From WLRN Radio
Most Latinos know the country is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month right now. What far fewer Latinos know is that next week marks Eid al-Adha, one of Islam’s most sacred holidays.
And yet the two observances are more related now than most Latinos realize.
Just as the U.S. Latino population is on the rise – Hispanics are now the nation’s largest minority – so is the number of Latino Muslims. And it’s not just a result of Arab Latin Americans emigrating to the United States.
According to organizations like WhyIslam.org, Latinos are one of the fastest growing segments of the Muslim community. About six percent of U.S. Muslims are now Latino – and as many as a fifth of new converts to Islam nationwide are Latino.
The American Muslim Association of North America, based in North Miami, says heavily Hispanic South Florida in particular is home to a rising number of Latino Muslims.
Not that conversion to Islam is easy in Latino society, as Marina Gonzalez knows. A Nicaraguan-American nurse in Miami, Gonzalez converted five years ago and wears the hijab, the Muslim women’s head garb. At first her family stopped talking to her.
“They [were] calling me Talibana,” Gonzalez recalls. “My mother, she didn’t like to go [out] with me because I wear the hijab.”
