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SAO PAULO: Over the previous twenty years, there was a visual rise within the variety of Muslim converts within the poor outskirts and slums of Brazil’s massive cities.

New mosques have been established in neighborhoods with no historical past of welcoming Center Jap immigrants.

No person is aware of for positive the dimensions of Brazil’s Muslim inhabitants. In 2010, when the newest census was carried out by the federal government, 35,000 Brazilians declared themselves as Muslim, a really small proportion of the entire inhabitants of 210 million. Many within the nation consider that the quantity is way increased now.

In 2012, Cesar Kaab Abdul established a mosque in Jardim Cultura Fisica, a slum within the metropolis of Embu das Artes, within the Sao Paulo metropolitan space.

A group organizer for many years, he was a part of the primary era of hip hop artists in Brazil within the Eighties, and have become identified in that sphere as a rapper and cultural activist. 

Cesar’s mosque was named after Sumayyah bint Khayyat, a member of the Prophet Muhammad’s group. 

“I selected a lady’s identify to indicate that the concept girls are oppressed in Islam is simply a prejudice,” he instructed Arab Information.

Cesar’s first contact with Islam was by Malcolm X’s autobiography, which generally circulates amongst black resistance actions.  

“Most rappers had Malcolm X as a reference, however his religiousness often went unnoticed,” he added.

As an workplace clerk in Sao Paulo’s monetary district, Cesar had a Muslim Arab co-worker and have become interested in his breaks to wish throughout workplace hours. “He instructed me he was Muslim, and I remembered Malcolm X’s story,” he recalled.

Cesar saved rapping and attained some success. His band even carried out at US rapper Ja Rule’s live performance in Brazil.

However he remained all for Islam and would constantly search for details about it on-line.

In 2007, he received in contact with a Muslim preacher in Egypt who instructed him and despatched him books about Islam. From that time on, Cesar’s life started to deeply change.

“I was very radical on Islam’s cultural and political elements … however then I started to grasp its true nature,” he mentioned.

In 2014 Cesar carried out Hajj, which was “a deeply reworking expertise.” At the moment, he had already ceased to participate in music live shows and to drink alcohol. In addition to his mosque, he established a middle for the dissemination of Islam.

A lot of his hip hop colleagues adopted his instance and transformed to Islam. Cesar started to make use of his cultural affect to unfold the prophet’s message, distributing Qur’ans even to high-profile Brazilian rappers resembling Dexter and Mano Brown.

His mosque turned a social heart, and in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic it distributed not less than 30 tons of meals to the neediest within the area.

One of many fruits of his work was the conversion of Kareem Malik Abdul, a grasp of capoeira, a mixture of dance and martial artwork created by African slaves in the course of the slavery period in Brazil (1500-1888).

“Capoeira has a reference to Afro-Brazilian religions,” Kareem instructed Arab Information. “At first I resisted the concept of going to the mosque when Cesar invited me, however then I noticed how Islam modified his life.”

A longtime member of a capoeira group, he didn’t just like the jokes his colleagues would make about him after his conversion.

“At occasions, any person would say in entrance of all people on the health club that I used to be carrying bombs in my backpack. As a Muslim, I used to be seen as a terrorist,” mentioned Kareem, who determined to go away his colleagues and begin his personal capoeira group.

“They noticed capoeira as a type of combating and will change into violent generally. In my group, I made a decision to deal with the musical, cultural and historic dimensions of capoeira, emphasizing the human side.”

The concept of taking additional care with the bodily security and limitations of all individuals got here from Islam, Kareem mentioned.

He ended up creating a instructing technique primarily based on motivation, which attracted kids with Down syndrome to his lessons.

A black militant, he often tells his college students in regards to the malês, which is what Muslim Africans — often introduced from West Africa — had been known as throughout Brazil’s slavery period, particularly within the nineteenth century.

In 1835, they led a well-known rise up for freedom in Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia.

“I’m positive a few of the malês had been capoeira fighters,” mentioned Kareem, who celebrated when one other capoeira grasp transformed to Islam as a consequence of his work.

Jamal Adesoji, a 40-year-old biologist and rapper from town of Pelotas, can be an fanatic of the malês’ historical past.

A black militant, he first found Islam after watching a film about Malcolm X. Years later, he sought the assistance of Palestinian immigrants in his metropolis to study extra in regards to the faith.

“I frequented mosques in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and at occasions I felt discriminated in opposition to for not being Arab and for being black,” he lamented.

Through the years, Adesoji met many African Muslims and began to really feel a part of a joint id.

“I studied and found that there have been malês and even Islamic faculties in my metropolis within the nineteenth century,” he mentioned.

“Islam first arrived in Brazil with the Africans, so it’s a part of our id — an element that was erased over time.”

Adesoji frequents a mosque within the metropolis of Passo Fundo that was created years in the past by Muhammad Lucena, a convert from Sao Paulo.

The mosque gathers 1,000 folks. About 150 of them are Brazilian converts, whereas the others are West African and South Asian, largely employees at halal models in meat and poultry processing crops.

Lucena was a black militant in Sao Paulo whose group started collectively learning Malcolm X’s works initially of the Nineteen Nineties.

They determined to go to a mosque within the neighborhood to study extra about Islam. Lucena and a pal ended up changing.

In 1997, he acquired a scholarship to review in Libya — a turbulent time as a consequence of worldwide sanctions imposed on Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

After a troublesome time adapting to his new life — he solely spoke Portuguese and didn’t know anyone in Libya — Lucena managed to study Arabic and studied at college for 3 years.

“After I got here again to Brazil, all I had in my thoughts was to disseminate the prophet’s message,” he mentioned.

Lucena was invited to work within the halal trade within the state of Rio Grande do Sul. “Many Brazilians transformed after assembly their Muslim colleagues within the processing plant, particularly folks from town’s poorest areas,” he recalled.

The fast progress of the Passo Fundo group known as the eye of a Kuwaiti donor, and Lucena was in a position to purchase a constructing and set up a mosque.

“A few of the Brazilian households who ended up leaving town and going again to their unique areas created Muslim communities there too,” he mentioned.

Lucena believes that Islam will continue to grow within the nation as extra Brazilians are getting concerned in its dissemination.

Syrian-born Jihad Hammadeh, a outstanding sheikh in Brazil, instructed Arab Information: “Brazil erased the good Muslim African figures from its historical past. Reparation is important in any respect ranges whereas blacks’ rights aren’t revered.”

He celebrates the truth that there are actually many sheikhs within the nation in a position to information converts by their journey, which is able to keep away from doable distortions.

“Though Brazilian Islam was consolidated by Arab immigrants, now issues have modified,” Hammadeh mentioned.

“A while in the past, it was unthinkable {that a} convert might assume management of an Islamic establishment. Now it’s increasingly frequent.”