NYC Latino Muslims, Alianza Islamica, ASWAD at MIB

By Yahya Figueroa Many of our Muslim answers have become dogmatic, repeating of a few themes someone has kind of understood from some book or the other. Iman (faith) is of course the cornerstone of our Muslim lives. I won’t recant basics of faith, theology and points we believe in. These cardinal points are laid…

By Yahya Abdul Latif Figueroa Director, Alianza Islamica Beginnings and starting points are always difficult to determine and become obscured in the pages of bygone days. How and when movements and ideas bloom is never easy to pinpoint.  Historical studies of the same period rarely agree on key issues. Nonetheless, the following lines hope to…

“Latino Muslims: Our Journeys to Islam” Did you know you can read the first part of the book for free? That’s right, you can read the short bios of Khadijah Rivera, Ibrahim Gonzalez, and Benjamin Perez for free on your web browser. Check it out at Amazon.com.

By Yahya Abdul-Latif Figueroa Director, Alianza Islamica Reclaiming heritage lends itself to the false impression of dwelling on the past. The next few lines are about the future flowing from the past. Hopefully a reopening to a humble beginning that accomplished a number of great starts yet confronted many challenges and now must map a…

By Yahya Figueroa Intellectual fads and cultural truism are very hard to detect. These false trends often have a grain of truth but the final product is distorted truths and fabulous falsehoods. The larger society has in so many ways lost its mind morally and intellectually. Our minority groups are usually in the rear but…