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Conversion to Islam in Latin America

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Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions
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Conversion to Islam in Latin America refers to all religious conversions to Islam in the Americas since these countries are culturally connected to each other. Until recently, Islam could be seen as a religion of the immigrants in most Latin American countries. This entry covers how increasing conversions are likely to transform Islam into a religion of the Americas.

Conversion to Islam in Latin America

Conversion to Islam has been a growing phenomenon across the Americas in the last two decades (Karam 2013). Converts are now more visible in Muslim communities in major cities of the region. In the United States, some estimates of Latina/Latino converts reach nearly 200,000 (Martínez-Vázquez 2010; Chitwood 2016). In Bogota, Colombia, approximately half of 1000 Muslims are Colombian converts (Sarrazin and Rincon 2015). Similarly, in Mexico, there are equal number of Mexican converts and Muslims of foreign origin (Garvin 2005), and some studies estimate that converts now...

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Correspondence to Şaban Taniyici .

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Taniyici, Ş. (2017). Conversion to Islam in Latin America. In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_250-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_250-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-08956-0

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