By In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the possibility of al-Qaeda infiltrating Latin America became a priority for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. However, the most publicized incidents of radical Islamist activity in Latin America have not been linked to al-Qaeda but instead to the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah, which is ideologically and politically close to Iran. These include the March 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the July...

According to the reports gathered by El Confidencial Digital, the Mossos d’Esquadra are investigating the Sunni Islamist organization named Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HuT) -or Party for the Islamic Liberation-. The number of Islamist groups of this kind is rising on the Internet, and using the WWW to gain supporters, that could be even recruited by the radical Islamism. HuT was born in Jerusalem in 1953 founded by the Palestinian Taqiuddin al-Nabhani. They are supporters of an Islamic...

Molino de los Arcos is one of the poorest neighbourhoods of San Cristóbal de las Casas, the second largest city in Chiapas and popular with tourists for its colonial beauty. The barrio is ethnically almost entirely indigenous, with Tzotzil Mayan as the dominant language. On Fridays, though, you can hear the slow, monotonous Arab chants of Muslim prayer. In a wooden shack, painted with Arab religious phrases, some twenty Tzotzil Muslim families have established a small place of...

Brazil is the largest country in Latin America. Although there are no official statistics, the Muslim population in Brazil is estimated to be approximately 1 million people, with a total population of more than 170 million. This number includes converts to Islam, Arab immigrants and their descendants. Brazilian converts make up for no more than 1% of this number, about 10,000 people. Therefore, within a population of over 170 million, the small number that make up Brazilian converts to Islam...

When you think of medieval Europe, you usually think of knights, castles, and the church. Rarely, though, do you think of the Moors, the powerful, benevolent rulers of Spain for nearly 700 years. While the rest of Europe was still struggling with Feudalism and food shortages, Moorish Spain was a center of culture, science, and trade. The illustrious Moors brought to the dry Spanish plains irrigation systems imported from Syria, transforming the area into a rich agricultural cornucopia. Foods...

After four years of Evo Morales swearing in, Bolivians live anguished, while what was predicted is complied with - opposition persecution, state terrorism, vandalism, despotism, nepotism, racism, corruption, plunder to the country, lack of basic products, poverty on the rise, unlimited drug-trafficking, murder, lynching, torture, overbearing threats from members of the government, law violation in a bulk. Everything and more that happened with the worst de facto regimes that usurped power in...

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...

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ قُلْ يَا عِبَادِيَ الَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا...

I was fortunate, by the grace of Allah, to travel with a group of 6 Muslim brothers to the country of Bolivia. Our mission there was to visit the Muslims in Bolivia so that they can establish the effort of the Prophet Mohammed (SAW), and spread the word of Allah-to give Dawah. The word Dawah means to invite. In this particular case, we were inviting the Bolivians to the word of Allah, to the deen of Islam. I was very excited to be leaving. For the next 40 days, I would be leaving my family,...

Migrants from the Middle East have been circulating to the Americas for over a century. Scholarship on the subject, though rich, has often fallen through the cracks of academic geographical divisions. Clearly, this is a topic that merits further scholarly attention and debate, especially in the post-9/11 era. Middle Eastern migrants to Latin America traveled predominantly from the eastern Mediterranean region variously known as the Arab East, the Levant, or the Mashreq. Part of the Ottoman...