more US hispanics drawn to islam

[Kamal35]

There's a mistake here. People think (even in Spain, thanks to Franco's education) that in Al-Andalus times, there were a great number of Arabs in the south of Spain and Spaniards in the North. That's not true. The Arabs came to Spain in a short number in 711. They were about 20.000-25.000 in an army which came to help some christian king against another christian king. When they won the war, they decided to stay, because there was a lot of water and goods in Spain.

Those arabs brought with them a lot of new technology and new knowledgements about agriculture, architecture, etc. They also brought Islam. A lot of indigenous people, unsatisfied with Arrianism (a kind of christianity which was very complicated to understand, the Trinity mistery and all that), noticed that Islam was more interesting than Christianity and decided to convert to Islam. With the centuries, more and more local Spaniards became muslims. Of course, there were some Arab invasions from the North and the south of Morocco (the almohades and the almorabitun), but they were quite few people. The inmense majority of Spaniards in Al Andalus were muslims. The Christians used to call Spanish muslims 'moors' in opposite to 'christians'.

What happened with Isabella & Ferdinand was that Spanish christians defeated and threw out of the country the Spanish muslims. It was a civil war, brother against brother because of religion, and not Spaniards throwing out Arabs.

The Spanish muslims spoke in Arab (so the Christians who had a developed culture) and had Islamic traditions (although they were much more open-minded than the average muslim of today in countries like Saudi Arabia or Yemen) and technology. Islam was erased from the face of Spain in 1492 with the rendition of my city, Granada. The last muslims (the moriscos) were finally defeated by Phillip the Second in 1568, after the last civil war of Granada. Phillip the Second gave orders to forbid any muslim sign in the Spanish culture: it was forbidden to speak in Arabic, to prepare 'moor' food, to have 'moor' weddings and anything that had something to do with the 'moors', the Spanish muslims.

Because the winners of that war were the Christians from the North of Spain in 1492, it was normal that those Christians were the guys who went to America with a strong Christianity. No muslims travelled to America, just Christians. And they imposed their beliefs to the indians.

Today, hispanics are very religious (christian) people. From Mexico to Peru, you'll find out that Christianity is stronger there than in Spain.

The fact that some hispanics convert to Islam is no more than a simple anecdote.