Crescent over Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA

Published by University of Texas Press 2015

Crescent over Another Horizon

Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA

Edited by: Maria del Mar Logroño Narbona , Paulo G. Pinto and John Tofik Karam

https://doi.org/10.7560/302293

Overview
Contents

About this book

Muslims have been shaping the Americas and the Caribbean for more than five hundred years, yet this interplay is frequently overlooked or misconstrued. Brimming with revelations that synthesize area and ethnic studies, Crescent over Another Horizon presents a portrait of Islam’s unity as it evolved through plural formulations of identity, power, and belonging. Offering a Latino American perspective on a wider Islamic world, the editors overturn the conventional perception of Muslim communities in the New World, arguing that their characterization as “minorities” obscures the interplay of ethnicity and religion that continues to foster transnational ties.

Bringing together studies of Iberian colonists, enslaved Africans, indentured South Asians, migrant Arabs, and Latino and Latin American converts, the volume captures the power-laden processes at work in religious conversion or resistance. Throughout each analysis—spanning times of inquisition, conquest, repressive nationalism, and anti-terror security protocols—the authors offer innovative frameworks to probe the ways in which racialized Islam has facilitated the building of new national identities while fostering a double-edged marginalization. The subjects of the essays transition from imperialism (with studies of morisco converts to Christianity, West African slave uprisings, and Muslim and Hindu South Asian indentured laborers in Dutch Suriname) to the contemporary Muslim presence in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Trinidad, completed by a timely examination of the United States, including Muslim communities in “Hispanicized” South Florida and the agency of Latina conversion. The result is a fresh perspective that opens new horizons for a vibrant range of fields.

Author / Editor information

MARÍA DEL MAR LOGROÑO NARBONA
Miami, Florida

Logroño Narbona is an assistant professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Florida International University.

PAULO G. PINTO
Niterói, Brazil

Pinto is a professor of anthropology at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, where he also directs the Center for Middle East Studies. His previous books include Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices.

JOHN TOFIK KARAM
Chicago, Illinois

Reviews

Crescent Over Another Horizon deftly traces the intricate connections between Muslims and Islamic institutions in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latina/o United States...this volume is an important and timely contribution to the study of religion in the Americas, relevant to both specialists and all scholars interested in the mutual constitution and contingency of religion, ethnicity, and identity.

— Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Crescent Over Another Horizon counteracts the tendency to locate Islam in the othered spaces of a nebulously constructed 'East'...Although the book operates across multiple scales and temporalities, its constituent parts mostly succeed in conveying Islam's dynamism in the regions under study.

— H-Net Reviews

Crescent Over Another Horizon is a compelling and timely text. A critical resource for scholars and the general public alike, it not only challenges the exclusion of the Americas and Caribbean from Islamic scholarship but also demonstrates that understanding the historical and contemporary complexity of the Americas and Caribbean must include Islam. Both a resource and a provocation, it is a text that will undoubtedly set the standard for research to come.

— Reading Religion

[A] welcome addition to the growing but still relatively sparse literature on Muslims in the Americas...should be on the bookshelf of any reader wanting to learn more about the activities and histories of Muslims...this collection will inspire further study of Islam's half-millenium presence in the New World.

— New West Indian Guide

[Crescent over Another Horizon questions] the supposed dichotomies between Islam and an idea of the West, rhetorically constructed in opposition to an idea of the East and Islam...a new geography is sought throughout the volume in which place does not frame who individuals are supposed to be but is the space from which one relates to the world.

— Latin American Research Review

This fascinating, original, and critically important volume creates a new map of the world and reimagines social history, immigration logics, and cultural transnationalism. This volume serves as an entirely new scholarly agenda for analyzing the history of the conquest/’discovery’ of the Americas in ways that make these histories immediately tangible to students in a post–Arab Spring universe.

— Paul Amar, Associate Professor of Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of The Security Archipelago, and editor of The Middle East and Brazil: Perspectives on the New Global South

A significant contribution to the field. Crescent over Another Horizon will produce a re-thinking of what sorts of connections—material and ideological, real and imagined—give meaning to people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

— Steven Hyland Jr., Assistant Professor of History and Chair, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Wingate University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Latino America in the Umma/ the Umma in Latino America John Tofik Karam, María del Mar Logroño Narbona and Paulo G. Pinto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I Reconsidering History
Chapter 1 “De los Prohibidos”: Mu slims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America Karoline P. Cook Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
Chapter 2 African Rebellion and Refuge on the Edge of Empire John Tofik Karam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
Chapter 3 Ethnic and Religious Identification among Muslim East Indians in Suriname (1898–1954) Ellen Bal and Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
Part II Contemporary Cartographies
Chapter 4 Institutionalizing Islam in Argentina: Comparing Community and Identity Configurations Silvia Montenegro Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Chapter 5 Conversion, Revivalism, and Tradition: The Religious Dynamics of Mu slim Communities in Brazil Paulo G. Pinto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
Chapter 6 Guests of Islam: Conversion and the Institutionalization of Islam in Mexico Camila Pastor de Maria y Campos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
Chapter 7 Cubans Searching for a New Faith in a New Context Luis Mesa Delmonte Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	190
Chapter 8 Muslims in Martinique Liliane Kuczynski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
Chapter 9 Forming Islamic Religious Identity among Trinidadians in the Age of Social Networks Halima-Sa‘adia Kassim Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Part III Islam Latina/o
Chapter 10 Discovering a Historical Consciousness: The Creation of a US Latina/o Muslim Identity Hjamil A. Martínez-Vázquez Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Chapter 11 Mapping Mu slim Communities in “Hispanicized” South Florida Mirsad Krijestorac Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	276
Chapter 12 Double-Edged Marginality and Agency: Latina Conversion to Islam Yesenia King and Michael P. Perez Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	304
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	337

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 356

eBook

Published: September 15, 2015
ISBN: 9781477302309