Islam Gains Toehold in Mexico's Zapatista Country
By Alistair Bell
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico: January 25, 2005 (Reuters) - Islam has joined a battle for the hearts and minds of Mexico's volatile
Tzotzil Indians in Chiapas state, home of Zapatista rebels and a hotbed of
sectarian strife between Christians.
In an
unlikely meeting of two worlds, an idealistic Muslim sect has converted some
300 Tzotzils, a Maya Indian group known for drink-fueled fiestas and religious
fervor.
"It
was difficult to learn the prayers in Arabic at first but now I have them in my
heart," said Muhammad Emin Lopez, 46, a Tzotzil fruit merchant who boasts
that his conversion to Islam in 1995 was the state's first.
He prays
five times a day as required in Islam, has gone on the obligatory
"haj" pilgrimage to Mecca and attends a small mosque in a cornfield
on the outskirts of the hill town of San Cristobal de las Casas.
Beside
the mosque, a Tzotzil woman dressed in colorful Indian garb and known by the
Muslim name Karima washes clothes in a stream near ramshackle wooden houses.
The
growth of Islam in such a restive area has raised the eyebrows of Mexico's
intelligence agency, wary of possible terrorist activity aimed at the neighboring
United States.
But the
Tzotzil Muslims have little interest in holy war, having seen religious and
political conflict close up.
Many are
former evangelical Protestants who were thrown out of a nearby town by fellow
Tzotzils who practice a mixture of Catholicism and ancient Maya Indian rites in
a conflict that began in the 1970s.
Some
30,000 Protestants have been forced from their homes and more than 100 have
died in sectarian violence.
"People
are full of darkness in Chiapas," said Lopez. "The Catholics and
Protestants have fought each other a lot and the Zapatistas only want to know
about war, not Islam," he said.
Several
dozen Spanish missionaries who introduced Islam to Chiapas and still live here
hold radical political and economic views such as wanting to do away with
currencies, taxes and the nation state, but church leaders and academics say
the group has no connection to violence.
The
Spaniards, members of a group of mostly Western converts known as the
Murabitun, failed in a bid to ally themselves with Zapatistas 10 years ago and
have been relatively quiet since.
The
missionaries, also active in the United States and Europe, suffered a blow when
Lopez and some 80 other Tzotzils split from them several years ago in an
argument over land and jobs and began worshiping on their own.
NEVER
ASSIMILATED
Now
numbering some 330,000, the Tzotzils in the mountains of Chiapas have never
been fully assimilated into the Catholic, Hispanic world since Spain conquered
Mexico in the 1500s.
Along with
other poor Maya Indians, they form the backbone of the Zapatista guerrillas,
who staged an uprising in Chiapas in 1994 and have now retired to bases in the
jungle.
The
Catholic Church has only a tenuous hold over the Tzotzils, some of whom
sacrifice chickens in church and down moonshine known as "posh"
during nominally Christian rites.
The
Tzotzils, like many of Mexico's 12 million indigenous people, have a hunger of
the spirit.
"They
are people who become attached to religion no matter where it comes from. Islam
presented itself just as any other option could have come along as well,"
said Felipe Arizmendi, Catholic bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas.
Experts
says the Maya have become adroit at adapting to different beliefs and
allegiances as the outside world has encroached on their jungles and mountains.
"That's
why they have survived so long. They've been able to be at the forefront of
whatever proposal or political project that's been offered to them for 500
years," said anthropologist Gaspar Morquecho.
That
said, surprised Zapatista rebel leaders turned down the Murabitun missionaries'
invitation to convert to Islam during a meeting in Chiapas in February 1995.
"They
had an initial contact with the Zapatista army and failed," said
Morquecho, author of an academic paper on the Chiapas Muslims.
Since
then, the Murabitun have kept a low profile in Chiapas, setting up a mosque,
"madrassah" Islamic school and several small businesses.
Headscarved
indigenous women bake and bearded Mexicans serve at a pizzeria in San Cristobal
de las Casas owned by Murabitun members. Pepperoni pizzas are off the menu,
likely due to the Islamic prohibition on eating pork.
Founded
by a Scotsman who turned to Islam during a stay in Morocco in the 1960s, the Murabitun
are from the orthodox Sunni branch of Islam but have incorporated some mystical
Sufi practices.
They are
highly critical of the charging of interest rates as un-Islamic and advocate
scrapping currencies, taxes and the nation state, to be replaced with Islamic
emirates trading in gold coins.
"Our
model is not ideological or utopian but is based on the life of our Prophet
Mohammad," reads a statement on the group's Mexican web site, http://www.islammexico.org.mx
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20050125-0500-religion-mexico-muslims.html
See also:
http://hispanicmuslims.com/articles/other/competing.html
DISSENT EMERGES IN MAYA MUSLIM
MOVEMENT
http://ww3report.com/newchiapas.html
A self-described "moderate" faction has broken from the Mission for Dawa in Mexico, an Islamic group which has won a following among Maya Indians in the poor barrios of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Led by Tzotzil Maya Muslim convert Juan Gomez Gomez--who now goes by the name of Yahya--the dissidents accuse Mission leaders of "deviating" from traditional Islamic teachings in favor of a "radical" ideology. Gomez said the Mission, led by a the Spaniard Aureliano Perez Orihuela, had "abandoned the true word of God."
Gomez also accused the Mission of exploiting Indian converts. He said one who left the movement had worked five years in a bakery run by the Mission but was never paid. Gomez charged that Mission leaders "do not practice what it says in the Koran." He said the Mission was not violent, but that there are "other Muslims who are more radical." It was not clear if he meant within Chiapas.
Gomez's wife Rahma (Josefina Jimenez Hernandez) and their two children are part of a group of 30 Muslims who live in the San Cristobal community of Molino de los Arcos and have now broken from the Mission for Dawa.
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) recently issued an alert warning of the threat of imminent violence due to intolerance towards the Muslim movement by the region's Catholic political establishment. Gomez, a former evangelical convert who was evicted from the nearby village of Chamula by local political bosses in 1974, said his community seeks to avoid violence. "Here the people respect us, and we also respect those who are of different religions," he said. "We are at peace." (Proceso, April 11)
The Mission for Dawa in Mexico claims some 300 followers in San Cristobal. First arriving in Chiapas in 1997, the Mission is said to be linked to the Murabitun Worldwide Movement, a Morocco-based sect led by Abd al-Qadir al-Sufi. WW3 REPORT intelligence indicates Abd al-Qadir al-Sufi is a former British anarchist who wrote under the name Ian Dallas in the 1960s.
(Murabitun Worldwide Movement)
See " Islamic Sect Targets Chiapas Indians" by Bill Weinberg, from Native Americas journal, Summer 2003, reprinted on the WorldWide Religious News website
Shaykh Abdalqadir has been calling people to Allah for more than 30 years now. He has students and murids all over the world in Muslim and non-muslim lands. He is a Shaykh of the Shadhili - Darqawi Tariqah. His Idhn (authorization) comes from two Shaykhs. Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib of Morocco, who was his first Shaykh and who made him his Muqaddim (representative) in the West, and Shaykh Muhammad al-Fayturi Hamudah who "by his authority joined together the two separate branches of the Habibiyya and the'Alawiyya, so that in us they have become again by Allah's overflowing generosity, the Darqawiyya."
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/6588/sayyiduna.html