Marta Felicitas Ramirez de Galedary is a co-founder of the La Asociacion Latino Musulmana de America (LALMA) in 1999. [1] LALMA is at the forefront of providing information and support to Latinos in Southern California. [2] She is a former nursing director at the UMMA Clinic in Los Angeles. Galedary also works with LA Voice, and MuslimARC, (Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative.) [3] She is also a registered nurse. [4]
Marta Felicitas Ramirez was born into a ranching family in Guerrero, Mexico. She was the youngest of eleven daughters and was a student at a Catholic school. [5] She attended the Colegio Hispano Americano in Mexico City, studying philosophy, art, psychology, and western literature. Galedary then married and had a son. She later took English lessons at a British Embassy institute before becoming an exchange student in Bath, England in 1981. There she first learned of Islam and befriended three of her Muslim classmates. [5]
Galedary divorced her husband and moved to the United States through an exchange program. She says that she came to Islam through much soul-searching and study and embraced the religion in 1985. [2] [6] [7] [ page needed ] [8] [ page needed ] In September 1999, Galedary joined four other Muslim women at the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles to start a Latina Muslim study group and Spanish language library. [5] She has been leading Spanish-language classes for new Muslim converts. [9] She is also a khateebah at the Women's Mosque of America. [3]
Her conversion story is featured in "Latino Muslims: Our Journeys to Islam." [10]
A mosque or masjid is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers (salah) are performed, including outdoor courtyards.
Islam is the third largest religion in the United States (1%), behind Christianity and Judaism, equaling Buddhism and Hinduism percentage wise. A 2017 study estimated that 3.45 million Muslim Americans live in the United States, about 1.1 percent of the total U.S. population. In 2017, 20 states which were mostly in the South and Midwest reported Islam being the largest non-Christian religion. In 2020, the U.S. Religion Census found there to be 4.45 million Muslim Americans in the country, making up 1.3% of the population.
Islam has been practiced in China since the 7th century CE. Muslims are a minority group in China, representing 1 to 1.5 percent of the total population according to various estimates. Though Hui Muslims are the most numerous group, the greatest concentration of Muslims are in Xinjiang, which contains a significant Uyghur population. Lesser yet significant populations reside in the regions of Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai. Of China's 55 officially recognized minority peoples, ten of these groups are predominantly Sunni Muslim.
Amina Wadud is an American Muslim theologian. Wadud serves as Visiting Professor at Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies and was also a visiting scholar at Starr King School for the Ministry. Wadud has written extensively on the role of women in Islam.
There is a difference of opinion among Muslims regarding the circumstances in which women may act as imams, i.e. to lead a mixed gendered congregation in salat (prayer). The orthodox position is that women cannot lead prayers for men, which is justified by the different roles that men and women take in society however, there is no Hadith and Quran verse that prohibits Muslim women from doing so.
The Latino American Dawah Organization (LADO) is a grassroots organization founded in September 1997 by a handful of Latino converts to Islam in New York City. The idea began with Samantha Sanchez who then recruited the help of Juan Alvarado and Saraji Umm Zaid and the group was formed. Later, the group leadership transferred to Juan Jose Galvan. The organization's name was selected to express LADO's ethnic and religious identity as Latinos/Hispanics and as Muslims. LADO also wanted to emphasize that this would be an Islamic organization whose primary purpose would be dawah and education to Latinos. Today, the Latino American Dawah Organization is known by most Muslims as simply "LADO" and as "The LADO Group." In Spanish, LADO is known as "El Grupo LADO." The acronym LADO means 'side' in Spanish. The motto of the Latino American Dawah Organization is "¡A su LADO!".
Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilized secular, Western, or otherwise non-Muslim feminist discourses, and have recognized the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement.
Asra Quratulain Nomani is an Indian American author. Born in India to Muslim parents, she earned a BA from West Virginia University in liberal arts in 1986 and an MA from the American University in international communications in 1990. She subsequently worked as a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal with her colleague Daniel Pearl in Pakistan post-9/11. Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists while following an investigative lead. Nomani later became the co-director of the Pearl Project, a faculty-student investigative-reporting project which has looked into Pearl's murder.
Cultural Muslims, also known as nominal Muslims, non-practicing Muslims or observing Muslims, are people who identify as Muslims but are not religious and do not practice the faith. They may be a non-observing, secular or irreligious individuals who still identify with Islam due to family backgrounds, personal experiences, ethnic and national heritage, or the social and cultural environment in which they grew up. However, this concept is not always met with acceptance in conservative Islamic communities.
Islam in Colombia is a minority religion, with most Colombians adhering to Christianity (Catholicism). According to a 2018 study conducted by Pew Research Center, the size of the Colombian Muslim population ranges from about 85,000–100,000 people out of a total population of 50.4 million. However, according to official estimates the Colombian Muslim community numbered just 10,000 people or 0.02% of the total Colombian population. Most Colombian Muslims are immigrants from the Arab World along with a small number of local converts.
Islam is the second largest religion in Norway after Christianity. As of 2023, the number of Muslims living in Norway was 182,607. The majority of Muslims in Norway are Sunni, with a significant Shia minority. 55 percent of Muslims in the country live in Oslo and Viken. The vast majority of Muslims have an immigrant background, and very few Norwegians are Muslim.
Hispanic and Latino American Muslims are Hispanic and Latino Americans who are of the Islamic faith. Hispanic and Latino Americans are an ethnolinguistic group of citizens of the United States with origins in Spain and Latin America. Islam is an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion teaching that there is only one God (Allah), and that Muhammad is a messenger of God. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, claimed to be the verbatim word of God, and the teachings and normative examples of Muhammad. Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and the Quran in its Arabic to be the unaltered and final revelation of God. The Spaniards took the Roman Catholic faith to Latin America via imperialism and colonialism; Roman Catholicism continues to be the largest, but not the only, religious denomination among most Hispanics. In contrast, the Arabs took Islam to very few Latin American countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia via post-independence immigration.
Felicitas Gómez Martínez de Méndez was a Puerto Rican activist in the American civil rights movement. In 1946, Méndez and her husband, Gonzalo, led an educational civil rights battle that changed California and set an important legal precedent for ending de jure segregation in the United States. Their landmark desegregation case, known as Mendez v. Westminster, paved the way for meaningful integration and public-school reform.
American Muslims often face Islamophobia and racialization due to stereotypes and generalizations ascribed to them. Due to this, Islamophobia is both a product of and a contributor to the United States' racial ideology, which is founded on socially constructed categories of profiled features, or how people seem.
The Women's Mosque of America is a women's mosque based in Los Angeles, California. It is the first women-led Muslim house of worship in the United States, and it was founded by WGA comedy writer/director M. Hasna Maznavi to uplift the entire Muslim community by empowering the women within, and to spark the pathway towards a worldwide women-led Islamic Renaissance — one that is shaped by Muslim women's voices, participation, leadership, and scholarship. Maznavi had a childhood dream to build a mosque before she died as her sadaqa jariyah, and she was further inspired by reading the Qur'an in English in entirety and her own study of Islamic history which revealed a rich history of female Muslim religious leadership before she decided to establish her dream mosque with rotating women khateebahs (preachers), which sets a precedent for women's leadership in American Islam.
M. Hasna Maznavi founded The Women’s Mosque of America, the first women-led Muslim house of worship in the United States. Hasna is also a WGA comedy writer/director committed to changing the way Islam & Muslims are represented in mainstream American media. The Women's Mosque of America is her effort to uplift the entire Muslim community by empowering the women within, and to spark the pathway towards a worldwide women-led Islamic Renaissance — one that is shaped by Muslim women’s voices, participation, leadership, and scholarship. Maznavi had a childhood dream to build a mosque before she died as her sadaqa jariyah, and she was further inspired by reading the Qur'an in English in entirety and her own study of Islamic history which revealed a rich history of female Muslim religious leadership before she decided to establish her dream mosque with rotating women khateebahs (preachers), which sets a precedent for women's leadership in American Islam.
In 1988 PIEDAD was founded by Khadijah Rivera in New York. In its acronym form, it reads "Propagación Islámica para la Educación y la Devoción a Aláh el Divino". Literally, PIEDAD means "Taqwa, piety or God-fearing." Their numerous seminars have included speakers like Imam Siraj Wahhaj, Mohammed Nasim, Dr. Thomas Irving, Dr. Omar Kasule, and others. PIEDAD began as the first Latina Muslim organization dedicated to Latina converts in the United States. Nylka Vargas became the PIEDAD National Coordinator after Khadijah Rivera's passing on November 22, 2009. Today, members consists of Latinas and non-Latinas. PIEDAD actively participates in local mosques and communities to collaborate, share information, and devise strategies to better all communities. Its five national chapters have more than 300 members.
LALMA is a not-for-profit organization that was established in 1999 in response to the need for Spanish-language resources on Islam. LALMA began with a group of five Latino Muslims from Los Angeles led by Marta Felicitas Galedary began having regular meetings to learn about Islam in the Spanish language. According to its mission statement, LALMA "promotes a better understanding of Islam to the Spanish speaking community and establishes a forum of spiritual nurturing and social support to Latino Muslims, building bridges among the monotheistic community and advocating for social justice in accordance with Islamic values." Initially LALMA stood for Los Angeles Latino Muslims Association, but after a restructuring to accommodate its growth, LALMA was renamed to La Asociacion Latino Musulmana de America.
Khadijah Rivera founded the first organization, PIEDAD, for Latinas of the Islamic faith in 1988. She was a Puerto Rican Muslim convert from Roman Catholicism. She was married to an Egyptian Muslim. Khadijah Rivera was involved in some two dozen social causes. She encouraged members to become active in their mosques. During her life, she was a social activist and community worker. She taught at a local Tampa Bay school. She was a coordinator of Project Downtown Tampa, a project that helps the homeless and needy. In summer 2009, she began working at CAIR's Tampa office.
Hamza Perez is a Puerto Rican former American rap artist who converted to Islam. He has been ranked as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the royal strategic Islamic center. Hamza spends his time on the streets and jail cells spreading the message of Islam to at-risk youth and communities. He was also a member of the hip-hop group M-Team, a music group that consisted of Hamza and his brother Suliman Perez. They used hip-hop to spread their faith and religious message to other young people. Hamza is the founder of the S.H.E.H.U. Program and one of the co-founders of the Light of the Age Mosque in Pittsburgh, PA. He has also worked with the interfaith poetry project Crossing Limits. In 2009, PBS released a movie entitled "New Muslim Cool" about his life, music, and community.
