I

Islam in Mexico

Traveling History of Islam in Mexico

Arely Medina
El Colegio de Jalisco, Jalisco, Mexico

It is difcult to precisely identify the arrival of

Islam to Mexico, some information points to the
period of Spanish conquest (Taboada 2004;
Alfaro-Velcamp 2011) with the arrival of fellow
travelers.
The demonstration of Muslim culture during
the viceroyalty of New Spain had to do with
Moorish and Andalusian culture that developed
in Spain and then settled in America (Taboada
2004). The closest to a Muslim community
during this time were the rebellions of some
Islamized slaves in Brazil, although never in
New Spain, because although the Indians were
forbidden to be Muslims in New Spain had
(Taboada 2004, 114) despite the prohibition of
Emperor Carlos V (Lpez 2010, 151).
That is why the Moors found it difcult to
profess Islam and were motivated to accept conversion to Christianity or did not transmit their
religion to their children. This stage is considered
mandatory dissimulation or taqiya (Cobos 2008)
and extends from conquest to the triumph of the
liberal reforms of 1833.
A second stage still characterized by dissimulation runs from the triumph of liberal reform until
1980 (Cobos 2008) and is linked to the immigration of Muslims of Arab origin. Between 1895 and
1960 the entry of 37,500 Arabs among them
included a minority of Muslims (Alfaro-Velcamp
2011, 285). This stage, said Alfaro-Velcamp, has
some methodological implications about who was

Keywords

Arabs; Conversion; Dawah; Immigration;

Community

Definition
Islam in Mexico is represented and characterized
by a minority of Mexicans, immigrants, or
natives; by a series of small groups or communities in the interior of the Mexican Republic; and
by a short history, thus one can not yet speak of a
Mexican Islam.

Introduction
The history of Islam in Mexico started with the
conquest of the American territory: Muslim conversos arrived in Mexico as Catholics and cryptoMuslims. The history continued with the series of
Arab immigrations and the constitution of Arab
embassies, by which is the arrival of the religion is
still currently permitted, via the enhanced mobility of traveling agents of the Islamic belief system.

# Springer International Publishing AG 2016

H.P.P. Gooren (ed.), Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_213-1

dened as Arab; this time frame played a historically important role in geopolitical changes in the
Middle East, and thus the nomenclature to identify the Arabic is variable. In the case of Mexico,
in the waves of Arab immigrants came those who
emerged from the Ottoman Empire, and who were
identied as Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians,
Iraqis, Egyptians, or Turks. These waves came to
Mexico between 1878 and 1882 (Hernandez
2009).
Many of these immigrants were simply identied as Arabs because this term was generalized
for those who spoke Arabic. Immigration records
show that the borders of entry to Mexico were in
the ports of Veracruz, Tampico, and Progress
(Zeraoui 2010), which were registered with Castilian surnames. Other immigrants simply were
not recorded because they had in mind moving
to the United States, later to be stalled in the
northern states of Torreon, Saltillo, and Monterrey
(Musalem 1997).
Attention to Arab immigration in regards to
religious identication must be provided, as not
all were Muslims, but some were Jewish, Orthodox, or Catholic and only a very small minority
were Muslim. This minority managed to be visible only from 1922 to 1924 (Hernandez 2009).
It was toward the end of the twentieth-century
that Muslims started to return as immigrants, taking part in the Mexican religious eld. In this
period started to see conversion of non-Muslims,
from among the Mexican population. This period
was characterized by the establishment of the rst
communities, community prayer (salat and
jumaa), as well as the preaching of Islam (da
wa) (Cobos 2008).
It is here that the emergence of the Shiite Muslim community of Torreon, the Su and Sunni
communities of Mexico City, and the Murabitun
of Chiapas are to be placed. The existence of these
is linked to an international proselytizing movement, save Torreon. We must also consider other
communities that emerged since 1990 as a result
of the intensication of transnational processes
and cultural globalization, such as in Guadalajara.
It is framed in a way within the establishment of
Islamic communities in Mexico known as conversion and autonomous Muslim communities

Islam in Mexico

(Medina 2014) which is part of a gradual change

from Islam in Mexico.

The Soraya Mosque of Torren

At the start of the twentieth-century, immigrants
of Arab origin arrived to Laguna Region of
Torren starting as agriculturalists and commercial businesses. They grew as families who live in
their religion in an intimate and familiar way, in
dissimulation, or taqiya.
It was in 1989 that the Soraya mosque started;
the rst in the country with a specically mosquelike architecture and which is still running.

The Halveti Yerrhi Order

The tekke, or institutional gathering place, of the
current Su community of Mexico is located in
Mexico City, owes its beginnings to the international movement Halveti Jerrahi.
After secularization in Turkey, the Halveti
Jerrahi Order continued to meet clandestinely.
The sheikh made his way to the United States
and in New York opened a tekke where some
Latina/os participated (Gonzlez 2009).
In 1987, the sheikh traveled to Mexico City
because he had three Mexican dervishes who also
belonged to the conchera tradition. They told him
that they had a revelation in a dream that inspired
him to bring the movement to Mexico.

The Sunni and Salafi Community

in Mexico City
The majority of Muslims has concentrated in
Mexico City. There emerged Su, Sunni, and
Sala communities.
In its early stages, immigrant Muslims, especially the diplomatic corps, gathered for community prayer. The incorporation of converts came
after the arrival of the Englishman Omar Weston
in 1994. Weston, with the help of the local community and some Arab embassies, created the
Islamic Cultural Center of Mexico A. C.

Islam in Mexico

(CCEM, A.C.). The CCEM integrated not only

immigrants but was dedicated to dawah, including the formation of a local mosque that raised the
national colors as a way to connect to locals.
Weston, with some immigrants, and also some
low-level ideological and organizational opposition, created the Educational Center of the Muslim
Community A. C. (ETCC), better known as the
Dar Assalam Center.
Abdullah Ruiz, a Sala leader who was a member of CCEM founded the Islamic Mexico Organization (IOM) in 2003, also known as Al Markas
as Sala. In 2004, he created the Sala Center of
Mexico, which gradually found an echo in the
Wahhabi tradition.

The Muslim Communities in Chiapas

Two Muslim communities are located in Chiapas
among the indigenous Tzotzil: the Murabitun
community, a Su group, and a Sunni community.
The Murabitun community are presented here
as an exception among Muslim communities in
Mexico, and not for being a rural indigenous
community, or because their members are converts, but by the way in how this community
was created segregated from those who they considered indels to carry out its own model of
society. It is a community located in a corneld
in San Cristobal de las Casas, founding the rst
Indian Muslim mosque in Latin America.
In 1995, Spaniards from the Murabitun World
Movement (MMM) ocked to Chiapas to publicize their project of society and the message of
Prophet Muhammad (Canas 2006). The Spaniards
made contact with a Tzotzil who were convinced
his Tzotzil family group converted. The new
Murabitun Muslim community settled in the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Casas and founded
the Islamic community of self-sustaining Mexico.
This community does not attempt to make
contact with other Islamic centers in Mexico,
which is why when Weston began his proselytizing and visited the community, the leaders of the
community Murabitun refused socialization.
In 2001, the community sustained a break and
two groups were formed: one linked to CCEM

directed by Juan Gomez sunni Yahya and the

other group linked to MMM. The reason was the
accused double standards of the Spaniards and
their criticism of indigenous customs along with
the prohibition to send their children to government school. Thus, some of them, with the help of
CCEM and Weston, decided to separate.
Murabitun dissidents of the community kept
their faith and formed another community along
Sunni lines. This group perform their religion in
their homes and only meet at the time of prayer in
the leaders own Al-jamma AlKawthar.

Islam in Guadalajara
The only record of Muslims in Guadalajara was in
1910 in the census of population and housing;
however, the presence of Islam in Guadalajara as
a community project emerged in 1993 with the
presence of immigrants and converts gathering for
Friday prayers. The precarious conditions and
social perception of the neighbors constantly challenged them and forced a later change of address
(Medina 2014).
The community harbored only fty people;
twenty to thirty were Mexican and foreign students, particularly from South America; the population did not increase in its infancy. Since 2001
the group met was called Casa Islam or Dar
al-Islam, which closed in 2005.
It was not until 2009 that the center of worship
Islam Guadalajara launched under the organization of Abdul Kareem, who after coming from
Houston, Texas, returned to Guadalajara to open
it. With some tracts, Kareem managed to contact
some immigrants and attract converts.
Without a building, it began its activities on a
website which provided the rst platform for
socialization. Later, sites were established for
prayer: a religious center, a medical ofce, and a
building rented for parties and alternative medicine sessions were used Friday to Friday to recreate an al-jamma, a space for prayer.
The beginnings of this community arose from
various stories of crisscrossing conversion and
immigration. The presence of a posterior Muslim
community was due to the immigration of Arabs

and Pakistanis, but also the old and new converts

who knew Islam through the use of Information
Technology and Communication (ICT), and from
this with their own methods and resources for
converting others. The process of these conversions has been analyzed and called autonomous
Muslim conversions (Medina 2014).
The autonomy of the community is not only its
chief characteristic but makes it unique in Mexico
because unlike the rst communities in the country, it did not receive proselytizing help or instruction. Thus, their own conversion experiences and
the means used for the interpretation of Islamic
exegesis were through their own self-created rst
channels of education. However, over time it has
built up a network of relations at both national and
international levels.
Guadalajaran Islam began as a process of adaptation and thus in the due course of time very
different interpretations of the practice arose.
Thus, there was a separation, whence the Cultural
Center of Western Mexico emerged: The Messenger of God B.C. Currently in Guadalajara Islam is
represented by Islam Guadalajara and the Muslim group in Guadalajara.

Conclusion
Islam in Mexico has advanced in several stages,
which help researchers understand the historical
moments and processes that anchor the modern
community: taqiya, dissimulation, and Islamization. The rst two are characterized by the arrival
of Muslims by birth and waves of immigration;
the third by processes of transnationalization and
cultural globalization, leading to a new form: the
conversion of autonomous groups (Medina 2014).
The rst Muslim immigrants to Mexico were
few, and religious life was put to the side as it gave
way to social integration. However, although they
managed to integrate into the sociocultural context, Mexican society began to create a vision of
who were Arab and Muslim. And although not
every Arab was a Muslim (their ranks included
Catholics, Jews, or Orthodox), it was immediately
linked with Islam and with it the clichs of polygamy but also by an anti-Arab sentiment due to

Islam in Mexico

competition in the national economy (AlfaroVelcamp 2011, 290).

The last step brings us closer to understanding
the challenges that cross religious systems in the
era of globalization. Currently, we are facing a
new and different wave of arrival of Islam that is
linked to the channels of information via the Internet and new media. While communities born in
the third stage remain in force, as well as via
international proselytizing, there is a new trend
marked by increasing and intensied labor mobility, tourism, academic, and different means of
information and communication, where the Internet plays an outsized role at times. There are now
individuals who seek different religious experiences by these means, and it is not simply proselytizing but individuals here and there seeking a
new membership and meeting to initiate their own
community project, as happened in Guadalajara.
Overall what has characterized the settlement
of Islam in Mexico is the immigration of Muslims,
proselytizing, and transnational experiences offering various sources of encounter with the Islamic
belief system.
Mexico now has different groups and Islamic
communities distributed in Chiapas, Mexico City,
Ciudad Juarez, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Merida,
Monterrey, Morelia, Puebla, Queretaro, Quintana
Roo, Rosarito, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Sonora,
Tamaulipas, Tijuana, Toluca, Torreon, and
Veracruz.
Talk about a Mexican Islam seems misplaced
since localism prevails. Each community
described here maintains its own interpretations
and practices. However, among the similarities
that can be registered are: meetings on Friday to
community prayer and sermon in places of worship; religious festivities in group and inclusion of
non-Muslims; transliteration of the Holy Quran;
challenge to religious tolerance, alteration hijab as
a symbol of Mexican and Catholic identity; redefinition of the Catholic creed; Universal membership Umma through travel experiences; and
Internet use.
The history of Islam in Mexico is still short but
has managed to maintain exibility to adapt to
space, time, and ethnic, linguistic, and sociocultural local factors.

Islam in Mexico

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