Muslims in Brazil
Muhammad Mumtaz Brazil, a country of 200 million people, is well known for its leading economy in the world. It is famed for its diversity in culture, people, faith, religions and much more. The constitution of Brazil adopted a secular government system, where people are free to choose and practice their religions. There is no official religion in Brazil; majority of Brazilian follow Roman Catholicism. Various other religions, including Islam, are also practiced in the country. Islam is one of the earliest religions in Brazil. It is believed that the earliest significant Muslim presence was the result of African slaves in the 16th century. In the 19th century, a large number of immigrants traveled to Brazil from the...
Haitians Find ‘Peace, Guidance’ in Islam...
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Schoolteacher Darlene Derosier lost her home in the 2010 earthquake that devastated her country. Her husband died a month later after suffering what she said was emotional trauma from the quake. She and her two daughters now live in tents outside the capital of Port-au-Prince, surrounded by thousands of others made homeless and desperate by the disaster. What’s helped pull her through all the grief, she said, has been her faith, but not of the Catholic, Protestant or even Voodoo variety that have predominated in this island country. Instead, she’s converted to a new religion here, Islam, and built a small neighbourhood mosque out of cinderblocks and plywood, where some 60 Muslims pray daily. Islam...
Former Gitmo Guard Now Proselytizes for Islam...
(POCATELLO, ID) – A former Guantanamo Bay prison guard shared his experiences with a small group of Pocatello residents Sunday night. Terry Holdbrooks lectures against American foreign policy at various venues around the country. Holdbrooks, who converted to Islam after supervising detainees, says Guantanamo needs to be closed, citing concerns about due process and the possibility of innocent people being kept behind bars. About 160 detainees are still held at the prison. According to the U.S. State Department, an estimated one in four detainees released will eventually return to terrorist and insurgent...
Targeted Islamic Outreach to Hispanics Achieving Results...
PEARLAND, Texas • Carlos Lopez works in the United States to earn money and send it back home to his family in Mexico. But he sends back something else, too: pamphlets and personal testimonies about his new faith. On Dec. 22, 2013, Lopez took the “shahada” — the profession of the Islamic faith — and joined the ranks of what the American Muslim Council estimates is a 200,000 strong Hispanic Muslim community across the U.S. Unlike previous generations of Hispanic Muslims who were attracted to the faith by their own spiritual explorations, Lopez and many others like him are converting as a result of targeted Islamic outreach efforts. This new form of Islamic “da’wah,” or outreach, aims to...
I Wish All Americans Received the Message of Islam...
Diane Charles Breslin is an ex-Catholic Christian living in US. She lost faith after reading the Bible but her continued belief in God led her to explore other religions including Buddhism and Hinduism. In this concluding part of her series, Breslin recounts her Irish Catholic background and says it was only by instinct that she always would pray to God — the One and Only — before going to sleep. It took three full years of my searching and studying Qur’an before I was ready to proclaim that I wanted to be a Muslim. Of course I feared the changes in clothing and habits, such as dating and drinking to which I had become accustomed. Music and dancing...
Islam Is Ireland’s Fastest Growing Religion...
The Republic of Ireland may be intimately associated with the Roman Catholic Church, but the fastest-growing faith on the emerald isle is Islam — at such a rapid rate that Muslims are projected to replace Protestantism as the second-most popular religion by the year 2043. Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported that between 1991 and 2011, the percentage of Irish residents who were Muslim jumped from 0.1 percent to 1 percent (equating to about 49,000 people). By 2020, Ireland’s Islamic population will more than double to at least 100,000. The increase is attributed to both immigration and population growth. The second fastest-growing faith in Ireland is Orthodox Christianity, largely due to immigration from Eastern Europe — doubling in just...
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