Islam in Latin America

In this occasion I will talk about the new Muslimah and her experiences.


To write this little article I took the time to talk with sisters from different countries, who allowed me to know their experiences.


I thank these brave women for allowing me to express their feelings.


Not everyone comes to Islam for the right reasons, but those who stay do so because they understood that Allah allowed that to happen for their growth.


Whatever the reason, the fact is that we are here. The biggest challenge is to stay. There are different communities in each country, some very well organized, others are willing to do it and others simply forget that women are the guide of the new generations.


Islam is based on doctrines and teachings that are perfect for us, imperfect beings. When we enter Islam we must struggle against the rejection of society, family and friends. Some support us hoping that this only lasts some time, others simply walk away and we stop being taken into account for activities in which we were previously the central focus.


We are very lucky to find a community that supports us and we feel like family, but unfortunately most of the new Muslimahs comment that they have come to a place where emptiness, intrigue, and jealousy reign.


A place where we feel frustrated because we don't know how to pray, we don't know how to answer to a greeting, where many believe that it is not worth teaching us if in any case in a few months we will be disappointed at the reason that led us there.


Nobody, or very few, make the effort to teach us the basic subjects, and that if you learn the first chapter of the Qur'an, although poorly pronounced, it will be fine. And I do not generalize, as I said before, there are some well-organized communities that do strive to teach.


We forget to teach the new sisters the most important thing: to love themselves, to respect and value themselves. To teach them that Islam is in the Qur'an and Sunnah and not in cultures.


For this reason, many of the new converts, after a few months, begin to go away, since they feel worse than when they arrived: now without family or friends, and feeling that everything they do is sinful.


Seeking support and understanding is like looking for a needle in a haystack, hearing two voices in your mind:


1) Your past


2) The other sisters


3) The sunnah and the Qur'an


It is our obligation as Muslim converts to find the right guide and also to know what is right.


It is not easy when we carry with us a life of bad teachings that we must leave when we come to Islam, but when feeling so indecisive, we do not know if it is prudent, correct or not.


Islam is beautiful and also perfect, it is we who must improve and understand that the fact that a person is born under the Islamic faith does not make him perfect, but we should know how to interpret the teachings correctly. Behind these people there are customs and cultures that they carry even from the pre-Islamic era. Some macho men and women who confuse submission with agreeing to lose their rights as a human being.


Women in Islam play very important roles as mothers, friends, wives, companions, sisters, teachers, educators, so... Why do we receive less value and less teaching in our communities? Why do they just tell us that marriage is half your din? Why are we told that the Muslimah must be submissive?


Sisters, we must wake up and look back. See the women who surrounded our Prophet. Women who were brave, fighters, were present in the battles, they were the first to learn, since they knew that they are the ones who will teach.


We must learn not to judge our sisters, instead we must lend a hand, be support, ears willing to listen, and mouths that learn to silence what we hear.


Speak, yes, to defend our rights as women, which Islam gave us long before the laws did.


Let's recognize that we are not perfect, that each one has its different customs, our cultures are different, but our faith and our way of life within Islam is the same with bases and principles.


We converts are brave, strong women, and we must fight twice as much because we must learn from scratch, change our lives, and learn a language. But above all we must learn for the first time to be ourselves, to love ourselves for what we are and not for what others see.


I want to end this with the experience of a new Muslimah: Amina from Mexico.


Islam, Allah (subhanahu wa ta'ala) gave meaning and answers to my life.


As a new Muslimah, at first I felt saturated with too much information, many WhatsApp groups, many classes, and sometimes there was no homogeneity in the teachings.


In one class, a brother said one thing, and in another class the same brother said something else. I asked a brother about a topic I heard that was different from what he was saying, he got upset and did not substantiate his argument with either the Qur'an or the Sunnah.


* What would make me leave Islam? *


1. What discourages me is the lack of care of some sisters. I remember the sister who insisted to me to declare my shahadah, it seems that her only objective was converting people to Islam, because later she left me. I felt alone.


Combining that in the city where I live there are perhaps about thirty Muslims, there is no mosque, the environment is difficult, but alhamdu lillah we also find people who help us and give us a hand.


P/d: New Muslim women need support, not criticism.