Stories of Some of the Early “Latino” Muslims (Part 1)

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…

Assalaam alaykum, The video below documents a landmark event in the history of El Barrio (Spanish Harlem) and the Latino Muslim story in the United States. It was Alianza Islamica’s attempt to publicly showcase an expression of Muslim culture that was distinctly Latino and accurately reflected our contemporary cultural reality: sights, sounds, music, songs, verse,…

This presentation is a comprehensive look at resistance movements from the Sixties through to the present day. It mainly focuses on the roots of resistance and how they influenced early indigenous Muslim communities. Rahim Ocasio presented it at Darul Hijra in Northern Virginia about 2008/2009 as part of a youth program.

This lecture shines a light on the problem of racism in the American Muslim community. Its primary focus is on the ways Arabs and Indo-Pakistanis discriminate against Black and Latino Muslims. The examples cited reveal the stark reality of Muslim discrimination and the need for frank and open dialogue. As with most things noxious, prejudice…