Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources. Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go. Amazon Restaurants Food delivery from local restaurants. ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics. Our objective, therefore, will be to conduct an analysis of some sociological processes that this religion has experienced to adapt to the Brazilian religious field.
Before beginning, once again I emphasize that upon speaking of Islam I am not thinking of something singular, without variations and diversities in time and space. Muslims share some common definitions that denote their belonging to the religion, yet they also have singular experiences. The various Brazilian Muslim communities differ in some characteristics. While those who have converted and do not have Muslim ancestors share a common Islamic reference, they also bring their previous religious experiences.
Therefore, although the empiric material does not encompass all of the communities 3 , which according to some Muslim sources include 52 communities, and to others 85, I believe to have data that helps to exemplify nearly all the regions of Brazil 4.
To review the size of the communities and their social, economic and cultural condition, I used the analysis of statistical data conducted by French scholars Philippe Waniez and Violete Brustlein Based on this grouping, I will risk making some generalizations that allow considering the whole, or at least, which provide a model from which it is possible to evaluate similarities and differences. The uncertainty of the numbers. There is an enormous discrepancy between the data about Muslims gathered by the official census and the numbers presented by Muslim entities. According to the official census, there were 27, Muslims in Brazil, or less than 0.
In most of the mosques visited, a large discrepancy was found between the number of faithful reported by the entity and the number who go to Friday prayers. In Belo Horizonte, of the members reported by the mosque, the average attendance was some 50 people. Thus, statistics may include those who are Muslim in name, or who say they are Muslim, but who do not participate or participate very little in the activities of the community.
There are two interesting factors here, one is more closely linked to the specific situation of this religion in Brazil and the other to questions of doctrine. At the beginning, most of these immigrants were Christian; then more Muslims began to arrive, due to the various historic and geographic changes in the Middle East that they left. There was thus, at the beginning, no concern in opening the religion to a broader society. For this reason, the country began to build mosques to congregate the families, and benefit societies and schools to support the community.
As part of this effort, land was purchased in for the construction of the Brazil Mosque, which had its cornerstone laid in and was inaugurated in , as the first mosque in South America 9. This use of space of the SBMs for social activities 10 and for the congregation of the community still appears to be strong. In Rio de Janeiro, it was reported that attendance is greater at the Muslim festivals and social activities than at the religious activities.
Religious nominalism is obviously part of the Muslim universe, for which reason attendance at the Mosque is not in keeping with the number of local Muslims. It can thus be affirmed that until recently Islam has operated in the Brazilian religious field as an ethnic religion or a nearly ethnic religion despite the fact that it is a universal religion and that its followers manifest other types of behavior in other places and situations. This characteristic may help us consider the type of belonging and participation in the religious activities of many of the members of the Muslim communities.
In parallel, it appears that more recently there has been a revival movement among some Muslims who had been distant from the community, which needs to be better studied. The second factor, which can help us reflect on the issue of the numbers mentioned above, is related to religious issues. According to the President of the SMB of Rio de Janeiro, a Muslim is not required to go to Friday prayers if the mosque or place of worship is more than 10 km from where the Muslim lives or works.
In addition, he explained that the requirement to pray at the mosque on Fridays is difficult to comply with in a non-Muslim country such as Brazil because Friday is a normal work day. These religious practices established at the historic beginning of Islam shaped the exterior and interior behavior of the believers, and in a Muslim society, allow them to be controlled by the broader group.
The task was to analyze the Muslim communities in Brazil, based on research material available until now. Le Monde , 11 de novembro. Outside of a Muslim society, or where Muslims are a minority, it is difficult to establish both collective and legal control. The imam of Rio, who is part of the Superior Council of Theologians and Islamic Affairs of Brazil reported this number of 85 in an interview in January There is an entity that administers these certificates and promotes courses in Halal butchering 17 aimed at Muslims, to teach inspection of the correct methods for slaughtering chicken and beef. Its rigor imposes the required assistance of prayer on Fridays, prohibits smoking and requires the use of a beard.
This type of control is more difficult in a society in which Muslims are a minority and where external control is diluted or even absent. It is possible that this can lead to a relaxation of practices and can direct the believer to a more particular, subjective and even nominal Islam. In fact, it is necessary to remember that, in principle, the tie of the Muslim believer to God is not measured by an Ecclesiastical institution, but only by the Koranic revelation. The history of Muslim society demonstrated that, for this reason, there was an effort by the part of leaders of the nascent empire to create, within the Islamic religion, an apparatus of religious norms that would institutionalize the faith.
Outside of a Muslim society, or where Muslims are a minority, it is difficult to establish both collective and legal control. This function can be rotated among the members. For this reason, it is easy to perceive that the control of the faithful is quite limited. It is important to remember, however, that during the history of Islam, a class of specialists in sacred issues was formed, the sheiks, separate from the other believers.
The sheiks became a type of clerical institution. Some of these specialists have a more judicial function, and both these as well as those dedicated to religious activities are, to a large degree, government employees. Muslim communities, principally those outside of Muslim countries, can operate without their presence, and that Muslim in the community most versed in religion becomes the imam and can conduct a conversion, a marriage, lead prayers, issue a sermon, etc.
This is often the case among us. They dedicate themselves to these religious activities, and the leadership of the societies is left to the local board. A small community can also finance, with its own resources, the transfer of a sheik, as took place in Juiz de Fora. Although these sheiks have moral authority over the faithful, they do not control them 15 , particularly in a non-Muslim society such as ours, which in general they do not know very well. In sum, to reflect on the uncertainty of the number of Muslim faithful in Brazil an analysis can be suggested of a number of factors such as the lack of control of the faithful by the communities, the presence of a nominal Islam, the integration of immigrants and their children in broader society and their consequent distancing from religion, the migratory movement from the Middle East 16 , the recent and still timid revival and return to religion among the Muslims, and even its recent openness to Brazilian society.
The latter is an issue that we believe is the most important for the Brazilian religious field and that we will address below. What led the Islam lived in Brazil as an ethnic or nearly ethnic religion to become another option in the Brazilian religious field? We will analyze this question here. We believe that this is what is taking place with Islam in Brazil. Some of the facts that are leading to this change were not necessarily designed by its authors with this result in mind, but wound up leading to this route.
As I mentioned above, the leaders of religious activities can be either those members of the community most versed in religion or sheiks sent from abroad by Muslim countries. Knowledge of the language and the Brazilian culture would allow more effective approximation and communication with the new generations. According to what the Brazilian sheiks told us, many went abroad but returned due to the rigor and difficulties of study.
But two of them graduated and became the first Brazilian born sheiks. These institutions are financed by international Muslim organizations, principally from Saudi Arabia. One business that they organize is the issuing of certificates for beef and chicken. There is an entity that administers these certificates and promotes courses in Halal butchering 17 aimed at Muslims, to teach inspection of the correct methods for slaughtering chicken and beef.
After the course, some of these Muslims go live close to the large slaughterhouses that export meat to Muslim countries, according to my sources. Other communities also have their contacts with the Muslim world. Rio de Janeiro, which until recently had no outside financing, nor a foreign sheik 19 , now has help from Kuwait, which allows the sheik and president of the Society, a Sudanese living in Brazil, and who speaks perfect Portuguese, to dedicate himself exclusively to both religious and administrative activities and to the promotion of Islam.
They received international financing for the airfare and the Sudanese Institute supplied books, lodging and food. This entire effort to prepare specialists in the Muslim religion who speak Portuguese, which began to reach the children of Muslims who were straying from the flock, and others who were too assimilated to Brazilian society, now appears to be increasingly considering the Brazilian population and its potential for conversion.
To continue to speak about this issue, I will make a necessary interruption to explain how the Muslim communities function in Brazil. Islam, as mentioned above, does not have a hierarchical ecclesiastical structure that controls the various mosques. This makes it closer to Protestantism than to Roman Catholicism. Each mosque is independent and in the Sunni world, there is nothing like a Pope who has the final word about an issue.
It was through the determinations of these religious practices and their detailed regulation that a process of religious normatization of social life and the creation of a Muslim law with its Koranic jurisprudence took place. In the Muslim world, the mechanisms of social-religious control are codified behaviors that guarantee order and are part of the life of the believer. Legal-religious schools thus arose. These practices are understood by the believer to be revelations of the Koran and thus divine orders. In a Muslim country, therefore, religious control takes place through the collective practice of mass religious behavior, fruit of personal observation of the established prayer and other rites, supervised by doctors of law who guarantee necessary compliance with these practices.
For those questions about which there is doubt or disagreement, doctors of law meet and issue determinations fatwas based on Koranic jurisprudence established over the years and on past interpretations. According to some scholars, it can be said that, in the Sunni world, one very important reference are the doctors of law and theologians of the Al Azhar University in Cairo. Nevertheless, there is no single institutional order that can be taken as the maximum representative of all the Muslims.
In countries where Muslims are a minority, such as Brazil, there is no single reference and each mosque is independent. Normally, they are either linked to the region of origin of the majority of the immigrants, and or to the international financial entities, and or to the other Brazilian mosques as a form of maintaining and sharing the practice of Islam.
There is a Federation that has the goal of uniting all the mosques, but which, according to the Muslims themselves, does not function; it is the League of Scholars, which encompasses the sheiks who are in Brazil. The mosques are thus independent from one another and can resolve their own questions internally, using as a reference the institutionally established religious norms.
This makes it difficult to create a national leadership, or a united representation of the various communities. There is no single authority that represents Islam in Brazil, which is recognized by the various communities. In any case, each community seeks financing for its mosque, to bring a sheik, to send its members on pilgrimage or to study abroad. The various Muslim Benefit Societies are therefore autonomous entities, with a directory and a president who is not necessarily a sheik, because this religious specialist often comes from abroad and does not speak Portuguese.
The various examples found in the communities studied allow identifying two models of formation of the Muslim Benefit Societies. That which we call the endogenous model, the fruit of an internal dynamic of the community, or that in which the community of immigrants unites to establish the Muslim Benefit Society in order to maintain its culture and its religion. In general, it congregates a reasonably sized population of immigrants and is concerned with the distancing of the Muslims, and principally of their children, from their religion of origin.
Often, the founding of a society was, at first, more a point for social encounters, than a beginning of religious practices. The most exogenous model of formation, fruit of a dynamic external to the community, took place in locations where the number of immigrants and their descendents was lower, and where factors external to the community, such as the rise of a converted Brazilian or one seeking conversion, or the presence of other Muslims temporarily living in the country, led to the formation of a Muslim society. This model is more recent.
There were also a few converts: It can be said that the endogenous model is the most common and that this second model, the exogenous one, is more recent. The latter, principally, when the stimulating element is a convert, appears to us to be the fruit of an internal dynamic of the Brazilian religious field. According to information from the president of the SBM of Rio de Janeiro, there are now 85 Islamic communities in Brazil and 50 promoters. A promoter is someone prepared to exercise the religious activities and also those to promote Islam.
Normally, the promoter is a sheik who studied at an Islamic theological university or someone who prepared for this work in courses at Islamic institutes, even if they did not take a university theology course. A mosque that has a promoter is more apt to comply with its religious functions and also to expand, principally if this promoter speaks Portuguese, which is becoming more common. The Rio Mosque has its own sheik and a promotional team. Smaller associations do not have sheiks or promoters; in general their activities are limited to collective Friday prayers.
If they are called to speak at a place such as schools, universities, etc, the most capable person goes, often the person who is leading the association, but there is no organized promotional work. There was, however, no concern in converting Brazilians who have no Muslim ancestors. He opted to focus on the Muslims. In the opinion of the leader from Rio de Janeiro, this was not a mistake, but maintained that it would be possible to do the two things with specialized groups for each task.
He said that even the books published by the CDIAL in Portuguese are aimed at people with an Arabic mentality, they are not materials for people with a Western mentality. Primarily, they tried to conduct a census of the Muslims in Rio de Janeiro State and in this process discovered resistance in their own Muslim community. The exact proportion of the converts varies according to the different sources. Please try your request again later. Are you an author? Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography.
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