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Islam, July - Sept 2010

Islam in Latin America, an FIU Project

http://casgroup.fiu.edu/lacc/pages.php?id=458

Islam in Latin America is a collaborative project of FIU and the Social Science Research Council-Carnegie foundation that aims at addressing the significant disparity that exists between the American media’s, and by extension the American public’s, perception of Muslims in Latin America and the reality of the current state of affairs. Part of this communication problem can be attributed to the lack of sound and systematic examination of this subject in English.

Islam as a contemporary religious, cultural, and socio-historical phenomenon in Latin America is grossly understudied, especially when compared to its European, Asian, and North American counterparts. The Islam in Latin America project is a trilingual (Spanish, Portuguese and English) initiative that seeks to create a better understanding of Islam’s various manifestations in Latin America. This project attempts to start a dialogue toward answering the following questions:

What has been the historical development of Islam in Latin America? Is there a different approach to the practice of Islam between Latin American converts and Muslim immigrants from the Middle East? Can we speak of a “Creole Islam” in Latin America unique to other practices of Islam in the European or North American Diasporas? What is the social reality that Muslims face in Latin America in the post September 11th environment? How has media affected the perceptions of Muslims in Latin America?

Working Papers

http://casgroup.fiu.edu/lacc/pages.php?id=1826

This page hosts summaries of scholarly articles on Islam in Latin America written by scholars across disciplines. The article summaries are available in both English and Spanish and they are organized by geographic area.

Article Summaries

Colombia

Islam en Colombia: Entre la Asimilación y la Exclusión
Diego Castellanos

As the population of Muslims increased in Colombia and dispersed throughout the country a greater development for Islam with the creation of institutions that support its practices and expansion. Diego Castellanos focuses on the social relations within Colombian Islam and concludes that Islam’s development in Colombia has meant more involvement from Muslim immigrants or Muslim-born, but an exclusion of the converts in leadership roles.

Mexico

Islam in Mexico: Defining a National Islam
Zidane Zeraoui

This summary of this article showcases the development of the different Islamic organizations that helped shaped Islam in Mexico. It discusses the debates between liberals and fundamentalists in terms of cultural differences that point towards a Mexican Islam and other issues such as women in a position of leadership and conversions. These are all consequences of the influence of the Mexican context in the emergence and spread of Islam in the country, suggesting that not only is there the possibility of a Mexican Islam, but if other Islam modalities within that Mexican way (i.e. indigenous and urban modalities). South American Frontier Region

(Un)covering Islam and Its Fifty-Year History in a South American Frontier Region
John Tofik Karam

George W. Bush hardly finished his declaration of War on Terror after September 11, 2001 when the news reached the border between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, usually called the tri-border area. Based on unsubstantiated allegations that this frontier zone harbored terrorists, multi-governmental forces targeted the mostly Muslim Lebanese and Palestinians who, since the 1950s, migrated to the two main cities of the Triple Border: Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil and Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. Through the first decade of this twenty-first century, varied governmental reports and news stories that cast doubt on their political loyalties and economic practices nearly buried the fifty-year history of Muslim Arab migration to this South American crossroads.

Resúmenes de artículos

Argentina

Musulmanes en Argentina: instituciones, identidades y membresía
Silvia Montenegro (CONICET, Argentina)

La presencia musulmana en Argentina es contemporánea a los procesos migratorios de finales del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX. No obstante, los sirios y libaneses que llegaron en aquel período eran preponderantemente cristianos y, entre ellos, los musulmanes representaron una minoría. Las más antiguas asociaciones religiosas que congregaron a los musulmanes fueron fundadas en las tres primeras décadas del siglo XX y, siguiendo el padrón de distribución espacial de los inmigrantes, se situaron no sólo en Buenos Aires sino también en numerosas provincias y localidades del interior argentino. En el contexto de un proyecto de construcción nacional donde las particularidades lingüísticas y religiosas de los inmigrantes debían subsumirse en una supuesta fusión homogeneizante, vehiculada principalmente a través de la educación pública laica, algunas de estas asociaciones no sobrevivieron a la generación fundadora.

Colombia

Islam en Colombia: Entre la Asimilación y la Exclusión
Diego Castellanos

Este resumen discute como con la creciente migración de musulmanes a Colombia, el país ha experimentado un desarrollo de la religión en términos de expansión y creación de instituciones oficiales que provean los espacios propicios para sus prácticas. Su enfoque son las relaciones sociales dentro del Islam colombiano, lo que hasta cierto punto ha apuntado a una mayor participación y liderato por parte de musulmanes (inmigrantes o musulmanes de nacimiento) y una exclusión de estos procesos de los conversos.

Mexico

El Islam en México: Definiendo un Islam Nacional
Zidane Zeraoui

El islam en Mexico se ha podido desarrollar gracias a las diferentes organizaciones islamicas que han surgido en los últimos años. A pesar de la persistencia de debates entre liberales y fundamentalistas en términos de diferencias culturales, se ha comenzado a contemplar un islam mexicano en el cual existe la posibilidad de mujeres en posición de liderato. Esto es consecuencia de la influencia del contexto mexicano en el surgimiento y expansión del Islam en el país, lo que sugiere la posibilidad de un islam mexicano, pero que a su vez contempla otras modalidades de Islam.

People

http://casgroup.fiu.edu/lacc/pages.php?id=1277

Directors

Cristina Eguizábal, Ph.D. | Director, Latin America and Caribbean Center, FIU
Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC) at Florida International University

Maria del Mar Logroño Narbona, Ph.D. | Project Director and Principal Investigator Dr. Logroño is an Assistant Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Florida International University. Her research focuses on the history of Arab migrations to Latin America. She has conducted archival research in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, France, Great Britain, Brazil and the United States. She has authored several articles on this topic, among them: “Information and Intelligence Collection Among Imperial Subjects Abroad: The Case of Syrians and Lebanese in Latin America, 1915-1930” in The French Colonial Mind, edited by Martin Thomas (University of Nebraska Press: forthcoming), “La actividad política transnacional de las comunidades árabes en Argentina: El caso de Jorge Sawaya,” in La Contribución Árabe a las Identidades Iberoamericanas, Gema Martin Muñoz ed., (Casa Árabe, December 2009).

Research Assistant

Elisa Marie Medina-Rivera
Research assistant and Master of Arts in Latin American and Caribbean Studies student, Florida International University

Field Researchers

Diego G. Castellanos
Researcher, Theological and Religious Studies Center, CETRE, El Rosario University Author of Islam en Bogotá.

Paulo Daniel Farah, Ph.D.
Professor, Philosophy and Human Sciences at USP (University of São Paulo, Brazil). Director of the Center for Arab Studies at University of São Paulo, Editor of Fikr, Review of Arab and South American Studies, and Director of the South America-Arab World Library/Research Center in Brazil. Author of O Islã (Islam) and Glossário de Nomes e Termos Islâmicos (Glossary of Islamic Names and Terms).

John Tofik Karam, Ph.D.
Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology (Syracuse University, New York). Currently he’s a professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program of Depaul University, Chicago. His areas of interest are: ethnicity, nationalism, globalization, and what he calls the “Arab Americas.” His book, Another Arabesque. Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2007) won awards from the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) and the Arab-American National Museum (AANM). It was translated into Portuguese as Um outro arabesco: etnicidade sírio-libanesa no Brasil neoliberal in 2009 by the Editora Martins.

Silvia Montenegro, Ph.D.
Ph.D. in Sociology (Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Brasil). She’s a CONICET-affiliated researcher in the Universidade Nacional de Rosario (UNR) and professor in the Department of Socio-Cultural Anthropology of the College of Humanities and Arts (UNR). Her areas of interest are: religious identities, the relations between religion and ethnicity, the practices of transnationalism and diasporic communities in contemporary society.

Paulo Gabriel Hilu da Rocha Pinto, Ph.D.
Ph.D. in Anthropology (Boston University, Boston). Currently, he’s a professor in the department of anthropology of the Univeridade Federal Fluminense (UFF) and coordinator of the Núcleo de Estudos sobre o Oriente Médio (NEOM) in the same university. His research is funded by CNPq and Faperj. His areas of interest: religion (Islam), ethnicity, pilgrimage, religious subjectivities, as well as the body, ritual, and performance. He carries out fieldwork with Sufi communities in Syria (Aleppo) and with Muslim communities in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Curitiba, and Foz do Iguaçu).

Fernando Rabossi, Ph.D.
Ph.D. in Anthropology (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museu Nacional) and M.A. in International Migration and Ethnic Relations (University of Stockholm). Currently he’s a Visiting Professor in the graduate program of Social Anthropology of the National Museum (Rio de Janeiro), where he is one of the coordinators of the Research Center in Culture and Economy (). His themes of interest are: markets, the state, globalization, ethnography, and culture.

Zidane Zeraoui, Ph.D.
Ph.D, in Political Science at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM. Professor and researcher, International Relations, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Campus Monterrey. Author of Islam y política. Los procesos políticos árabes contemporáneos (1997); Árabes y musulmanes en Europa. Historia y procesos migratorios (2006). Editor of La paz y las regiones del mundo (2007) and co-editor of Sobre el Medio Oriente (2007).

Project Partners

FIU International Media Center:

* Mercedes Vigón | Assistant Director, FIU International Media Center
* John Virtue | Director, FIU International Media Center

FIU Office of Media Relations:

* Madeline Baró | Assistant Director, FIU Office of Media Relations

FIU Latin American and Caribbean Center:

* Uva de Aragón, Ph.D. | Project Contributor and Associate Director of the Cuban Research at Florida International University. Dr. de Aragón is a prolific author and expert on Cuban and Cuban-American issues.