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http://www.pakistanlink.com/Community/2006/Jan06/13/11.HTM

Monday, January 16th, 2006

Some S. Florida Latinas Converting to Islam for Emphasis on Family,
Women's Roles

By Tal Abbady Melissa Matos slips into an easy communion with her
newest circle of friends.
At regular meetings, they invoke their families' native towns in Cuba
or the Dominican Republic, or recipes for arroz con pollo. English is
interspersed with Spanish. And, posing no incongruity to the women,
hijabs, or Muslim head scarves, frame their faces.

When she converted to Islam in May, Matos, a Dominican-American raised
as a Seventh-day Adventist, expected the passage to be lonely.
"I said to myself, `Great, I'm going to be the only Muslim Latina in
the whole world,'" said Matos, 20, a student at Florida International
University who recently joined a group of Latina converts to Islam.

Scholars say Matos is part of a growing number of Latin women
converting to Islam for its emphasis on family, piety and clearly
defined women's roles, values converts say were once integral to
Hispanic culture but have waned after years of assimilation.

The women are among 40,000 Hispanic converts to Islam in the United
States, according to the Islamic Society of North America. About a
decade ago, Latino converts began forming Internet groups such as the
Latino American Dawah Organization and the women's group Piedad that
trace Hispanics' ties to Islam back to the Spanish Moors.

Grassroots leaders say the number of converts grew sharply after the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, bucking a trend of thought among Americans
that links Islam to terrorism.
Sofian Abelaziz, president of the Miami-based American Muslim
Association of North America, said one indication of the conversions
is the demand for Spanish-language copies of the Koran, which spiked
after Sept. 11. In the past two years, the group has filled orders for
5,500 Spanish-language Korans for schools, cultural institutes and
prisons around the country, out of 12,000 orders total.

Matos and other converts say the recent media spotlight on Islam was
their first exposure to the faith and spurred further learning.
"[Before] I picked up the Koran, my attitude was, `There's something
wrong with this religion,'" said Matos, 20, of Miramar. A friend gave
her a copy of the Koran. "But then I saw it was filled discussions of
grace from God, of the protection of things we talk about as human
rights, of a universal brotherhood. ... This is a religion that
encourages thinking and contemplation," she said. In May, Matos
converted by reciting the shahada, a prayer in which converts attest
to their belief in Allah and Mohammed in front of Muslim witnesses.
Islam now circumscribes her life. She is studying Arabic, prays five
times a day, wears a hijab and follows Islamic dietary laws.

"There is no conflict between my Dominican heritage and Islam. I grew
up in a culture where you have a family you love and you take care of
one another, and Islam complements those values," Matos said.
Matos' conversion rattled friends and family members who linked Islam
with Taliban-style oppression, but scholars say Latina converts are
practicing a confessional Islam that offers strong moral guidelines.
"People might ask, `Why would women convert to a religion that is so
traditional in its gender roles?' But that's part of the appeal.

There's a recovery of dignity," said Manuel Vasquez, religion
professor at the University of Florida. "Second-generation Latinas are
caught between the morality of their parents and the morality of the
larger mainstream society. Islam offers a clear code. Women ... know
they are respected, taken care and protected from the negative
influences of secular society. It's a kind of empowerment they don't
experience in a culture that is constantly sexualizing them, and
Latinas are particularly sexualized."
The converts may be fashioning a form of Islam that meets their needs
in a country that allows them to do so.

"It's a comment on our society, on the fragmentation of American
family life," said Leila Ahmed, a Harvard University professor who has
written extensively on gender in Islam. "We have to bear that this is
happening in America, where there is freedom of choice. These women
are not converting in order to go and live in Saudi Arabia. We also
don't know how permanent these conversions are in a country where
people convert two or three times in their lives."

Like many converts, Matos calls herself a "revert," a reference to the
Muslim belief that everyone is born in a state of submission to Allah.
Being Hispanic and following Islam now are inextricable.
"When I meet with [my group] we speak in Spanish," she said. "We'll
talk about what it was like back in Cuba or the Dominican Republic.
And yet we're all wearing hijabs. It reminds me of the universality of
Islam."
Religious leaders say the Latina converts assimilate easily into Islam.
"What they see in Islam is what their parents used to practice: that
respect for elders, the care and protection that husbands are
obligated to give their wives," said Maulana Shafayat Mohamed,
director of the Darul Uloom Islamic Institute in Pembroke Pines. "Many
converts tell me, `This is how my parents grew up.'"
When a Hispanic Muslim friend slipped a copy of the Koran into her
hands, Marie Hernandez found "a total way of life." (Courtesy Sun
Sentinel)