Given by Yahya Juan Suquillo, the Imam of the Islamic Center in Ecuador at the Fourth Annual Conference of Latin American Muslim leaders in Curacao. Sponsored by I.S.E.S.C.O. (Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) & O.L.P.A.D.I. (Organización Latinoamericana para la Difusión del Islam). FOREWORD Before the end of the second millennium CE, most scientists and thinkers in the western world have began to question their assumptions about the theory of...

RABAT, September 16 (Islamonline.net) - The heads of the Islamic associations and cultural centers in Latin American countries are meeting in Curaçao Island in the Netherlands Antilles (the Caribbean Islands) on September 16-18 under the auspices of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The three-day meeting is part of relentless efforts to implementing a strategy for Islamic cultural action in the West, which had been endorsed by the Organization of the...

PORLAMAR, MARGARITA ISLAND, Venezuela -- Margariteños cannot figure out how their picturesque island off the coast of Venezuela became a battleground in the war on terrorism. No bomb ever exploded here, no shot fired. But the Bush administration has the island, and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, under scrutiny as a place where terrorists might live, raise money or move contraband. "The television commentators are distorting information," said Sulenma Reyes,...

The Islamic Educational Center of North Hudson took its message to a new demographic yesterday: Latinos. In a one-day celebration at the Union City center, Muslims and Latino converts sought to teach their neighbors, the vast majority of whom are Latino, about the Spanish Moors, who ruled Spain from the eighth century to the fifteenth century. The Moors, who were Muslim, brought irrigation techniques, farming, and superior schools and hospitals to Spain, said Mariam Santos, who presented...

MEXICO CITY, November 23 (IslamOnline) - Muslims in Mexico started observing the holy month of Ramadan on November 6. Some Muslims determined the date based on information received from Islamic countries, while others used information received from adjacent countries, mainly the USA. The moon sighting information from abroad concurred with information received from the Observatory of the UNAM (the Autonomous University of Mexico.) As normal, the Taraweeh prayer started immediately on the...

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. ...

As the administration of President George W. Bush weighs an attack against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, international terrorist groups are taking firm hold in South America - often referred to as "America's backyard" - according to recent testimony given to the U.S. House of Representatives. Both Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and the Palestinian terrorist group Hezbollah are active in Latin America, with Hezbollah having "broader penetration in the Western Hemisphere than any other...