Most studies on immigration to Argentina tend to associate Muslims with Arabs, without distinction. This error has its origins in the way immigrants from Arab countries arrived, especially from Syria and Lebanon. Before the Ottoman Empire territories were divided by national frontiers, all Arabs that arrived here were considered Turkish for the simple reason that they carried Turkish documents. Still today, Arabs in Argentina are popularly known as 'Turks', without necessarily any pejorative connotation. Argentina having been composed by waves of immigration, most new incoming groups were donned sobriquets: Jews were 'Russian', Italians 'Tanos', the Spaniards 'Gallegos', and the Arabs 'Turks'

Brieger, P.

Leiden University Scholary Publications

Regional IssuesI S I M  N E W S L E T T E R  6 / 0 0 33Pedro Brieger, sociologist, is chairperson of theMiddle East Department (DEMO) at the Institute ofInternational Relations of La Plata University,A r g e n t i n a .E-mail: pbrieger@wamani.wamani.apc.orgN o t e s1 . The first Muslims to arrive in Argentina wereprobably descendants of the Moors that camewith the first Spanish conquistadors before thecountry became independent. This, however, isu n c e r t a i n .2 . Morandini, Norma (1998), 'El harén, los árabes y elpoder político en la Argentina'. Ed. S u d a m e r i c a n a,Buenos Aires, p. 22.3 . Imam Mahmud Hussain is ex-president of theAsociación para la difusión del Islam en AméricaLatina (Association for the diffusion of Islam inLatin America), and director of the Centro de AltosEstudios Islámicos de la Argentina (Centre ofAdvanced Islamic Studies of Argentina) and themagazine Sufismo Viviente, and is currentlytranslating the Koran into Spanish. Interview bythe author, 11 august 2000.4 . Interview by the author, 30 August 2000.5 . Peralta, Santiago (1946), 'Influencia del puebloárabe en la Argentina, apuntes sobre inmigración',Buenos Aires, p. 297.6 . Public conference of Imam Mahmud Hussain,Buenos Aires, 24 September 1996.7 . 'Bring the Muslim gorilla so he can see that thispeople changes no ideas, struggle or fight withthe flags of Evita and Perón.' The expression'gorilla' refers to a contemptuous expressionagainst the military that overthrew General JuanPerón. The enemies of Perón's followers areusually called gorillas. Although Menem comesfrom the peronista movement, many consider thathis government has left the political banners ofPerón and his wife Eva Duarte, better known asE v i t a .8 . Brieger, Pedro (1996), 'Some Reflections on theDiario Clarín and Fundamentalism'. MSANEWS(msanews@faith.mynet.net), Ohio.L at i n  Amer i caP E DR O  B R I E G E RMost studies on immigration to Argentina1 tend toassociate Muslims with Arabs, without distinction.This error has its origins in the way immigrants fromArab countries arrived, especially from Syria andLebanon. Before the Ottoman Empire territories weredivided by national frontiers, all Arabs that arrivedhere were considered Turkish for the simple reasonthat they carried Turkish documents. Still today,Arabs in Argentina are popularly known as 'Turks',without necessarily any pejorative connotation. Ar-gentina having been composed by waves of immigra-tion, most new incoming groups were donned sobri-quets: Jews were 'Russian', Italians 'Tanos', theSpaniards 'Gallegos', and the Arabs 'Turks'.Muslims in ArgentinaThe first official data on Arabs in Argentinamentions '17 Ottomans' who arrived at theport of Buenos Aires in 1887.2 In the firstcensuses Muslims do not even appear in theregisters, since only Jews and Christianswere offered specific categories. Muslimswere considered as 'others', and were thusi n d i s t i n g u i s h a b l e .Today, the Republic of Argentina has onlya small Muslim minority, and obtaining aclear picture of the Islamic community is stillsomewhat of a problem, although the na-tional census does offer Islam as a clearchoice. According to Imam Mahmud Hus-s a i n ,3 there are currently about 450,00 Mus-lims in Argentina – less than 25% of the pop-ulation – and only 40,000 consider them-selves believers. According to MujamadHayer, director of the Oficina de Cultura yDifusión Islámica (Office of Culture and Is-lamic Diffusion), there are between 650,000and 700,000.4Arab immigration to Argentina was quiteconsiderable in the late 19t h century, afterWorld War I and up to the mid-20t h c e n t u r y ,having become its third most important im-migration wave. Of these immigrants, 40%are estimated to have been Muslims or chil-dren or grandchildren of Muslims.Late 19t h – early 20t h c e n t u r ySyrian-Lebanese immigrants in Argentinacreated institutions that denoted their cul-tural-geographic, more than their religious,origins. Indeed, Muslims, Jews and Chris-tians comprised these institutions, joined bytheir 'Arab' identity. There were, however,properly Islamic institutions. These were es-tablished to preserve the religious legacy,including the Arabic language, that wasbeing lost as years went by: most children ofSyrian-Lebanese immigrants no longerspoke Arabic at home and were not interest-ed in learning it. They clearly manifested anincreasing tendency toward adopting theculture and customs of their host country.Chronicles from the 1940s mention that itis rare for a Muslim Arab not to drink wine.5And while the 'melting pot' tendency ex-pressed itself in many ways, each immigrantgroup (even to this day) claimed its ownspecific part of the national mythology. Forexample, the gaucho, a farmer whose sym-bolic image includes the horse, the spearand his equestrian skills, is claimed by cer-tain Muslims as their own, as they see simi-larities between the gaucho and theBedouin. Some even maintain that the ob-scure origins of the word 'gaucho'6 are root-ed in Arabic.Carlos Saul Menem'sp r e s i d e n c yThe diffusion of Islam as such began as re-cently as 1973, with the foundation of theCentro de Estudios Islámicos (Centre of Is-lamic Studies) headed by Imam MahmudHussain, and has also served to attract Ar-gentineans of non-Muslim origin to Islam.But until the 1989 elections, Muslims inArgentina went virtually unnoticed. Theirinstitutions were only known in the neigh-bourhoods in which they functioned, or bythe members of the community who at-tended the small Arabic or Islamic studyc e n t r e s .However, this was to change when CarlosSaul Menem became President of Argenti-na. Of Syrian origin, his father, Saul Mene-hem, and his mother, Mohibe Akil, had ar-rived from distant Yabrud at the beginningof the century and settled in La Rioja, asmall, rather poor, province close to Chile.Menem's entry into power, beyond any ide-ological issues, revolutionized the country.Argentina now had a president of Muslimroots. Although Menem had embracedCatholicism, which he repeated whenevergiven the chance (up until the 1994 consti-tutional reform demanded that the presi-dent be a Roman Catholic), to people he wasstill a Muslim. His wife, who never aban-doned Islam, professed her religion openly,and his son, who died in 1995, was buried inan Islamic cemetery.The 'Arab-Muslim' aspect of the presi-dent's origins and close environment alsobegan to acquire public resonance. Menempromised to visit Syria after becoming pres-ident, and one of his assistants admittedthat Colonel Muammar Ghadafi had con-tributed 4 million dollars to the electoralcampaign. In addition, his sister-in-lawAmira Yoma became government staffmember, and her Syrian husband Ibrahim alIbrahim – despite not knowing a word ofSpanish – accepted a high position at theBuenos Aires International Airport (until heresigned in the middle of a scandal and fledthe country). His brother was president ofthe Senate and his other brother, EmirYoma, was his private secretary until he fellfrom grace due to money laundering accu-sations. His cousin Rima Siman was appoint-ed to the Argentinean Embassy in Italy,while another cousin, Amira Akil, was em-ployed at the embassy in Syria. These arebut a few examples.Menem played on ambivalence, not com-pletely denying his roots. He even said thathe was a descendant of Mohammed and ap-peared on very popular television pro-gramme dancing with an Arab odalisque.Meanwhile, k e b b e, l a b a n and a r a k w e r ebeing served at the presidential residencewhen entertaining guests.The controversial government of CarlosMenem resulted in its being rejected by cer-tain sectors of Argentinean society. It alsospurred scornful chanting about his Muslimroots in street demonstrations by the oppo-sition: 'Traigan al gorila musulman para quevea, que este pueblo no cambia de idea,lucha y pelea con las banderas de Evita yP e r ó n . '7Still, it was not until the attacks on the Is-raeli Embassy and the central building ofthe Jewish community that Muslims madetheir grand public appearance in Argen-tinean society. On 17 March 1992, a bombdestroyed the Israeli Embassy in BuenosAires, killing 29 people. About two yearslater, on 18 July 1994, an attack caused thedeath of almost 100 people at AMIA (Aso-ciación Mutual Israelita Argentina – JointJewish Argentinean Association). Iran wasaccused of being responsible from the verybeginning. There was talk of an internation-al connection and a 'local' connection thatwould necessarily imply participation ofmembers of the Islamic community in Ar-gentina, although no one was incriminated.With the objective of finding informationon the 'fundamentalist Islamic' cells at anycost, Argentinean journalists travelled enmasse to Ciudad del Este, a Paraguayan citynear the border, since it presumably har-boured terrorists. But no one found any-thing besides merchants of Lebanese origin.Muslims in Argentineanm e d i aThe Islamic community – which up to thenhad been ignored by the media – as well asthe words Shia and Sunna began appearingalmost daily in the Argentinean media. Cer-tain community leaders were invited to ap-pear on major television programmes to ex-plain the purported link of Islam with terror-ism. The term 'fundamentalism' began to beused synonymously with Muslim, and the Is-lamic community became stigmatized be-cause of its 'apparent' link to the attacks. Inthe first six months of 1996, Diario Clarín,the most important newspaper in Argenti-na, mentioned the word fundamentalism in104 articles as a synonym for fanaticism, ex-tremism and, in more general lines, religiousMuslim extremism. In those 6 months, only3 articles failed to associate fundamentalismwith Islam,8 thus marking a tendency withregard to the association of a phenomenonwith a community as a whole.Islam todayThe number of Muslims in Argentina is de-creasing, and this is due to several factors.Firstly, in families of Muslim origin, customsare being lost, from the Arabic language tofood and drink. Secondly, there is relativelylittle reading material on Islam available inSpanish. There is a growing tendency to-ward mixed marriages in which childrenlose all references to Islam, and there aretoo few study centres for disseminatingIslam. This may, however, change in the fu-ture with the construction of the new Islam-ic Cultural Center King Fahd, financed bythe Saudi government, which includes aschool and a mosque with a minaret in theheart of Buenos Aires. It is considered to bethe largest of its kind in Latin America.The 1990s marked the 'public' appearanceof Muslims in Argentina but, because of theattacks and the stereotypes created, Mus-lims were more worried about proving theirinnocence than about spreading their reli-gion. But despite all of this, the last fewyears have witnessed an entirely new phe-nomenon: Islam has incorporated itself intoArgentinean society as something morenatural and acceptable. There is no longeran element of surprise when someone pub-licly claims to be a Muslim. Besides, the chil-dren and, especially, the grandchildren ofMuslims are beginning to look for theirroots and are trying to get closer to theirown history and that of their ancestors, aphenomenon common to the both Northand South America.  ◆

Muslims in Argentina

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