[johnuioyer]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth...432487342.html

About 500 indigenous Mayans, some linked to Zapatista rebels, converted to Islam and celebrate Eid by eating spicy food. Well, technically the Mayans are "Indians"...

San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico - On a dirty road past tourist shops, dreadlocked backpackers and Spanish-style catholic churches and just beside an abandoned mill inhabited by indigenous squatters, sits a mosque - built from a mud hut - and nestled in a corn field.

It is about as far from Mecca as one can get, but this is where Salvador Lopez Lopez comes to pray.

An indigenous Mayan, fluent in the local Tzotzil dialect, Lopez is one about 500 Muslims in Chiapas, Mexico's southern-most state.
....

According to reports, most Spanish Muslim missionaries in Chiapas come from the Murabitun sect, a largely European group of converts to the Sufi strain of Islam. Some Islamic groups have been highly critical of the Murabitun and their interpretations of religious scriptures.

Shaykh Abdalqadir, a Scotsman and the group's apparent spiritual leader, is said to be an anti-capitalist who believes that Muslims should return to the traditions set out by the prophet Mohammed.

The idea of returning to a past era when life was better, and critiques of rent-seeking business practises, seems to resonate in Molina, the desperately poor community where the Lopez's mosque is located, on the outskirts of San Cristobal.