Salifist, or Wahabbist group.
Latin America usually converts Muslims; and even where it fails to convert, willl often culturally soften the Muslims. Do you see burqas in that group?
Latin America is – and has been – doing something right that the West needs to emulate.
HispanTV’s report on the King Fahd Mosque in Buenos Aires
The report notes that this is the place where a fusion of Islam and Latin America meet.
Iran has opened up a major televison propaganda network in the Spanish language called HispanTV. While the USA was ignoring South America, Saudi Arabia, and Iran were not.
Until the King Fahd Mosque opened, Islam was dying out in Argentina. It hovered officially between 1% and 2%, but in reality, an Argentine Acadmenic, Pedro Brieger, had shown that practicing Muslims in Argentina had whittled down to a small, and declining, number. Almost all Argentine Muslims had been non-practicing.
The number of Muslims in Argentina is decreasing, and this is due to several factors. Firstly, in families of Muslim origin, customs are being lost, from the Arabic language to food and drink. Secondly, there is relatively little reading material on Islam available in Spanish. There is a growing tendency toward mixed marriages in which children lose all references to Islam, and there are too few study centres for disseminating Islam. This may, however, change in the future with the construction of the new Islamic Cultural Center King Fahd, financed by the Saudi government, which includes a school and a mosque with a minaret in the heart of Buenos Aires.
But this successful effort at assimilating the Muslim immigrant came to an end around 2000.
In 1995, President Carlos Menem donated land in downton Buenos Aires so that the Saudis could build the King Fahd Mosque. Islam was given a chance to recharge itself.
Centuries of Christianizing efforts in Latin America were undone in one stroke. By 2011, the Saudi financed mosque had pressured Argentina’s Public TV to grant them an hour of public TV program time to prosyletize – weekly on Sunday mornings.
Worse yet, the time slot for the program was taken from a Christian-run secular TV show hosted by Christian Arab-Argentines, who were furious that a Muslim minority, who did not represent Argentine-Arabs, had stolen their time.
The damage is in its early stages, and it can be undone; but an attempt to undo the damage has to be made. No attempt seems forthcoming.
This is a disaster in slow motion.
We Americans have to show an interest in South America.
(Original Source) NOTE: This map comes from a Muslim source, but the numbers are exaggerated. Believed to come in under fair use
In the Guyanas, and the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, a lot of indentured Muslim workers did come in from India, Indonesia, and Asia. These Muslims can form a noticeable percentage of the local population; but these countries tend to have small populations.
While Arabs are among them, the Arabs are not the base of the Muslim populations.
The odd fact is that the Arabs among them tend to be Christian, as this page from a Trinidadian goverment website proclaims.
The last group of immigrants to venture to colonial Trinidad originated in the region previously known as Greater Syria, which comprises of present day Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon. Many of the Lebanese hailed from the villages of Buhandoun and Amyoun while the Syrians came from villages in the ‘Valley of the Christians.’ These Arabs emigrated to the Caribbean from as early as 1904 in an attempt to escape religious persecution and economic hardship in their native countries.
…
Arabs are very religious and quickly assimilated into the Roman Catholic Community. Although the Syrian-Lebanese were either Maronite, Antiochian Orthodox or Orthodox, they preferred to join the Catholic faith because, according to Rose Abraham, “[the Catholic Church] is the highest, the strongest church…the only church Arabs felt is a good church.” It can also be inferred that the similarity in rituals and teachings between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches would have been comforting to the Syrian-Lebanese immigrants.
NOTE: The emphasis is mine.
Note that the Arab Christians came to Trinidad & Tobago to escape persecution from Muslims.
French Guiana is technically part of Metropolitan France; but has a population of barely 1/4 Million.
Together these four countries/areas are 2-3/4 Million, which would not equal one medium sized Latin American city. The Muslim concentrations in them are not majorities, nor are they significant for the whole continent even though they might carry local clout. But in both Suriname and Guyana, Muslims never rise to even one quarter of the population, despite what the map claims.
Again, we see the tendency of Muslims to exaggerate their numbers, as they do in the above map.
So the larger percentage of Muslims in the Guyanas, and Trindad and Tobago, is statistically inconsequential for Latin America as a whole. Moreover, these countries tend to be outside the Latin American world of Spanish and Portuguese – speaking English, Dutch, or French.
Moving back to Latin America proper: The 2% given for Argentina, and the 1% given for Brazil is probably exaggerated. Muslim authorities tend to exaggerate their numbers.
While Argentina might be roughly 1.5% Muslim, in reality almost all were non-practicing until very recently.
May 9, 2017 – Edited: Updated figures. Had to update a link.
