Muslim – Page 4 – Latin Arabia

King Fahd Mosque on HispanTV

Latin Arabia HispanTV, Muslim, Opinion, Propaganda, TV November 9, 2012November 9, 2012Argentina, Buenos Aires 0 Comment

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.

Source: Muslims in Argetina – Pedro Brieger

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.

Islam in South America

Latin Arabia History, Muslim September 26, 2012May 9, 2017French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad 3 Comments

(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.

Syrian/Lebanese Presence in Trinidad and Tobago

RELIGION

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.

The year of the census is in parenthesis.

Country	Total Pop.	% Muslim	% Christian	% Hindu	Total Muslim	Source
Suriname	~587,000 (2016)	13.9% (2012)	48.4% (2012)	22.3% (2012)	~81,000	Wikipedia
Guyana	~736,000 (2016)	6.8% (2012)	63.9% (2012)	24.8% (2012)	~50,000	Wikipedia
French Guiana	~250,000 (2013)	Unknown	Vast Majority	Unknown	small	Wikipedia
Trinidad&Tobago	~1,350,000 (2015)	5.0% (2011)	55.3% (2011)	18.1% (2011)	~68,000	Wikipedia

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.