8 things to know about Latinos and Islam

*Six percent of practicing Muslims in the U.S. are Latino. Fifty percent of these are women. VL

By Raquel Reichard, Latina

Anti-Muslim sentiments are high in the U.S., with leading presidential candidates like Donald Trump calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” and more than half of Americans saying they have an “unfavorable” view of Islam.

While the growing anti-Muslim rhetoric comes from recent terrorist attacks by extremist groups like ISIS – assaults, by the way, that are outnumbered by acts of terrorism perpetrated by non-Muslim white men in the U.S., that globally claim the lives of more Muslims than anyone else, and that Muslims, themselves,loathe – it stems from deep-rooted Islamophobia, a violent prejudice that Latinos are becoming more and more familiar with.

That’s because Latinos make up one of the fastest-growing segments of the Muslim population, a fact that might take some Latinos, who have historically followed Catholicism and increasingly Evangelical Christianity, by surprise. Despite this shock and the misconceptions about Muslims that, like the rest of the U.S., exist in our community, Islamophobia is increasingly becoming another Latino issue.

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