Melissa Morales, a Latina born in Puerto Rico, was eating in a local Mexican restaurant recently when the waiter wanted to know why she covered her head in a long black scarf. "Eres monjita?" the Spanish-speaking waiter asked. Are you a nun? Her answer caught the waiter by surprise. No, she told him. Not a nun, a Muslim. Latinos and Islam may seem like a strange combination to most, primarily because Catholicism is so deeply embedded in Latino culture. But the combination is less...

Some foreign missionaries working for an Islamic group in the southern state of Chiapas have been asked to leave Mexico because they lack proper residency documents, a Mexican immigration official said Sunday. The missionaries -- who include Basque converts to Islam from Spain -- have converted a number of Chamula and Tzotzil Indians, but have never applied for status as a religious organization, said Javier Moctezuma Barragan, assistant secretary of the National Immigration Institute. ...