Author: Jens Glüsing
Publication: Spiegel
Date: May 28, 2005
URL: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,358223,00.html
Long a bastion of Catholicism, southern
Mexico is quickly turning into a battleground for soul-savers. Islam, too,
is gaining a foothold and the indigenous Mayans are converting by the hundreds.
The Mexican government is worried about a culture clash in their own backyard.
Anastasio Gomez, a Tzotzil Mayan
from Mexico, fondly remembers his pilgrimage to Mecca. He circled around
the Kaaba, the highest sanctuary of Muslims, seven times. At Mount Arafat
he prayed to Allah and then he, together with 15 other Indians, sacrificed
a sheep before boarding the flight back to their Mexican home.
"In Islam, race plays no role,"
the young man says joyously. His enthusiasm is understandable. After all,
in his home state of Chiapas, Mexico's poorest, the indigenous people are
viewed as second class humans, and whites and Mestizos treat the Indian
majority as if they weren't there. In the southern Mexican provincial metropolis
San Cristóbal de las Casas, the descendants of the Maya even have
to move onto the street if a white person approaches them on the sidewalk.
Gomez, 23, converted to Islam eight
years ago; ever since then, he has called himself Ibrahim. On his first
pilgrimage seven years ago, the Indian was still something of an anomaly.
Today, however, Muslim women in headscarves have become a common sight
on the streets of San Cristobal.
Conquerors from Spain
About 300 Tzozil-Indians have converted
to Islam in recent years and it's a development that is beginning to worry
the Mexican government. Indeed, the government even suspects the new converts
of subversive activity and has already set the secret service onto the
track of the Mayan Muslims. Mexican President Vincente Fox has even gone
so far as to say he fears the influence of the radical fundamentalists
of al-Qaida.
But the Indians have no interest
in political extremism. Rather, they belong to the Sunni, Murabitun sect
that was founded by the Scotsman Ian Dallas and is seen as an offshoot
of a Moroccan religious order. The Murabitun followers represent a sort
of primal Islam: Earning interest profits through money lending is a no-no
and they preach a literal interpretation of the Koran.
"The see themselves as restorers
of Islam," says the anthropologist Gaspar Morquecho, author of a study
of the Muslims of Chiapas. "Their defiance of capitalism is similar in
many respects to the critique of globalization espoused by many left-wingers."
While the Mayan Muslims in Chiapas
have been receiving extra attention of late, the Tzotzil conversion has
been underway for some time. In the mid 1990s, a group of Spanish Muslims
embarked to Latin America to spread the word; their leader was Aureliano
Perez, who is now worshipped by the Maya-Muslims as Emir Nafia. He offered
the Zapatista rebels fighting under Subcomandante Marcos, whom Perez supported,
an ideological-religious alliance. Marcos was hesitant to enter the odd
pact, but the Muslim missionaries were unperturbed: They discovered that
the Tzotzil Indians made up the majority of the Zapatista rebels and were
quite open to the teachings of the prophet Mohammed.
The battle for the souls of Chiapas
is nothing new. In the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors used brute
force to convert the Indians to Catholicism. Half a millennium later, evangelical
preachers from the US have turned Latin America into a religious battleground
in their efforts to lure Catholics away from the Church. In the town of
San Juan Chamula alone -- whose church is seen as something of a spiritual
center by the Tzotzil Indians and attracts thousands of tourists a year
-- there are 11 different congregations seeking to save the souls of the
Indians.
The loss of cultural roots
The Catholics, however, are still,
for the most part, in control. They belong to the mafia-esque former state
party PRI run the town hall and the lucrative weekly market. In face of
the advance of the evangelists, however, they fear that their influence
may be waning and they have chased out more than 30,000 protestant Indians
out of San Juan Chamula in the last three decades and hundreds have been
killed or assaulted. Most of the refugees settled down in the slums on
the outskirts of San Cristobal. Cut off from their cultural and religious
roots, the Indians are easy prey for all manner of soul-savers.
"In Islam, the Indians rediscover
their original values," claims Esteban Lopez, the Spanish secretary general
of the Muslim community. "The Christians destroyed their culture." He presents
the use and abuse of alcohol as proof. Alcoholism is wide-spread under
Tzotzil Indians and the strict ban on spirits in Islam helps many to break
the vicious circle of addiction and poverty.
In San Cristobal, the Mayan Muslims
run a pizza shop and a carpenter workshop and they are seen by the whites
as hard-working and diligent. In a Koran school, children learn Arabic
and five times a day they pray in the backroom of a residential building.
Empty congregation halls are not a problem for the new Muslims: Converted
Muslims vow to witness the teachings of Mohammed among their families.
Anastasio Gomez -- aka Ibrahim --
for example, has managed to convert his entire family. He is especially
proud of the conversion of his 100-year-old grandfather who was member
of a Christian sect. "He was wandering from religion to religion all his
live. Now he has found his peace of mind with Allah," says Ibrahim.
