
Juan Enriquez, 70, became known
by his Muslim name, Yahya, after he converted to Islam in 2007. Here, he calls
to Friday’s prayer in the mosque of Camagüey, which was built inside a private
home to avoid problems with the Cuban authorities.
The first time a pope ever set
foot in Cuba was in 1998, when John Paul II traveled to the Communist state.
The visit was the result of a thaw between the Vatican and Cuba’s president,
Fidel Castro, who banned religion in 1959 when he seized power. Cuba’s
majority-Catholic population welcomed the pontiff with great excitement;
several hundred thousand people, including Castro, attended the Mass led by the
pope in Havana. Meanwhile, a small number of other Cubans drew their own
conclusion from the regime’s growing tolerance of religion: Perhaps soon the
state would increasingly accept Islam too.The religion is now quietly growing
in Cuba, where there are as many as 9,000 Muslims. While they represent a tiny
segment of Cuba’s 11.3 million population, it’s a significant increase from
roughly a dozen in the early 1990s. “The Communist Party has been making
decisions to open up religious plurality,” says Michael Leo Owens, associate
professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. “Islam will
naturally grow.”
Because there isn’t a long
legacy of Islam in Cuba, many of the island’s Muslims are converts who found
the faith after speaking with students and diplomats visiting from
Muslim-majority countries, says Joan Alvado, a photojournalist based in
Barcelona, Spain. Starting in 2014, Alvado has photographed the lives of Cuba’s
Muslims, in the capital of Havana and around the country. Most recently, Alvado
returned to Cuba, from early October to early November, to further explore this
tiny culture, and his work is showcased here.
Yarima plays with Islamic
prayer beads as her father, Ali, 33, holds her. Ali and his wife converted to
Islam in 2014; Yarima is one of the first babies in Cuba born a Muslim.
Osman Reyes, one of Alvado’s
subjects, converted to Islam in June 2015. He says the religion helped him to
feel “more free,” according to Alvado. Reyes lives near the central Cuban city
of Camaguey, where local Muslims established a humble mosque inside a private
home in the early 2000s.
Despite being part of the
fastest-growing religious group in the world—a Pew Research Center report
estimates the world’s Muslim population will increase by 73 percent by
2050—Cuba’s Muslims can seem invisible, even to other Cubans. “No one in
Havana, even my Cuban friends, knew that there were Muslims,” Alvado says.
In the early 1990s, the handful
of Muslim citizens in Cuba faced possible persecution by the regime for
practicing their religion, but most worshipped on their own; few could teach
them about their newfound faith. Now they have leadership, teachers and a large
house of worship that opened in Havana in June 2015. The mosque distributes
traditional Muslim dress to men and women and donates lamb to congregants
during Ramadan.
Muslims gather in a new mosque in La Habana. The mosque, which opened in June of 2015, was built by the Arabia Saudi authorities in the Habana Vieja quarter, with the approval of the Cuban government.
Adapting to Islam has been a
significant departure for Cubans, many of whom grew up eating pork and drinking
alcohol. Most Cuban Muslims have adapted gradually. A lack of experts or imams
to guide their way has meant that old traditions survive even as the converts
adopt new ways of living under Islam. In one of his photographs, Alvado
features a small Christmas tree next to a green Saudi Arabian flag. The
decorations belong to a Catholic-born Cuban woman who has been a Muslim for
five years.
“She still puts the Christmas
tree up every year,” says Alvado. “The Muslim community in Cuba is really
young.”It’s unclear whether Castro’s death in November will affect Cuba’s
religious revival. Castro had already passed the presidency on to his younger
brother Raúl in 2008, though he continued to represent a powerful and
uncompromising faction in Cuban politics. “The hard-liner elements of the Cuban
government lost their greatest mouthpiece,” says Andrew Otazo, executive
director of Washington-based think tank the Cuba Study Group. Cubans will be
watching anxiously to see whether Castro’s death will lead to reform or whether
hard-liners—insecure about where they stand now—will crack down on religion.
“Will there be more religious freedom or ability to practice your religion if
you see fit? That’s the big question,” he says
Explore Alvado’s work inside
the world of Cuba’s Muslims below.
Muhammad Ali walks home under the Capitolio building, in the
Habana Vieja quarter of La Habana. Ali, born Manuel, became Muslim 20 years
ago, at a time when very few Cubans had had any exposure to the religion.
A Muslim group prays in front
of a home in a small, isolated village in the Baracoa province. After the
family’s home was struck by Hurricane Matthew, other Muslims in the area began
visiting to offer economic support.
Source : muslim-stories
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