If you are like me, and most Americans – and dare I say, most Westerners as well – you never knew about the major Arab subculture in South America.
And that’s just Chile. Argentina and Brazil have more!
Europe has about 6+ million Arabs [many Euro-Muslims are not Arab] in a continent of 746 Million people, and yet we hear nothing but panic.
Egads! Eurabia! The Arabs are coming! The Arabs are coming!
What if I were to tell you that South America alone has 25+ Million Arabs, most of whom are assimilated, Christians, and getting along quite well in their respective countries.
WHAT?!
Yes! It is true. What did South America do that was so right; and what can we learn from them.
Each country in South America has a different profile. All they share is a common Latin language; and even that shows heavy dialectal differences.
Likewise, the Arabs among the Latins show some considerable differences.
Country
Numbers of Arabs
% of Population
Ethnic Makeup of Arabs (N/A to Suriname)
Religious Makeup of Arabs (not of total population)
Many are assimilated
and probably unaware of Arab ancestry
99+% Christian
Only ~15,000 Muslims
Surimame
81,0008
~ 13.9%
Indonesian, Asians, Arabs, Africans Muslims, not necessarily Arabs
Not Applicable
Uruguay
50-70,000
~ 2%
Mostly Lebanese.
Almost all Christian
Venezuela
~1,600,000
~ 5%
A mix of everything.
Almost all Christian
1Numbers vary. Fearab Argentina claims 4 million / 10%. Others claim less. But there is a large amount of intermarriage now. 9% is a good estimate. 2Numbers vary, but the estimate of Lebanese-Brazilians alone is 7 Million, so 12 – 15 million for all Arabs is a conservative estimate. In 2017, the president of Brazil was Michel Temer, who is of Christian Lebanese descent. 3Very rough estimate. Doubled number of Lebanese. The key was that many arrived as Eastern Christian, but the Maronites are affiliated with Roman Catholicism. So those who arrived as Eastern Christian were probably not Lebanese. 4Many arrived as Eastern Christians, but became Roman Catholic 5Wikipedia reports varying figures. From 20,000 (official) to 97,500 (private figures). However given the tendency of Lebanese Maronites to not identify as Arabs, and given their incredible tendency to assimilate rapidly, the higher numbers are probably more reasonable. Most, however, would be intermarried with other ethnics, which might explain why they do not show up on official figures. Ecuador has had 3 presidents with Lebanese ancestry, so we have to assume the higher figures were more accurate. What is clear is that they still constitute less than 1% of the population. To produce 3 presidents shows their elite status. 6Though small, El Salvador has had a president of Palestinian ancestry. Antonio Saca. His opponent, Schafik Handal, in the election was also Palestinian. Even more amazing, Saca, the winner, is a devout Evangelical. The present (2025) president of El Salvador is another Palestinian: Nayib Bukele. 7Former President Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé’s mother was Palestinian born. 8Suriname is 13.9% Muslim; however, it is not clear how much of these are Arabs, or the relic Islam of black slaves or the descendents of Javanese/Indonesian/Asian laborers. I used the Muslim figure. Suriname was populated by peoples from the former Dutch empire, and the Arabs in the country may be minimal. The country also is: 48.4% Christian, 22.3% Hindu, with various indigineous religions as well. Guyana and Suriname are members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
What must be remembered, however, is that Suriname and the Guyanas have very small populations. In total, not even equal to a good size Latin America city. Their Muslims are usually not even Arab, but often descended from Indonesians or Asians brought over the the colonial powers.
NOTE: The data can be tricky to collect.
As a rule, if you just look for Arab-Argentine or Arab-Brazilian in Wikipedia or another source, the population numbers cited will sometimes be low, and quite often less than Lebanese-Argentine or Lebanese-Brazilian. There is a history to this. The persecution of Lebanese Maronite Catholics by Muslims made the Lebanese-Christians consider themselves as Phoenician Westerners, NOT Arabs. Hence, Lebanese Maronites often refuse to be classified with other Arabs, and so demographic statistics for Arabs can be woefully underestimated.
One often gets ridiculous statistics for Argentina and the USA where there are more Lebanese listed than Arabs, which is an impossibility, as Lebanese are a subset of Arabs in general. The subset cannot be greater than the whole.
A good rule of thumb is to roughly double the amount of Lebanese – maybe add 10% on top of that. When you keep that in mind, and do some cross-checking, the numbers often make sense.
For example: Doubling the number of Lebanese-Argentines and adding 10% comes close to the 3.5 – 4 million Arab-Argentines claimed by Fearab Argentina.
A) Lebanese-Argentine figures are 1.5 Million according to Wikipedia.
B) Double that to get 3 Million
C) Add 10% to that, and one gets 3.3 Million, which is close to the high estimate of 3.5 Million Arab-Argentines in Wikipedia. Note: that Wikipedia gives a low estimate of 1.3 Million Arab-Argentines. The low estimate is ridiculous since Wikipedia lists 1.5 Million Lebanese-Argentines alone.
Mexico is another classic example. 45% of the Arabs in Mexico are Lebanese. Double that 45% figure and you get 90%. Add 10% to the 90%, and you get 100% of the Arabs. The rule is generally true, with the exceptions of Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras where Palestinians are high in percentage numbers.
For my discussion about the difficulty caused by Maronite misidentification: (Click Here)
RELIGION: Do not trust Wikipedia’s statistics for Islam. The imams often rely on dated statistics. For ex:
The imams of Argentina claimed 3 million Muslims.
The census claims only 400-700,000 Muslims.
The number of Christian Arabs is over 3,000,000.
The reality is that less than 20,000 Muslims are practicing. The rest will intermarry into Christianity over time.
The media goes to imams for statistics and we get exaggerated news reports of creeping Islam in Latin America; but the reports lack substance.
The number of practicing Muslims in South America is rather small, in spite of media exaggerations.
The numbers of Muslims is changing, but South America is also in the midst of a major Evangelical Revival which is sweeping up tens of millions, so do not be confused if the news reports many more Muslims in Brazil. In the same period of time there are probably 10 Million more Pentecostal Christians. Traditional Islam has no experience of competing against Western Evangelical Christianity, and may not be able to compete against it.
May 8, 2017 – Edited: Had to update some figures.
May 22, 2017 – Edited: Adjustments. November 23, 2017 – Edited: Rewrites. August 28, 2019 – Updated number of Muslims in Ecuador, and adjusted overall numbers for Ecuador. September 2, 2020 – Updated a number. May 3, 2021 – Edited: Updated Brazilian numbers. May 4, 2021 – Edited: Updated Bolivian numbers. October 4, 2023 – Edited: Added Peruvian numbers. November 22, 2024 – Edited: Added categories. January 17, 2025 – Edited: Added more info.
Jose Brechner, who has warned of the dangers of Islamic radicalism in Bolivia even prior to Evo Morales’ election, is instructive on this point. Brechner is a Bolivian journalist and political commentator who writes for various Latin American news journals and magazines and was a founder of the rightwing Nationalist Democratic Action party, the now defunct political organization of former US backed Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer. As in the March 2009 opinion “Bolivia, Israel, and the Muslims” , he describes the threat in unabashed xenophobic terms.
“There is fear in Bolivia, and a lot of it, because those who do not know the frantic Indians do not know terror. The closest to the Bolivian altiplano indigenous are the hordes of Muslim fanatics.
MY NOTE: Counterpunch is a leftist journal, and writes with a slant.
In reality, Hugo Banzer was more than a dictator, and Banzer was democratically elected to his last term of office.
While José Brechner is right wing, there is no indication that José Brechner is anti-democratic. Rather his history is one of commitment to democracy. But, he does not mince words about the semi-anarchial state of Bolivian politics, where pre-Christian practices still linger among the indigenous population, which constitutes a massive demographic among the electorate. The problem is not their race, but their practices.
Finally, the Nationalist Democratic Action was split into competing factions, with Brechner in the more democratic wing.
Here is the article by José Brechner, which was cited by CounterPunch: Bolivia, Israel, and the Muslims. What Brechner was afraid of is that Islam might make inroads with the indigenous population. He claimed the indigenous were naïve, that they might fall for Islam.
He obviously considered some of the native peoples to be uncivilized, savage, and a fertile ground for Islamic indoctrination. Essentially, he was afraid that the Bolivian Indians might be induced to go on the warpath, or in this case: jihad.
Definitely, not woke; but was he right?
Bolivia, Israel, and the Muslims
Bolivia, Israel, and the Muslims
José Brechner “Corrección Política Cero”
Jose Brechner
February 3, 2009
November last, [Evo Morales’] closest and most loyal followers, the bloodthirsty indians from Achacachi—a town close to La Paz–, after brutally beating up a group of 11 men and women between the ages of 40 and 60 that were visiting the place, were burnt alive until nine of them died. They accused them of theft, but they did not prove their crime.
…
Muslims want to settle in South America, and there is no better place than Bolivia to start the Islamic indoctrination, where they enjoy a numerous, naïve indigenous population, with no religious conviction.
One Muslim leader named in the OSC report is Mahmud Amer Abusharar, founder of the Centro Islamico Boliviano (CIB) in Santa Cruz. Abusharar emigrated from the Palestinian territories in 1974 and claims to have built Bolivia’s first mosque in 1994 so that he would not lose touch with his religion.
MY NOTE: Wikipedia had once reported that imam Abusharar died in 2011, but the citation was removed.
Yet, at the time of this post (2025), Wikipedia claims that Bolivia has only 2000 Muslims, less than .017% of the population.
This does not sound like a cause for panic.
Was it all smoke and mirrors … much ado about nothing?
José Brechner is Jewish, the Bolivian-born son of Holocaust survivors. Was he allowing his Jewish, and Zionist, sympathies to overwhelm his judgment?
Well, not exactly. As noted, on this website, and elsewhere (the ADL), Iran actively seeks to propagandize South America, with the help of Venezuela.
On July 20, the Defense Ministers of Iran and Bolivia (Brigadier General Mohammed Reza Ashtiani and Edmundo Novillo Aguilar, respectively) signed a Defense Agreement, in which Tehran commits to the sale of various military systems to La Paz. The intention declared by the Andean country consists of reinforcing its surveillance power on the borders, specifically north and south, where a large part of drug trafficking circulates. However, several states in the region expressed their disagreement with the treaty, alleging that it implies a possible threat to security.
Bolivia is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, and it is landlocked. Why in the world would Iran even consider a military deal with it, unless Islamic infiltration were in mind.
It is starting to look like José Brechner might have been prescient after all.
Bolivia was steered to the left by Evo Marales, a socialist leader; and while Morales is out of power, and has just been indicted, the socialists still control politics in Bolivia.
However, even though Israel has given the Iranians a beating in 2024, the ayatollahs’ rule over Iran is still not finished, yet. And caution is in order, not only in the Mideast, but in Latin America.
José Brechner was right all along.
An even more fundamental question is why Islam and socialism partner so well.
According to Wikipedia, There are only 2,000 Muslims in Ecuador, out of a population of 17,000,000. Not much.
Yes, there are 100,000 Lebanese in Ecuador, but almost all of them are Christians. One cannot get good figures for other Arabs. So, roughly around 2% or less of just the Arabs in Ecuador are Muslim, and only around .01% of the general population of Ecuador is Muslim.
Because reading the Quran was involved in the Arabic course (above), there was an element of proselytization involved. How effective it was, one cannot say.
Of course, these figure are sketchy, and they can change in time, but what is clear is that Islam is not presently significant at all in Ecuador.
The cultural effect of Christian Arabs is much greater.
Despite such small numbers, Ecuador has had three presidents of Arab – specifically Lebanese – descent. Amazing!
The chief conclusion is that, in Ecuador, the penetration of Islam is very small. Overall, the local Christianity (whether Catholic or Protestant) overwhelms whatever Muslim influence exists. However, Arabs are high performers, and they do assert themselves in politics. So although statistically insignificant, they do have outsized influence in other areas.
For example, this Catholic-affiliated school (Yes, Catholic?!) has the young girls perform Arabic Dancing. As noted elsewhere on this site, Arab Dancing is very popular in Latin America. So obviously the Christian Arabs in Ecuador have a lot of influence.
What has to be emphasized is that almost all of the Arabs in Ecuador embrace one form or another of Christianity.
We return to Habib’s, which is Brazil’s fast food chain that specializes in Mideastern food. It has 475 outlets, most of them in Brazil. It is noted for good food and inexpensive prices.
And we have noted Habib’s in past posts (Click Here), but we thought that a more recent video with some taste tests would be interesting.
