Carla Carballo, 29, used to greet her friends in a typically Latina way with a kiss on the cheek. But since she converted to Islam, she has left behind that custom, and she tries not to interact with men who are not part of her family.
Carballo, a resident of Jackson Heights, was born in Bolivia and immigrated to the United States when she was eight years old. She became familiar with Islam through her older sister, and a decade ago, she converted.
Although Carballo, who is single, grew up Catholic, she was attracted to the conservative life style that Islam offers women, and she began to use the Muslim hijab [headdress] after her conversion.
“My self-esteem depended on how people saw me,” Carballo says. Before converting to Islam, Carballo worked in a dance club. “The only opinion that matters to me is my family’s,” she says after being confronted with the idea of “what everyone will say.”
The process of converting to Islam consists of reciting the shahadah, the prayer that affirms the two basic Muslims beliefs – that only one God exists, and that Mohammed, who established the religion in the seventh century, is his prophet. The person promises to live by the five pillars of Islam: recite the shahadah five times a day, help needy people, fast during Ramadan, and make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the city where Mohammed was born.
After converting, Carballo gave up alcohol, since the Koran, the sacred text of Islam, prohibits the consumption of intoxicating substances.
Although the hijab has become a symbol of the Muslim woman, the Koran does not explicitly say that a woman must cover her head. It only says that she must be modest. That is why Ninah Pretto, 24, who converted two years ago to Islam, does not feel pressure to cover her head.
“At this time my change is on the inside. I don’t need to show it on the outside,” says Pretto, an American whose mother is Puerto Rican and father is Panamanian.
Pretto, who is single and lives in Forest Hills, began to read about Islam when she was at the University of Rochester, where she studies Political Science. She says that she found the answers that she had not found in Christianity. (In Islam, Jesus is an important prophet, but he is not considered divine).
“My whole life I have felt a strong connection to God, but I struggled with the idea of the Trinity. I believe in only one God. I could not understand that Jesus was also God,” Pretto says.
In contrast to Carballo, whose family supports her (her mother also converted), Pretto explains that her relationship with her parents – her mother is Christian and her father Jewish – has deteriorated. “My mother thinks I betrayed her, and I barely speak to my father,” Pretto confesses. “It has been a struggle because I love my family. I am Latina, and for us the family is very important in our lives. But I have my convictions,” she says. Pretto works in a movie theater in Manhattan.
Like Pretto, Mary Delgado, a 40-year-old Colombian physical therapist and mother of a 20-year-old son, converted to Islam two years after discovering that she did not agree with Catholic teachings.
“The Trinity doesn’t make sense,” says Delgado, who lives in Jackson Heights, and learned about Islam from a Muslim co-worker. “What most attracted me to Islam is that it encourages the believer to seek consciousness and ask questions. It’s easy to understand.”
Currently Delgado, who is divorced, does not use a hijab, but she says she is preparing to start wearing it someday. According to Delgado, in the beginning it was difficult to assimilate the difference between the Latino culture and the beliefs of the Muslim religion.
“In our culture, it’s normal for a woman to have friends, to go out dancing, to drink. It took time for me to understand why it’s better to avoid that,” says Delgado, who says that after converting, it was easy for her to quit smoking.
Islam is commonly presented as a religion that represses women precisely because it endorses a conservative lifestyle. But these three Latinas agree that that idea is incorrect.
“The negative things that are seen in terms of [Muslim] women are products of the culture in which they were raised, not Islam. The Koran talks about equality between men and women. I don’t believe that Islam oppresses women in any way,” Pretto emphasizes.
“In Islam it is not okay to hit a woman. The woman creates respect for herself. I live in this religion and I don’t allow myself to be treated badly,” affirms Carballo.
It is difficult to know how many Muslim Latinas there are in the United States, since the census does not collect information about religion. The Muslim Council of America, based in Chicago, calculates that there are approximately 200,000 Latino Muslims in the country. The highest concentrations are in large cities such as New York and Los Angeles, where there is a large population of Latinos and Muslims.
