inhospitality drives urban diaspora peoples to Islam

[Brian Hebert]

My recent studies have focused primarily on Islam, hospitality, and the urban diaspora.  In the past decade, immigration has been one of the big political topics, especially in the south.  We have stiff-armed Hispanics and when they protested (thousands in the street waving the Mexican flag in Dallas Tx), we have simply retrenched our positions (Tea Party).  Since Catholicism in South America was only a thin veneer laid over animism, Hispanics are not well founded in their "faith."  In fact, it is not "theirs" at all.  Like the Hispanics, in the post 9-11 world, we have also stiff-armed Arabs and Muslims.  We do not share a common culture, geography, or religion.  We get all of our information about them from the media and Hollywood.  Thus, there is little understanding and much fear.  I have seen firsthand how these two factors are having, and will have, a huge impact on my city which is around 40% Hispanic.  My first brush with this event was through a class mate who worked in customs at the port.  He reported that the Saudis were sending in flats full of Islamic Dawa (evangelism) literature in Spanish!  The second event happened last week when a woman called me about a new believer from a Muslim background.  After running through a matrix of questions about what happened and who this lady was, it turned out that the woman was Hispanic. 

Check out this quote I dug up:

"Just as many Latino Muslims believe that Christianity was once an elitist religion that failed to protect their indigenous ancestors, many Latinos today feel that the church does not adequately defend the Latino-American struggle for equality.  Alienation from Christian American society, along with poor social and economic conditions, may divert Latinos from Christianity--the religion of the establishment that, they believe, ignores their needs.  According to the Omar Foundation's Osman, as a minority, Latinos are not understood or supported by the U.S. church, which, he says, continues to side with the elite."
"In Islam many Latinos find a community more sympathetic to their plight.  Muslims, who are also a minority in the U.S., identify more closely with the Latino struggle for justice and equality.  Estranged from mainstream Christian America, Latinos can identify with and take pride in the Muslim community and in Islam's past."
Lisa Viscidi in Islam in America (Green Haven Press: Farmington Hills, 2006) pg 74.

Copied from my blog

[Tim Ahlen]

Your observations about Islam's focus on Latinos are right on. And, we are discovering that Latino believers are frequently the best people to share Christianity with Muslims.  Interestingly enough, evangelical Christianity is thriving and even exploding through  church planting movements, which are occurring in many parts of Latin America, while, as you observe, it struggles in the US.

I attribute this in large measure to what you allude to in your entry-- the American evangelical church is frequently more American than Christian, and its reaction to Latinos is more hostile than that of Islam.  Sad.

At least part of the answer to this problem is that our evangelism efforts need to focus on converting the underlying animistic worldview so prevalent among Latino people groups, rather than trying to replace their thin Catholic veneer with an equally thin evangelical one.

Thanks for the post.