Bad Bunny x Puerto Rican Muslims: How both remix what it means to be Boricua

Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is more than a global music phenomenon; he’s a bona fide symbol of Puerto Rico.

The church choir boy turned “King of Latin Trap” has songs, style and swagger that reflect the island’s mix of pride, pain and creative resilience. His music mixes reggaetón beats with the sounds of Puerto Rican history and everyday life, where devotion and defiance often live side by side.

Bad Bunny has been called one of Puerto Rico’s “loudest and proudest voices.” Songs like “El Apagón” – “The Blackout” – celebrate joy and protest together, honoring everyday acts of resistance to colonial rule and injustice in Puerto Rican life. Others, like “NUEVAYoL,” celebrate the sounds and vibrancy of its diaspora – especially in New York City. Some songs, like “RLNDT,” mention spiritual searching – featuring allusions to his own Catholic upbringing, sacred and secular divides, New Age astrology and Spiritism.

As a scholar of religion who recently wrote a book about Puerto Rican Muslims, I find echoes of that same strength and artistry in their stories. Although marginalized among Muslims, Puerto Ricans and other U.S. citizens, they find fresh ways to express their cultural heritage and practice their faith, creating new communities and connections along the way. Similar to Bad Bunny’s music, Puerto Rican Muslims’ lives challenge how we think about race, religion and belonging in the Americas.

How a Group of Muslim Ladies is Enhancing Approaches to Domestic Violence in Barbados

“Everything in my life is Allah’s work,” says Sakina Bakharia as she sits, sipping on an iced mocha, at a café across from Rockley Beach in Barbados.

Bakharia is buzzing, not only from the coffee but because of a successful 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign her organization, the Barbados Association of Muslim Ladies (BAML), was part of. Running from Nov. 24 to Dec. 10 each year, the initiative raises awareness about domestic and gender-based violence on the island.

Domestic violence is a widespread and urgent issue in the Eastern Caribbean. Prevalent for years, a March 2024 report noted a further 21 percent rise in domestic violence cases in Barbados from the previous year — likely underestimated, given a 30 percent spike in calls to crisis hotlines in the same year.

That is why, at the 2024 launch of Barbados’ 16 Days of Activism — an event that included BAML and other advocates — Tonya Haynes, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, did not mince words. “We live in a world where going to work or walking home from school have proven to be deadly activities for women and girls,” she said.

Her warning was not hyperbolic. She noted that Barbados reports rape rates above the global average and that half of all Barbadian women will experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. “Intimate partner violence, sexual violence, child sexual abuse, and other forms of gender-based violence are daily occurrences in Barbados,” she said, emphasizing that programs like the 16 Days campaign demand we pay attention to those realities.

BAML began in 2010 when Firhaana Bulbulia, now UNICEF’s Eastern Caribbean’s Youth Engagement Officer, created a Facebook group for Muslim girls in Barbados to find safe Islamic spaces to connect and care for one another. In its early years, BAML hosted recreational activities, fundraisers, and community service initiatives, such as food drives for Bajan families. Drawn together by their faith, and united in their sisterhood, BAML’s leaders slowly saw a need to address deeper, often unspoken challenges facing Muslim women in Barbados.

Looking out toward the sea as she finishes her cool coffee, Bakharia says she and her team are there to provide women and girls across Barbados with the resources, tools, and models they need to create a better, safer, and more peaceful reality — drawing on the Sacred to fuel and empower their work.

Special Guest Episode at the Maydan

Podcasts are fun.

They’re even more fun when you get to do them with a valued colleague.

A couple of months ago, Wikke Jansen and I sat down to talk about my book The Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean. Wikke is a visiting fellow at the Berlin University Alliance Project “Global Repertoires of Living Together (RePLITO) and received her Ph.D. in Global Studies from the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University Berlin, where we got to know one another through the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies.

Wikke not only carefully read my work, but also asked some poignant and pointed questions about what its points might have to say to other themes in the study of global Islam and decolonization.

The result is a special guest episode at the Maydan, an online publication of Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University, offering expert analysis on a wide variety of issues in the field of Islamic Studies for academic and public audiences alike, and serving as a resource hub and a platform for informed conversation, featuring original articles and visual media from diverse perspectives.

Introducing the Latin America & Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter

The study of Islam & Muslim communities in Latin America and the Caribbean is a field on the rise and features an ever-expanding network of scholars.

This newsletter is one way for us to be connected.

The idea behind the Latin America & Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter is simple: to bring together persons interested in the study of Islam and Muslim communities in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the networks that exist across, between, and beyond the Americas. The goal is to increase knowledge and encourage further scholarship on the topic.

The quarterly newsletter will not only communicate information on research opportunities and contribute relevant resources, but also serve as a platform to connect and collaborate.

The Latin America and Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter is secular, academically independent, and non-confessional. Its main aims include gaining recognition for the field, creating a network of scholars with the hope of one day creating a formal membership organization, generating further interest in the topic, and producing data, analysis, and insights on the subject from various fields of research and the public sphere.

The General Editor for the newsletter is Dr. Ken Chitwood and the Editor is Ms. Giulia Brabetz, both of the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures & Societies at Freie Universität Berlin. Contributions will include work from a range of scholars working in various fields. While the newsletter will be predominately in English, specific articles and resources will be provided in Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Arabic, and other languages. 

The first newsletter will be sent mid-October, 2020. 

If you are interested in learning more about the newsletter or have specific questions or concerns, please contact k.chitwood@fu-berlin.de. 

Otherwise, we invite you to subscribe and share this invitation with other potentially interested people in your network. 

Public lecture shines light on little known Muslim populations

From Panther Now, a publication from Florida International University: 

Muslims have had a significant impact on Latin culture, politics, and society, with 3,000 Spanish words having historical connections to Arabic, such as the words “pantalones” (pants) and “arroz” (rice). Their influence, however, has been unnoticed because of the lack of conversation around the topic, according to a professor. 

Ken Chitwood is a [religion scholar] at the University of Florida. For the past six years he’s been studying Islam in the Americas and other subjects. But like many people, there was a time he was unaware of Islam’s influence in the west, he said. 

Chitwood was writing a weekly report during a mosque visit when he met a man dressed in a tunic who told him of how he converted to Islam in New York, he said. It was then that Chitwood decided to research conversion stories, and after researching 135 conversion stories, he soon noticed a pattern: they had connections to Latin America. 

He knew there was a large amount of research done to show Islam’s ties to Latin America, but people weren’t paying attention to it. When he taught a course on the subject years later at the University of Florida, students found it difficult to research. There were plenty of documents and statistics, but it was hard to piece together an “overall narrative.”

Through the event “Islam in Latin America,” which [was] held at [Florida International] University on Tuesday, Nov. 7, Chitwood [spoke] about Islam’s heavy presence in both Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Islam and Muslim communities’ influence in the past and present. 

On Eid 2017, a Peek into the Lives of Puerto Rico's Muslims

For Juan, Ramadan is a balancing act. On the one hand is his religious faith and practice. On the other is his land, his culture, his home – Puerto Rico.

Although he weaves these two elements of his identity together in many ways, during Ramadan the borderline between them becomes palpable. For the 3,500 to 5,000 Puerto Rican Muslims like Juan, the holy month of fasting brings to the surface the tensions they feel in their daily life as minorities – Muslims among their Puerto Rican family and Puerto Ricans in the Muslim community. 

So, who are the Puerto Rican Muslims and what are their struggles?

The Study of Islam in Latin America & the Caribbean

There are Muslims in Latin America? 

This is the question I often get confronted with when I tell people what I study.

Yes, I study Islam and Muslim communities in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latinx U.S. Yes, that is a valid field of study. Yes, it has a history you would be surprised about. Yes, the numbers are not as large as other places in the world, but they are higher than you think. Yes, the influence of Muslims in the American hemisphere is lengthy and significant. Let me tell you more...

In this essay, published by Springer's International Journal of Latin American Religions I offer a brief review of the field of Islamic studies in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Americas focusing on its main themes and suggesting some areas for further consideration and research.

The essay not only introduces readers to the topic itself, but outlines its main themes and suggests some ways that  scholars could inject their energy and efforts to advance this unfolding field of study. These theoretical considerations suggest that more work could be done in expanding the field in its engagement with prevalent theories in the field of global Islamic studies and those that treat the Americas as a geography of dynamic hemispheric engagement and encounter.

Essentially, the paper argues that there is still a necessity to explore the tensions, interactions, frictions, and collaborations across and at the boundaries between the global umma (community) and the American assabiya (local social solidarities), between the global and the local, and between immigrant communities and the growing number of regional converts.

Finally, I also make some suggestions about some practical considerations that may prove beneficial to the field’s advancement. 

Our Man in Havana - Turkey, Islam, & a Mosque in Cuba

Did Muslims discover Cuba? Is Turkey going to get the chance to fund a mosque in Havana? Can the Castros warm to Islam as they open the doorway for other international relations? 

Recently, as part of a special focus on Turkey, I published a chapter in volume 16 of Critical Muslim, a quarterly magazine of ideas and issues showcasing ground breaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. 

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The aim of my chapter is to explore a recent attempt by Turkey’s political leadership to build a mosque in Havana in light of Turkish Islam’s re-emergence on the global scene. Specifically, it is a reflection on this effort’s aims of re-territorializing and re-inscribing Turkish Muslim symbols, as imagined by what I call the nation’s ‘alter-Islamist’ political leaders, on the Cuban landscape as part of a wider endeavor to position Turkey’s “brand” of Islam as a bridge between “West” and “East” (essentially conceived) contra Saudi Arabia in a “cold-war for Sunni hegemony.” In a globalized world it is not possible to consider “Islam in Turkey” in any isolated manner or from a solely national, or even regional, point-of-view. Instead, it is necessary to cast the subject into a greater globalized context with attendant theoretical and methodological considerations. This chapter is an attempt to do so. Therefore, this inquiry will help researchers and the interested public better understand lived and political Islam in Turkey in a global context, involved in a feedback loop with various interlocutors including not only the usual suspects (e.g. the E.U., U.S., Saudi Arabia), but nations typically on the periphery of critical considerations of Islam in Turkey (e.g. Cuba and other Latin American and Caribbean countries).

You can read the article HERE or pre-order a copy of the full text on Amazon. 

*UPDATE: The first publicly mosque is now open in Havana. Sponsored by Saudi dollars with input from several other Muslim majority nations (including Turkey's Diyanet) it is located at Calle Oficío, No. 18 on the corners of Obrapía & Obispo. It was opened in 2016.