148 and Muslim Communities in Latin America and the Caribbean: Narratives of Resilience and Change 16:40 - 18:20 Thursday, 2nd September, 2021 Ken Chitwood

In recent decades, global Islamic studies expanded to include geographies and communities beyond a conventional Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) core. Research in South Asia, Europe, Asia, and sub- Saharan Africa widened the field’s scope, introducing fresh, critical understandings into scholarly discourses about Islam and ’ lived realities across the world. Nonetheless, global Islamic studies’ scope still fails to fully incorporate marginal geographies and the study of Islam beyond the MENA remains underrepresented. There is a pertinent need to further globalize the study of global Islam in scope and conceptual frames. This is particularly evident when it comes to Latin America and the Caribbean. Research on religion in Latin America and the Caribbean has grown to appreciate the changeability and variety of religious expression in the region over the last several decades. Studies on various traditions thickened scholarly understanding of the region’s religious diversity and introduced new ways of understanding transformations in culture, society, and politics across the Americas. Still, the study of Islam and Muslim communities in relation to this evolution remains marginal when compared to that of other traditions. This workshop aims to address these gaps by convening a conversation between leading and emerging scholars whose work focuses on Islam and Muslims in Latin America and the Caribbean. In particular, it provides an opportunity for comparative perspectives between and across disciplines and case-specific analytic frameworks -- in Colombia, Mexico, , Puerto Rico, and the Latinx U.S. -- that variously address the theme of “Resilient Religion.” Facing numerous crises and changes over the last 500 years, Muslims in the region have shown a great degree of resilience and diversity in their approaches to processes of religious, environmental, social, economic, and political transformation. The following papers address such processes and Muslims’ adaptation and resistance to them. Featuring geographic and disciplinary diversity, these papers together address three broader arguments: 1) Islam and Muslims are not foreign to Latin America and the Caribbean, but are an integral part of the region’s historical and contemporary evolution; 2) Latin America and the Caribbean should be considered part of dynamics of change in global Islam despite relatively lower numbers of adherents; and 3) recognizing these two facts helps us see the reordering of Latin America and the Caribbean and global Islam in new light, thus opening new avenues for historical understanding, contemporary research, and public debates over religious versatility and resilience in the late-modern world.

111 Colombian and Mexican Converts in Search of Islam: Transnational Movements’ Ideologies, Local Issues, and Social Change

Baptiste Brodard Universidad Veracruzana, Veracruz, Mexico

Abstract

With their active role in shaping organizations, converts play an important role in Colombian and Mexican Muslim communities. In both countries, recent Muslim communities integrate a high percentage of “indigenous” people, making the tension between transnational trends and local contexts particularly sensitive. Having embraced Islam for a variety of reasons, these “new Muslims” are exposed to a wide range of interpretations of Islam both on-site and online. In this regard, how do they cope with diverging ideologies, competing discourses, and discrepancies between movements coming from abroad, including Shiite, Salafist and Sufi groups? While local possibilities in terms of places of worship venues and relations with Muslim leaders often determine their ideological orientations, converts also play an active role in the search for the “authentic” expression of Islam. Even more substantially, many of them seek a way to live Islam in harmony with their social, family, and cultural context. This search for a balance between the new religiosity and lived reality, which is not evident in a context where Muslims represent a slight minority, questions their capacity for adaptation and resilience. On the basis of ethnographic observations and interviews, I will address the question of the influence of transnational Islamic movements on Muslim converts in Colombia and Mexico on the one hand. On the other hand, I will reflect on the influence of these converts on religious trends in their local context, and thus on their role in adapting Islamic discourses and practices according to their needs and socio-cultural challenges. 150 Puerto Rican Muslims and Their Politics: Resilience Through Intersectional Activism

Ken Chitwood Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Abstract

When students protested at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras (UPRRP) in March 2017, Adrían – a staunch supporter of Puerto Rican independence and a recent convert to Islam – stood with them. Praying at the university’s gates every evening, Adrían was the only Muslim at the demonstrations. The convergence of Adrían’s faith and resistance politics on display at UPRRP helps bring into focus some of the contours of the political and ethical self-fashioning of Puerto Rico’s Muslim convert population. As “quadruple minorities” – Puerto Rican in the Muslim community, Muslim in the Puerto Rican community, and both Puerto Rican and Muslim in the context of American empire – Puerto Rican Muslims represent a numerically small, but categorically complex constituency that invites scholars to better understand the diversity, intersectionality, and changeability of religious and political expressions in the late-modern age. Muslim converts in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinx U.S. have generally been overlooked in considerations of the region’s politics and religious make-up. However, significant aspects of their political perspectives and practices illustrate the complicated landscape of both contemporary Islamic politics and those of the Americas. In this paper, I analyze Puerto Rican Muslims’ multivalent politics based on ethnographic fieldwork in Puerto Rico and the U.S. from 2015 to 2018. Examining individuals, concepts, practices, and institutions variously understood as “Puerto Rican” and “Muslim,” I flesh-out what resilience looks like in the everyday religious and political lives of Puerto Rican Muslims in Puerto Rico, New York/New Jersey, and Florida. 151 Islam and Islamization in Brazil – Stories about Immigration, Prejudice and Resilience

Luciana Garcia de Oliveira Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

Although Brazil is a country of ethnic, cultural and religious plurality, there are few references about Islam and the Muslim community in Brazil. This silence, at the present time, occurs due, among other reasons, to the association of Islam with foreign agents, more specifically, to Arab immigrants. However, in reality, the Muslim presence in Brazil is reflected in a diversity of institutions, mosques and associations that, generally, follow the ideological orientations of the Muslim-majority countries: a Sunni majority and a Shiite minority. In São Paulo, the with the highest concentration of Muslims, Islam is intrinsically associated with Arab identity. All Islamic spaces were built by immigrants through the funding of some Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The imposition of Arab identity in Brazilian Islamic spaces causes discomfort to the African immigrants and, similarly, to Brazilian converts, who began, increasingly, to occupy these places. The result of this discomfort was the creation of new spaces, new mosques and mussalahs, built to accommodate the increased demand in Brazil and as a way to act with resilience in the face of an impending conflict. And, in order to dissociate themselves from “Arabism”, the converts “Islamized” themselves, according to the literal reading of the sacred text of the Q’uran. In these spaces, Islam is transformed into an interracial religion, as defined by the Ummah (the global community of Muslims). This proposal aims to analyze the dynamics and complexity that permeate the recent phenomenon of conversions to Islam in Brazil, more specifically, in the city of São Paulo. 170 The Emergence of Muslim Identity Representations among Immigrants in Mexico’s YouTube Sphere

Nik Hasif The University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia

Abstract

Historically, Islam and Muslims have been present in Mexico for centuries through Spanish colonisation, the presence of an Arab diaspora, and immigration; nevertheless, they were considered ‘hidden’. Thanks to 21st- century social media — YouTube in particular — this minority community, consisting of 7,982 members (INEGI, 2020), has gradually become more visible to the wider public. Muslims, particularly immigrants, are engaging in YouTube culture, thereby attracting a following in Mexico’s online communities. By focusing on videos produced by Muslim immigrants as a point of departure, this exploratory study seeks to understand how the dynamic of Muslim identity is manifested and negotiated online. This study also investigates how these Muslims are perceived by an online audience. To achieve these objectives, a digital ethnographic approach was employed, comprising an inductive content analysis and semi-structured interviews with these creators. Preliminary results from the study indicate that these YouTubers promote adherence to Islamic identity through non-religious YouTube channels, serving as a unique differentiation marker while also providing a means of self- affirmation. Their religious identification is mediated under five core thematic categories: name, verbal, conduct, graphics, and material expression. The fact that the identity negotiations take place within the diffuse border of YouTube enables us to witness the simultaneity of the global and local in Islam, as well the resilience- building of immigrant Muslims through digital-religious practices and expression. 238 Small Communities, Big Transformations: Muslim Converts in Mexico

Mariana Valdez Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar. University College London, London, United Kingdom

Abstract

The case of religious conversion to Islam in non-Muslim majority countries such as Mexico underlines the importance of taking a global perspective on Islam and Muslim communities. In the case of Mexico and other Latin American countries that are known for their Catholic majority populations, the idea of a “foreign” religion that might even be categorized as “exotic” or “negative” by lay people is unthinkable. Contrary to perceptions of “otherness,” Mexico has been the cradle of various new Muslim communities. Thus, it is important to notice the slow changes of religious dynamics in a region characterized by a generally hegemonic Catholic religion. In this paper, I analyze the experience of Muslim conversion of Mexican women in a specific region of Mexico which is known to be a Catholic bastion in the country; the city of Guadalajara. Mainly, the interplay between living in a general (Christian/Catholic) religious society, their access to (or lack of) religious information, their own views about religion and how these visions and practices created gaps that were filled by the religion of Islam. This will show the struggles of common Mexicans trying to find spiritual meaning in their lives, even though, their society (and usually their lives) seems to be permeated by the Christian/Catholic religion. The emergence of Muslim converts gives a glimpse of the resilience afforded by Islam in what can be thought to be a highly contested religious scene.