At the wedding last Sunday, my brother- in- law, an anthropologist who has worked for more than 30 years with the Chamula Mayas of Chiapas, told me bemusedly that the latest fad for these VERY religiously syncretic people-- they have incorporated their own Paganism, Catholicism, Presbyterianism, some sort of Evangelicism, and alchoholism with little effort. They have a complicated cosmology and incredible art-- I'll try to photograph some when I am up in Santa Fe again.
I was a bit taken aback. I am by no means as convinced of the incompatibility of (some kinds of) Islam and the West as my friends at Gates of Vienna. I have seen the layered- over- Animism, Sufi- saints- and- shrines, women- on- horseback- drinking- vodka version in Central Asia. My friends in Kazakhstan tell me of ancient warrior queens who hunted. My Mongolian Kazakh friend Canat, former Soviet commando, then dissident, then eco- entrepreneur (go with him if you want to ride with the eagle hunters) once told me "I love Allah, but I do not love mullahs. After the Change, they came and tried to build us a mosque. They wanted us not to drink, and to cover our women. We sent them back to Arabia".
But a Moslem presence in an already anti- American part of Mexico? (Commandante Marcos ground). South of our ever- permeable border? Just what kind of Moslems were they?
I Googled around and found this Houston Chronicle article via Freerepublic. It is a fair and complex piece. Good-- they are more or less Sufi- based sect, and so NOT Wahabbi, which hold Sufism to be just another heresy. Bad-- they are allegedly anti- Semitic.
Of course, if they act like the Chamula always have -- or the Central Asians-- they will incorporate drink into their rituals, and mellow out.
Two more thoughts: there are serious IslamIST-- no joke-- groups throughout Central and South America, especially in Paraguay -- not native but imported, and actively encouraged by such as Hugo Chavez (who has just blamed the Pakistan earthquake on international capitalism-- you can't make this stuff up.)
Last, another quote from Canat, dated September 12, 2001; I keep it on the wall next to my desk:
"Hello, my friends,
"I present my condolences to your family and all your friends. I can't believe now what is happened in USA. Of course, this is big lost of World. This is not just American's, it is all world tragedy.
"Take care yourself, my friends. My family and my Kazakh people are with you."
They don't, by any means, all hate us.
1 comment:
How much religious violence and animosity is present in Tartary?
And just how syncretic is the average Muslim? I reccomend Paul Kriwaczek's very engaging In Search of Zarathustra, which suggests that Zoroastrian concepts and symbols are very much alive in Iran!
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