Islam Gains Hispanic Converts

[rocam]

Chip Johnson

Monday, March 6, 2006

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...AGFOHIUKD1.DTL

When U.S. Army Sgt. Matt Fernandes landed in the desert ahead of the invasion of Iraq, he knew little about the country and virtually nothing about Islam.

But he grew intrigued by the hospitality and generosity of the Iraqi people and began to reconsider his beliefs about them and their faith. The more time the Oakland native spent in Iraq, first fighting his way north to Baghdad to seize the airport and later fighting insurgents, the more he questioned his own faith and theirs.

When his time at war was over, Fernandes would eschew Catholicism and become a follower of Islam.

World War II journalist Ernie Pyle wrote the famous axiom, "There are no atheists in foxholes.'' But even Pyle wouldn't have guessed that 50 years later there would, according to the Army, be nearly 1,700 soldiers of Islamic faith wearing the khaki, green and camouflage-brown uniforms of the U.S. military.

It should come as no surprise that faith and salvation were on the minds of more than a few soldiers when Fernandes, who served in the 82nd Airborne Division, arrived in Saudi Arabia before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

At the desert base, a U.S. Army Ranger chaplain filled a bathtub with water and urged soldiers to be baptized as born-again Christians. More than a few did it.

Fernandes, now 23, wasn't among them. Although it was a time of tension and uncertainty among the troops, he didn't feel faith embraced under fire was true faith.

"I felt it was wrong to become religious just because something bad might happen,'' he said. "I didn't want to be pushed into that."

And so it was that Fernandes took his unrepentant soul into battle, seeing combat, often bloody, in at least half a dozen places from Ramadi to Baghdad. No one in his unit was ever hit or injured, but they did their share of killing.

When his unit returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., in January 2004, Fernandes learned that his father, Jerry, a lifelong and devout Catholic, had converted to Islam 14 months before. The elder Fernandes had begun exploring the Islamic faith when the war began because what he heard on television and read in the papers about Muslims didn't jibe with his personal experience.

The father's religious quest intrigued the son, who started spending weekends with his father in the tiny town of Lititz, Pa., learning about Islam. He accompanied his father to the mosque in nearby Lancaster, where he met other people of the Muslim faith.

The more he learned, and the more people he met, the deeper his faith in Allah grew. By July 2004, the younger Fernandes had made the conversion. And the more he took to Islam, the more changes he saw in himself.

He stopped going to the bars outside the base, and he bypassed the strip clubs as well. It's not that he ever drank heavily or visited the clubs frequently, but many soldiers do, and he wanted no part of it.

Instead, he whiled away the hours in school, or volunteering at the animal shelter.

As Fernandes delved further into the study of Islam, he started keeping a copy of the Quran and other books about Islam in his quarters. He also spent a lot of time with two other soldiers who had converted to Islam. His fellow soldiers soon grew suspicious.

Fernandes never made a public announcement of his religious conversion, but the guys in his unit put "2+2 together pretty quickly,'' he said. While no one ever openly criticized him, his conversion did put some distance between Fernandes and the men in the squad he led.

"I never had the feeling that they wouldn't back me up, but they kinda looked at me like a traitor,'' Fernandes said.

Before Fernandes left for his second deployment in December 2004, he told the U.S. Army of his change in faith. It prompted a visit from an army chaplain.

"He wasn't trying to bring me back to Jesus or anything like that, but he referred to me as a soldier of Islam,'' he recalled.

Fernandez, who had earned an Army Commendation Medal after a fierce battle in the town of Samawa, didn't respond. He had always been spiritual, but the contradictions he saw in Christianity led him to seek the answers to his questions elsewhere. He found them in Islam.

"I do believe in God and I've always been a spiritual person, I just don't believe in the Christian version of God," he said.

Faith is not a question of national loyalty, but a search for salvation. It's a journey everyone takes, and something everyone hopes to find. Fernandes found it in the most unlikely of places, at the most unlikely of times.

Chip Johnson's column appears Friday and Monday. E-mail him at chjohnson@sfchronicle.com.

[rocam]

By LOLA ALAPO, alapol@knews.com

March 9, 2006

http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_ne...526236,00.html

His Puerto Rican parents named him Antonio Alicea.

To his Muslim brothers and sisters, he is Abdullah. His new name signifies his renewed life: "Slave to Allah."

"Ever since I embraced Islam, there is a difference about how I was on the streets and how I am now," Alicea said. "I used to think there were no consequences to doing bad things and there was no incentive to change. When I started reading the Koran, (consequences) was a new concept. Now, I'm starting to do more good and eliminating the bad from my life."
Alicea, 26, is among the growing number of Hispanics in the United States who have converted to Islam.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 35.3 million Hispanics live in the United States. The exact number of Hispanic Muslims is difficult to determine because the census does not collect information about religion. Ali Khan, executive director of the American Muslim Council, estimates there are more than 150,000 Hispanic Muslims in the United States based on participation at mosques.

The largest communities of Hispanic Muslims are found in major cities and areas that traditionally have a large number of Hispanics and Muslims, according to Juan Galvan, vice president of the southern chapter of Latino American Dawah Organization, a group whose mission is to promote Islam in Latino communities in the U.S.


Antonio "Abdullah" Alicea is a Puerto Rican convert to Islam. Alicea, 26, is among the growing number of Hispanics in the United States who have converted to Islam.

Many Latino converts have Catholic backgrounds, Galvan said.
Alicea, a New York-born Puerto Rican, comes from a Jehovah's Witness family. He moved to Knoxville three years ago with his parents and brother.
He first learned about Islam five years ago while stationed with the U.S. Army in Texas. Alicea, who enjoys reading, discovered that Islam influenced a lot of literature, which made him curious so he began searching, he said.
"Through my research, I saw that Islam impacted the world a lot," he said.
He converted shortly afterward, he said.

When his family moved to Knoxville, Alicea's parents learned of the Annoor Mosque in Fort Sanders for Alicea through a Muslim storeowner.
Alicea said the religion has changed his life and his behavior.


Carlos Alvarado, 13, left, listens as his mother, VictoriaHoffman, teaches a lesson at the Annoor Academy in Fort Sanders. Carlos, who is ofMexican-American heritage, was the first in his family to convert to Islam. His mother and sister,Mercedes, center, converted after he did.


Before his conversion, he dabbled in drugs, he said. Now, he spends a lot of time learning at the mosque. He also is enrolled at the Oak Ridge Truck Driving School.

Alicea's mother was at first displeased with her son's conversion.

"But she took my Koran and started reading and saw that (Islam) was similar to her religion, so she was okay with it," Alicea said.

That's the kind of connection Rafiq Mahdi Henderson, the Imam at the Annoor Mosque, hopes non-Muslims make with Islam.

Henderson also wants the Muslim community to reach out to the growing Hispanic population in East Tennessee.

He invites feedback from members of the Latino community on how Muslims can make themselves accessible to them, he said.

"We welcome the opportunity and challenge to try and present Islam to people of Latino background in a way that enhances the beliefs they already have," Henderson said.

Hispanic culture and Islam share similar characteristics including a strong emphasis on family and religion, Galvan said.

He noted that Islam plays a central role in Spain's history. Moors and other Arabs ruled for more than 700 years. Many Spanish words also have Arabic roots.

"When many Latinos first step into a mosque, they feel as if they have returned home," Galvan said.

Carlos Alvarado, 13, found answers in Islam to many of life's unanswered questions. While living in Tampa, Fla., he attended the Catholic Church for some time but never received satisfactory responses, he said.

He started going to a mosque with a neighbor while his mother, Victoria Hoffman, was at work.

He converted in August 2001. He was 8 and the first one in his family, which includes his 11-year-old sister, Mercedes Alvarado.

"I felt kind of happy," said Carlos, who is of Mexican-American heritage. "I found out the truth before (my family.)"

Carlos' conversion spurred Hoffman to begin reading about Islam and by Sept. 2001, she and her daughter were converts.

The family moved to Knoxville shortly after. Carlos is now a sixth-grader at Annoor Academy in Fort Sanders where Hoffman is a history and English teacher for upper elementary grades.

Islam has drawn her and her children closer together, Hoffman said.
"These two are teens and this is the time of their lives they should be rebellious, but I don't have that problem with them," she said. "They're very open with me."

Alicea wants people to become more "God-conscious," he said, regardless of whether or not they are Islam adherents.

But for him, Islam is the cure for life's ills.

"I use the Koran like medication," he said. "It gives me peace."

[rocam]

Saturday, April 1, 2006
By Chris Meehan
cmeehan@kalamazoogazette.com 388-8412

http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/...810.xml&coll=7

Juan Galvan told the crowd at Western Michigan University that his own ethnic background reflects the changing profile of modern Muslims.

As he opened his presentation to members of WMU's Muslim Student Association, Galvan said that Islam is a religion of many faces, races and nationalities. ``The most ironic thing about today is that a Mexican-American Muslim from Texas is about to speak with a group of people who live in Michigan,'' he said at the MSA banquet, held March 24.

Here he was, Galvan said, a Hispanic Muslim appearing at a Midwestern university to speak to young Muslims who hailed from many lands.

``It is through God's mercy, love, blessing and grace that we meet today,'' he said. ``And, for this opportunity to meet with you, I thank you.''

Galvan grew up Catholic in a small Texas town. He converted to Islam in college a few years ago after meeting a man who explained, among other things, that Spain was a Muslim country for more than 700 years and that ``thousands of Spanish words have Arabic roots.''

He said he began to believe that Islam is the ``true, universal religion of God... As Muslims, we believe Islam is the correct and natural path.''

In an interview before his talk at WMU, Galvan said that he laments how fringe but high-profile groups in Islam seem to define what it means to be a Muslim. He pointed to the plight in Afghanistan of Abdul Rahman, a formerly Muslim convert to Christianity who was threatened with jail and execution.

``What is unfortunate is that the meaning of Islam is not being defined by (mainstream) Muslims,'' he said. ``You see a person throw a rock on the news and come to the conclusion that Muslims are all violent.''

Today, he said, the largest numbers of Muslims live in Indonesia. The United States is home to the most diverse population of Muslims, he said.

``The American Muslim community is the most diverse Muslim community in the world,'' he said in his speech. ``Even the history of Muslims in the United States is a testament to this diversity. Albanian Muslims are recognized for establishing the first effective mosque in the U.S. in Biddeford, Maine, in 1915.''

Besides Galvan's talk, the MSA program included a buffet-style dinner and an exhibition that featured artifacts from around the world.

[rocam]

Tuesday, May 2, 2006

By Gregg Sherrard Blesch
Staff writer

http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southt...dex/02-ds2.htm

Guadalupe Govea spoke Spanish as she greeted a friend Monday in the parking lot of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview.
Govea, 27, was dressed in hijab like the rest of the women boarding buses to join a largely Latino crowd in Chicago calling for changes in the country's immigration laws.

Govea's family is Mexican, and she has converted to Islam.

"I'm Mexican, too," Govea thought when she independently joined a similar rally in March and noticed puzzled looks from the throngs of Latinos.

This time, though, she was joined by many more Muslims, including a few hundred from the Bridgeview mosque, organized by the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago.

The mosque's imam, Sheik Jamal Said, had called repeatedly for the worshippers to show their support for the cause.

Mahamadou Drame, of Orland Park, had gotten the day off from his job at the International House of Pancakes.

"They asked me why, and I said, 'The imam decreed,' Drame said. His boss, likewise a Muslim, would be joining the rally later himself.

Drame, a very tall immigrant from Mali, was dressed in black slacks, crisp white shirt and white Islamic prayer cap.

Throughout the day, he cheerfully distributed a thick stack of red and white signs that would make the outnumbered group's solidarity visible: "Muslims for American Dream" on one side and "Keep Families United" on the reverse.

The Latino population in the Chicago area — more than a quarter of the city's residents — far surpasses the number from Muslim countries.

But the southwest suburbs are home to a large and growing Muslim community, now numbering from 40,000 to 50,000, according to Mosque Foundation president Dr. Mohammed Sahloul.

Many among that number since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have struggled to obtain and renew visas to stay in the country or bring family members. They wait for years, as common names — such as Mohammed Atta, he suggested — are checked against watch lists.

The men and women were joined by dozens of teenagers from the mosque-affiliated Aqsa and Universal schools, as well as students from Sandburg, Richards, Oak Lawn and Shepard high schools.

In the back of one of four school buses filled at the mosque, 19-year-old Abed Abdelqader pulled on a T-shirt printed for the event in Spanish: "Todos somos immigrantes. Todos somos Americanos". (We're all immigrants. We're all Americans.).

The Mosque Foundation group arrived at the southern end of Grant Park, by the Field Museum, just as the first marchers arrived from a crowd that would take more than three hours to snake through downtown from Union Park.

Ilkwanori, a Korea drumming crew, beat a rhythm and danced where the Islamic group gathered, joining the rest of the crowd chanting, "Si, se puede" the Spanish rallying cry ("Yes, we can") of the United Farmworkers Union.

Nearby, the SouthWest Organizing Project gathered later with hundreds bused from six Catholic churches on the Southwest Side.

"It's very beautiful when people from different races come together," said Leonor Garcia, 66, of St. Gall Church in Chicago's Gage Park community. "In the end we're all children of the same God, and we're all fighting for the same cause."

In the afternoon, the Bridgeview mosque's imam appeared on stage with Cardinal Francis George and religious leaders of other faiths.

George, spiritual leader to the overwhelmingly Catholic crowd, delivered a message of respect toward immigrants.

"We should — we will — find ways to welcome them, legally," he said.

Then Jamal prayed, "Oh Lord, do not allow the pursuit of political gain to overcome the pursuit of justice," and an interpreter translated his words into Spanish.

[rocam]

Latinas Balance Catholic Upbringing, Adoption of Islam

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, June 5, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060400957.html

Every morning, Jackie Avelar wakes up to a predicament. On one side of her bed is a clock that sounds the Islamic call to prayer five times a day. On the other side is a statue of Mary. As a Muslim, she wants to remove it. As a Latina, she can't.

Her father, who is a Catholic from El Salvador, wants the statue to stay.

"I have to respect him," Avelar said.

So she has found a comfortable balance: She covers the statue with a photo of her family.

Avelar, 31, constantly struggles to find balance within her family, within the outside world, within herself. Growing up, she was a beach-going, tank top-wearing, salsa-dancing girl. Now, she's a devout Muslim who favors Islamic garments and avoids socializing with men.

She is the first Muslim in a family that has never known any religion but Catholicism.

Across the nation, thousands of Latino immigrants are redefining themselves through Islam, including a few hundred in the Washington region, according to national Islamic groups and community leaders. Precise numbers are not available, but estimates range from 40,000 to 70,000.

The conversions speak to a larger evolution of immigrant identity, as a new generation ingests a cultural smorgasbord of ideas they were rarely exposed to in their homelands. Today, it's easier than ever to learn about Islam from Spanish translations of the Koran, Islamic magazines and Web sites.

But as they embrace a new faith, Latinos face struggles, ranging from guilt to discrimination, as Muslims in a post-Sept. 11 America.

"Sometimes you feel like you are betraying who you are, that you are abandoning your family," said Avelar, who is small and round-faced with a soft voice.

The converts hail from throughout Latin America. In Islam, some say they see a devoutness and simplicity they find lacking in Catholicism. Like the tightknit Latino culture, Islam places emphasis on family, which can make it easier for converts to adjust.

Yet some are as motivated by feelings of alienation in a nation that is divided over immigration. Latino women find what most westerners rarely see -- a respect for women, unlike, some converts say, the machismo culture in which they were raised.

On the Friday before Easter, a day that no longer holds religious significance for Avelar, she took part in the juma , the weekly group prayer all practicing Muslims attend. She drove to a small Annandale mosque in a silver Honda, with a license plate holder that reads "Don't drive faster than your angels can fly."

Dressed in a pink hijab , or headscarf, and a black shoulder-to-ankle garment, she melted into the tide of immigrants.

The men entered the front door. Avelar glided to a side entrance with the other women and vanished inside.

Questioning Catholicism

For Priscilla Martinez, a third-generation Mexican American, conversion began with a question. For Margaret Ellis, a first-generation Panamanian American, it ended with an answer.

Growing up in Texas, Martinez asked her priest why Catholics believe in the Holy Trinity -- the Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- but said she never got a satisfactory explanation.

Then more questions, until: "I felt I didn't have a relationship with God," said Martinez, 32, who lives in Ashburn with her Muslim husband and their children.

At the University of Texas, she was introduced to Islam in a Middle East history course and during Muslim student events. At the end of her freshman year, Martinez recited the shehada , the vow a person takes to become a Muslim. When she told her Catholic family, they gave her an ultimatum: Leave Islam or leave their house. Martinez left.

"It was more cultural than anything else," recalled Martinez, of medium height and wearing a green hijab. "It was something foreign to them, and it solidified the fact that I wasn't returning to the church."

Today, she said, she's on good terms with her family. Swimming is the only thing Martinez misses about her old life. Now, she swims only in private or with other women, and never in front of men, aside from her husband.

Ellis, too, was unsatisfied with Catholicism and said in Panama, the Catholics she knew were not religious. She wanted a deeper connection with God.

[...]

[rocam]

[...]After she converted, her great-aunt demanded, "How could you leave your mother's faith?"

In the United States, Ellis kept asking herself: Where do I fit in? As a black Latina, she found many black Americans didn't accept her. And Latinos she met were largely from nations without many blacks.

"For me, the perfect niche was the Muslim community, because for us it doesn't matter where you are from or what you look like," said Ellis, 44.

She is now called Farhahnaz Ellis.

In public, her Latino identity, like those of most converts, is often invisible. Ellis remembers the day in a bodega in Reston when she overheard two women looking at her Islamic garment and speaking aloud in Spanish: "Oh my God, look at her. She's crazy. It's so hot."

Ellis, who is tall and slender, walked up and broke out in Spanish. The startled women quickly headed out the door.

Religious Curiosity

When the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks occurred, Avelar, then a George Mason University student, was dating a Pakistani American Muslim. One day, she angrily asked him: How could Muslims commit such acts? Yet she also grew curious. When her anger died down, she asked him to tell her about Islam. After they broke up, her interest continued.

"I absolutely had no intention of converting," Avelar recalled. "Even though I felt Islam was inside my heart, I didn't want to admit it to myself."

She was thinking about her father.

On the night of her senior class photography exhibition, Avelar's family and friends sat in the audience. Here, a photo of Avelar wearing a necklace with a cross, only dangling from her back. There, a photo of Jesus on his cross, only his face was smeared.

Millie Jimenez, 31, who grew up with Avelar, caught on. "It symbolized that she was turning her back on Catholicism," she recalled.

Avelar wanted her father to understand this. But on that night, his children said, he felt something else for his only daughter. (He declined a request to be interviewed.)

"He seemed proud that she had an art show," said Selwyn Avelar, 25, her brother.

Two weeks later, she converted.

Avelar told her mother, then Selwyn. They gave support. But it would take her two months to work up the courage to tell her father.

When she finally did, she said he replied: " 'You're a grown woman. I believe I've raised you well.' "

Then, he said: " 'Before your grandmother died she left us specific instructions to never abandon or change our religion.' "

His attempt didn't work.

'I Love Islam'

Avelar stopped eating pupusas revueltas, tamales de cerdo and any other Salvadoran dishes with pork. In her house, she stopped eating any meat that wasn't halal , or permissible under Islamic dietary laws.

Alcohol was out, as were tank tops. On Christmas Eve, she drove her family to midnight Mass and dropped them outside the church.

Avelar's beliefs are shaped neither by politics nor injustice toward Muslims, she said. In her mind, she's still a hyphenated immigrant -- only with one more hyphen.

"I love my country. I love living here. I love being Latina," she said. "But more than anything else, I love Islam."

Avelar's family held out hope that her conversion would be just a phase. That changed the day she came home with a Muslim man. He was also Latino. They had met two weeks earlier. They wanted to get married.

Her father angrily said no and blamed Islam. " 'They want to marry you off to a man you don't even know,' " she remembered him saying. Then, he took away her Islamic books and said: It's either Islam or the family.

Avelar replied: "Don't ever ask me to choose between you and my religion because I won't choose you."

"That was the day he realized how serious I was," she said.

Later, Avelar and her boyfriend had differences. They did not marry.

Portrayals of Women

After the juma , where Avelar recited verses from the Koran in the back of the mosque with the other women, she left through the same door she had entered.

She said it doesn't bother her that women in Islam have different roles, roles that many westerners describe as repressed. Where they see inequality, she sees respect. A respect, she said, she doesn't see often in Latino culture.

"The way Latin men portray women, it's terrible," Avelar said. "You look at Spanish CDs, and you see women in bikinis on the cover."

Before Islam: The day laborers at a nearby 7-Eleven whistled and cat-called -- " ¡Oy Mamacita ! " -- as she passed them.

After Islam: The day laborers stared in silence as she, in her hijab, passed them.

"The fact they stayed quiet, I was like, ' Alhamdulillah! '," said Avelar, reciting the Arabic phrase "Praise be to Allah."

"I love the respect that I get from the opposite sex [when I'm] in hijab."

Her relationship with her brother also changed.

Before Islam: "We were close," said Selwyn Avelar. "We used to go out and have a drink. We used to talk."

After Islam: "I felt like she was a different person," he said. "She wasn't the girl I had known for 25 years. . . . I felt like she was trying to convert me.''

Yet she's also his sister. And he loves her. In recent months, he said, he's grown to admire her, for learning Arabic, for using her time wisely and for living a healthier and more constructive life.

"Maybe there are times I don't talk to her about my life because she'll give me advice on the Muslim way," he said. "But she's become more of an interesting person. I can learn more from her."

And what about Avelar's father?

Now, whenever a man visits their home, she said, he waits to see if his daughter is properly covered. He likes it that men don't ogle her and she doesn't drink alcohol and stay out late.

His daughter believes he has found a comfortable balance.

[rocam]

Marriage, post-9/11 curiosity, and a shared interest in issues such as immigration are key reasons.

By Amy Green | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0928/p03s02-ussc.html

ORLANDO, FLA.
With her hijab and dark complexion, Catherine Garcia doesn't look like an Orlando native or a Disney tourist. When people ask where she's from, often they are surprised that it's not the Middle East but Colombia.

That's because Ms. Garcia, a bookstore clerk who immigrated to the US seven years ago, is Hispanic and Muslim. On this balmy afternoon at the start of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, she is at her mosque dressed in long sleeves and a long skirt in keeping with the Islamic belief in modesty. "When I was in my country I never fit in the society. Here in Islam I feel like I fit with everything they believe," she says.

Garcia is one of a growing number of Hispanics across the US who have found common ground in a faith and culture bearing surprising similarities to their own heritage. From professionals to students to homemakers, they are drawn to the Muslim faith through marriage, curiosity and a shared interest in issues such as immigration.


AT PRAYER: Melissa Matos, of the Council on American Islamic Relations, is one of a growing number of Hispanic Muslims. The population has grown 30 percent since 1999.


The population of Hispanic Muslims has increased 30 percent to some 200,000 since 1999, estimates Ali Khan, national director of the American Muslim Council in Chicago. Many attribute the trend to a growing interest in Islam since the 2001 terrorist attacks and also to a collision between two burgeoning minority groups. They note that Muslims ruled Spain centuries ago, leaving an imprint on Spanish food, music, and language.

"Many Hispanics ... who are becoming Muslim, would say they are embracing their heritage, a heritage that was denied to them in a sense," says Ihsan Bagby, professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky.

The trend has spawned Latino Islamic organizations such as the Latino American Dawah Organization, established in 1997 by Hispanic converts in New York City. Today the organization is nationwide.

The growth in the Hispanic Muslim population is especially prevalent in New York, Florida, California, and Texas, where Hispanic communities are largest. In Orlando, the area's largest mosque, which serves some 700 worshipers each week, is located in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. A few years ago it was rare to hear Spanish spoken at the mosque, says Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida.

Today there is a growing demand for books in Spanish, including the Koran, and requests for appearances on Spanish-language radio stations, Mr. Musri says. The mosque offers a Spanish-language education program in Islam for women on Saturdays. "I could easily see in the next few years a mosque that will have Spanish services and a Hispanic imam who will be leading the service," he says.

The two groups tend to be family-oriented, religious, and historically conservative politically, Dr. Bagby says. Many who convert are second- and third-generation Hispanic Americans.

The two groups also share an interest in social issues such as immigration, poverty, and healthcare. Earlier this year Muslims joined Hispanics in marches nationwide protesting immigration-reform proposals they felt were unfair.

In South Central Los Angeles, a group of Muslim UCLA students a decade ago established a medical clinic in this underserved area. Today the nonreligious University Muslim Medical Association Community Clinic treats some 16,000 patients, mostly Hispanic, who see it as a safe place to seek care without fear for their illegal status, says Mansur Khan, vice chairman of the board and one of the founders.

Although the clinic doesn't seek Muslim converts, Dr. Khan sees Hispanics taking an interest in his faith because it focuses on family, he says. One volunteer nurse founded a Latino Islamic organization in the area. Another Hispanic woman told Khan she felt drawn to the faith because of the head covering Muslim women wear. It reminded her of the Virgin Mary.

The trend is a sign that Islam is becoming more Americanized and more indigenous to the country, Bagby says. As Republican positions on issues such as immigration push Muslim Hispanics and blacks in a less conservative direction, Islam could move in the same direction. Muslim Hispanic and black involvement in American politics could demonstrate to Muslims worldwide the virtues of democracy, eventually softening fundamentalists. He believes the Osama bin Ladens of the world are a small minority, and that most fundamentalists are moving toward engagement with the West.

"The more Hispanics and other Americans [who] become Muslim, the stronger and wider the bridge between the Muslim community and the general larger American community," Bagby says. "Their words and approach have some weight because they are a source of pride for Muslims throughout the world."

Garcia left Colombia to study international business in the US. Always religious, she considered becoming a nun when she was younger. But her Catholic faith raised questions for her. She wondered about eating pork when the Bible forbids it, and about praying to Mary and the saints and not directly to God.

In the US she befriended Muslims and eventually converted to Islam. Her family in Colombia was supportive. Today she says her prayers in English, Spanish, and Arabic, and she eats Halal food in keeping with Islamic beliefs.

"It's the best thing that happened to me," says Garcia in soft, broken English. "I never expected to have so many blessings and be in peace like I am now."