This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/4728
January 13, 2011
January 13, 2011 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - In a piece carried by a Taliban/al-Qaeda friendly website, we find it claimed that 200,000 American Hispanics are converting to Islam each year. Of course the information has since been disseminated by the usual suspects.
The article refers to a Jan. 7 New York Times piece which benignly states, "While the majority of Hispanics in the United States are Catholic, some studies have estimated that there are as many as 200,000 Hispanic converts to Islam in this country..." [source, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/nyregion/09muslims.html].
Obviously, the Times' statement says nothing about yearly conversion, simply absolute numbers.
It seems that some of the basis for the Times' article might be based on a 2006 Christian Science Monitor item, " The population of Hispanic Muslims has increased 30 percent to some 200,000 since 1999, estimates Ali Khan, national director of the American Muslim Council in Chicago..."
So we have a circle of disinformation typical of Islamist propaganda - a legit news source presents conjecture possibly of benefit to Islamist da'wa efforts with no substantiation outside of a Chicago imam's "estimate."
Two factors are at work here, the first being an example of how urban myths come into public consciousness and the second, that there are always parties interested in expanding upon these conspiracy theories for their own political benefit.
It is the politics of the claim regarding Hispanics that is key here. With many American Muslim pressure groups under siege because of their associations and tactics, those seeking the eventual triumph of Shari'a in the U.S. are actively stoking the information stream, intending to create the self-fulfilling prophesy that Islamic domination of the West is inevitable.
Because many domestic decision makers are disciples of a pathological multiculturalism, the political motive for the drive for Muslim conversion is infrequently and inadequately examined.
However, evidence pointing to the sinister potential of da'wa is available, below a portion of Dr. Michael Weller's [Annenberg Professor of International Communication The Institute of World Politics] testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 13, 2003, which shows that international Wahhabism [the extreme Saudi form of Sunni Islam] is actively seeking to create a street-savvy, prison-tough Islamist fifth column.
"...Radical Islamist groups, most tied to Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi organizations suspected by the U.S. government of being closely linked to terror financing activities, dominate Muslim prison recruitment in the U.S. and seek to create a radicalized cadre of felons who will support their anti-American efforts. Estimates place the number of Muslim prison recruits at between 15-20% of the prison population. They are overwhelmingly black with a small, but growing Hispanic minority. It appears that in many prison systems, including Federal prisons, Islamist imams have demanded, and been granted, the exclusive franchise for Muslim proselytization to the forceful exclusion of moderates..."[source, http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=960&wit_id=2719]
Regardless of the rapidity [or lack thereof] of ethnic minority groups converting to Islam, the fact remains that the activity of foreign influenced da'wa efforts in prison should be viewed with great concern as al-Qaeda and related groups transition from relying on foreign born terrorists to those of domestic origin.
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http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=hispanic1132011101%2Ehtm
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/4728