Argentina is a very large country on the southeast of South America, running from the polar south to the tropical north. The population is very European in ancestry, with roughly half being pure-European in background, and another large section being mostly European in background.
It has a large Arab population (9±%), but which is intermarried and assimilated into the country’s larger demographic This is because it is heavily Maronite (Catholic) Lebanese who assimilate well.
Interestingly, Argentina has around 180,000 Jews – the seventh largest Jewish population in the world – and they can be politically active.
Posted on YouTube: November 10, 2012
WHAT A COMMERCIAL!
What is more important is that you see how mainstream this is in South America. Would you see this on American TV?
I added the translation. Please forgive any errors.
May 5, 2021 – Edited: Had to take out dead links. Changed text.
Street protests in Argentina – Al Jazeera Report Nov 10, 2012
If you are wondering why the Arab goverments are making inroads to South America, it is because they show some interest in these important stories while our own American networks ignore them.
Argentina is going through another economic crisis. Dollars are not allowed to go out of the country.
This is a major story, and Al Jazeera gives it a 25 minute discussion.
Our American networks should be covering this, but they are not.
THIS IS WHY THE ARABS ARE WINNING THE PROPAGANDA WAR!
Our Networks have to get their act together.
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.
Posted by Maricel Di Mauro originally on November 2nd
Notice that the poster of the YouTube video is an Argentine whose name indicates an Italian ancestry – Italians are very common in Argentina.
Again, Arab culture is mainstream in Argentina. Be careful though. Don’t confuse Arab with Muslim. 90% of Argentine Arabs are Christian. In other South American countries, the Christian percentage is usually even higher.
What this does show is the ubiquity of the subculture all over South America.