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date: 18 February 2025

Mexican Islam in the Perspective of Islam in Latin Americalocked

Mexican Islam in the Perspective of Islam in Latin Americalocked

  • Sylvie TaussigSylvie TaussigCNRS France; IFEA Lima

Summary

The very idea of a Mexican Islam is paradoxical: this religion comes from outside, through the migration of people from Arab Islamic countries or through the circulation of symbolic goods fed from outside and circulating ever more easily with the rise of new technologies. However, in the early 21st century, Islam in Mexico and, more generally, Latin America is not a “foreign” or outsider religion. On one hand, sociologically, its followers are equally migrants and converts. On the other hand, Islamic organizations are working hard to think about their territorialization. Finally, like any social fact, the Muslim form of the religion does not exist absolutely but inflects itself according to the context in which it is situated: in this case, if it is true that Islam is one, the practice of Islam is necessarily delineated differently in a Mexican context.

The paradox of the Latinity of Mexican Islam needs to be explored in its different dimensions, historical, sociological, ideological, and metapolitical. In fact, tension arises from the double claim of a transnational ummah (whether it is the universalism of Islam as a monotheism that does not take into account races, genders, classes, nations, and so on or the constitution of a community through its religion) and of a Mexican Islam. The Latin perspective has to be addressed by proceeding with the identification of commonalities between the Muslim realities of Latin countries and examining the very claims of a Latinity and then of a Hispanicity of Islam in order to consider the no less paradoxical question of Mexico as an opportunity for renewal for Islam.

Subjects

  • Religion in America

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