Muslims In Mexico Under Greater Scrutiny From U.S.
23 May 2011
12 Comments
The 2010 Mexican census says there are 3760 Muslims living in Mexico in regions as varied as Chiapas and Mexico City. The assassination of Osama bin Laden earlier this month has caused the Mexican and American governments to step up their surveillance of this little-known community.
According to M Magazine, Muslims occupy fifteen states in Mexico: Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Michoacán, Veracruz, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Coahuila, Jalisco, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Morelos and the Federal District or Mexico City. But it’s the Muslims in Chiapas who seem to draw the most ire from their government with fears that the Mayans they’ve held down for so long will call on Al-queada to help them rise up again.
A 2005 story in Germany’s Spiegel magazine, however, says Mayan Muslims have no interest in religious extremism. Their attraction to Islam lies in its perceived disinterest in race, something they’ve never experienced from their government.
“In Islam, the Indians rediscover their original values,” claims Esteban Lopez, the Spanish secretary general of the Muslim community. “The Christians destroyed their culture.” He presents the use and abuse of alcohol as proof. Alcoholism is wide-spread under Tzotzil Indians and the strict ban on spirits in Islam helps many to break the vicious circle of addiction and poverty.
In fact their white neighbors say Muslims in Chiapas are hardworking, running a pizza shop and a carpenter shop, and that the kids study Arabic and pray five times a day in the backroom of a residential building.
The second most monitored group of Muslims in Mexico are the ones in Michoacan who officials fear will have a run-in with fundamentalist Christian mennonite drug cartel La Familia. That would be a Road Warrior battle to end all battles. But there have been no problems on that front, either.
Only a couple of Muslim communities in Coahuila have been caught committing petty crimes like theft and forgery.
This hasn’t stopped the United States Department of Homeland Security from monitoring all foreign nationals entering the country of Mexico from Arab states. The most recent data, released in June 2010, indicated that during fiscal year 2009, officials detained at the border with Mexico 125 illegal immigrants of Syrian, Sudanese, Pakistani, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Yemeni, Nigerian, Somali, Algerian and Saudi Arabia origin. Among those arrested, Daniel Joseph Maldonado and Miguel Alfonso Salinas caught their attention after both were seized with documentation certifying them as Mexicans.
U.S. security officials said Maldonado has ties with Somali rebel groups and received terrorist training in Somalia in 2007. He was caught trying to enter the United States to indoctrinate young students and turn them into human bombs. Miguel Alfonso Salinas was arrested at the international bridge in New Mexico in 2006. He was subjected to interrogation by the FBI when it was discovered his real name is Ayman Kamal Sulmane, and his nationality is Egyptian.
Original post: Muslims In Mexico Under Greater Scrutiny From U.S.
trens, you must be right? i’m appearently quite dumb? this article makes no sense to me, but then again i’m a little drunk. anyways i’ll do my best to figure out what the hell the author is talking about?
the title is “Muslims In Mexico Under Greater Scrutiny From U.S.” than the author says “But it’s the Muslims in Chiapas who seem to draw the most ire from their government” – “their government” as in the mexican government. “In Islam, the Indians rediscover their original values,” well if you don’t want to drink just don’t drink? http://www.enjoyguatemala.com/culture.htm
then the author says that mexican muslims have only commited a few petty crimes, but “This hasn’t stopped the United States Department of Homeland Security from monitoring all foreign nationals entering the country of Mexico from Arab states.” ok so appearently america is not monitoring mexican muslims but arab muslim who fly into mexico. i think our (america’s) concern is that terrorist will come acroos the border and do us harm. they may think, let’s not try to fly to america directly, or even into canada, they have technology, let’s try mexico. sounds like something we should be watching?
and the last two paragraphs seem like a job well done by ice??????
i think a better title would be “arabs visiting mexico under us surveillance” and the lesson on the less than 4 thousand mexican muslims and their possible confrontation with a mennonite drug cartel has no relevance. plus i think the mennoites are pacifists. must not be “true mennonites”, strange the hypocrisy of this site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonite
23 May 2011 at 7:21 pm