The terms Caribbean and South American refer to aggregations of countries, not to specific areas within legally defined boundaries. Thirty-one countries form the Caribbean, which is divided into English, French, Spanish, and Dutch linguistic regions. The majority of the countries are English-speaking. The total Muslim population by country varies from 4 to 15 percent. The largest Muslim populations are in English-speaking countries such as Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. There are small...

Perhaps Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, was Melungeon. It somehow seems fitting that one of America's greatest Presidents should be of mixed race and probably Muslim heritage. But who are the Melungeons? Historical records document that from 1492 through the early 1600's an estimated 500,000 Jews and Muslims were exiled from Spain and Portugal through a religious witch-hunt known as the Spanish Inquisition. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim exiles escaped to their ancestral homelands...

Every weekday morning, children at an Islamic school in this city sit cross-legged at low desks and rock in time as they recite the Quran in Arabic. The older girls' heads are wrapped in obligatory scarves, and all the children are required to leave their shoes at the door. But this isn't Pakistan, Iran or an Arab state. This Islamic "madrasa" is part of a small but growing community of several hundred Muslim converts in San Cristobal de las Casas, a Mexican tourist community in...

Yolanda Rodriguez considers herself a Muslim first, then Mexican- American, but on her regular walks down 18th Street in Chicago, she does not wear a hijab, the traditional head covering worn by many Muslim women. Well known in the Pilsen community as general manager of Radio Arte, a youth-oriented offshoot of the Mexican Fine Arts Center offering Spanish-language radio experience, Rodriguez, 33, often finds herself negotiating between her public persona and her personal faith. She is...

The first group of Muslims that came to Panama (Central America) came as slaves from Africa, brought by the Spaniards to work the gold mines. Not unlike the Africans in the other parts of the Americas, they refused to be slaves. In 1552 a group from the Mandinka tribes arrived in Panama. They were always considered as intelligent, industrious slaves and with a higher degree of culture. Of this group, the Vais were the most outstanding blacks of the continent because they had invented a...

In 1499, seven years after the tragic fall of Granada into Castilian hands, Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros came to that city to break the 1491 treaty that guaranteed Muslims' religious rights. The last king Boabdil was exiled but the common people of Granada were left behind to bear the brunt of persecution and torture in Inquisitorial jails for the next century and a quarter. By 1502, valuable books, many of them bound in leather and trimmed with gold leaf, were seized from private libraries in...

The mere mention of South America can conjure up visions of tall spires and stately steeples bedecking the enchanting and somewhat mysterious landscape of the continent. A common bond of Catholicism runs through the skein of South American countries that have emerged over the last century. It is no wonder then that one might typically perceive this region as a "baptized continent," devoid of any significant Islamic influence or presence. And even if the observer were to recognize the...

Islam is winning converts among the indigenous people of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where Christianity has been the principal spiritual belief and where religious differences are a growing source of conflict. The newly converted Muslims, 15 of whom have already made the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, said they chose Islam out of conviction, but also because they were fed up with the often bloody clashes between Roman Catholics and Christians of other...

HISTORICAL ASPECTS Thirty to fifty centuries ago, the native Ecuadorian Indian cultures were known as: "Chordeleg, Machalilla and Chorrera." They are believed to have been sun worshippers. Their Indian chief was believed to have been sent by their "Sun God." They practiced religious ceremonies offering young virgin women for sacrifice as a sign of thankfulness for the goods harvested. These Indian tribes believed in physical resurrection after dead. Therefore, they would...

In recent years, Agustin Gomez Mendez and other Maya Indians in far southern Mexico have taken yet one more sharp turn in a long quest for redemption, deciding that Jesus Christ isn't their personal savior after all. "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger," says Gomez Mendez, a poor farmer and father of six who converted his family to Islam in 1996 under the tutelage of Spanish missionaries. Over the past few years, about 300 evangelical Christian Maya have...