Moriscos: A colonial threat and Latinx Muslims

[naadia_faruqui]

A Morisco/Morisca is a person who has Moorish heritage or Muslim lineage. Even if a person is Catholic by faith but has ancestors who were Muslim, they did not have Purity of Blood or Limpieza de Sangre according to the Spanish Inquisition from the fifteenth to nineteenth century. Not only were the Spanish utterly racist and ignorant to Moriscos, but they also considered Moriscos as a threat to the Catholic Church and its colonial agenda. The Spanish Conquistadors were highly suspicious of Moriscos—which is very evident in Cook’s reading and the testimonies of the Moriscos under trial for heresy—for reasons of twofold. For one, the Spanish assumed the Moriscos’ Muslim lineage would mean loyalty to the Ottoman Empire who were a threat to Spanish rule after the Spanish Reconquista took back the Iberian Peninsula from Islamic rule. In addition, the Spanish Catholic Church was concerned Moriscos would interfere in their mission to spread Catholicism to the indigenous populations of New Spain. Priests would assimilate indigenous people by forcing them to attend mass and confession. Public displays of heterodoxy, like the potential of Moriscos practicing Islam, undermined the Spanish Catholic efforts for assimilation and thus, their agenda for colonization. Until now, I did not know the link between Colonial Spain’s subjugation for Indigenous people and Muslims or Muslim-adjacent people. This reading remind’s me of Junaid Rana’s reading when he said, “Native Americans were made sense of via stereotypes of Muslims” for the Spanish. For example, the Spaniards called Aztec sites mosques and made sense of Aztec animal rituals because they were familiar with certain Muslim animal rituals from the Moors. Colonial Spain viewed both Indigenous people and Moriscos as heathens whose culture needed to be suppressed. However, the Spaniards questioned if Indigenous people even had souls, so they actually viewed them as sub-human.

In the twentieth century, many African-Americans identified with Moorish identity and founded the Moorish Science Temple in the 1920’s which believed that African-Americans were Moors with divine heritage. After its leader died, the group dissolved and other movements like the Nation of Islam and Ahmediyyas gained traction and interested Latinx people to convert to Islam. Racial minorities were attracted to Islam’s uplifting social rhetoric and message for equality. The Nation of Islam was especially very politically effective against white supremacy and attracted many Latinx converts like Manuel 2X. During a time of rampant white supremacy and Jim Crow laws, the Nation of Islam emerging with a narrative that all black and non-white people were descendants of a divine “Original Man” and white people were devilish and lacked divinity was sure to be enticing to all oppressed racial minorities.

As Asian and Muslim immigration began to increase in the United States, Muslim immigrant influence led to a gradual decline in identifying with Moorish identity among Latinx Muslims. Maybe associating with—or even appearing as South Asian as Addison Gilmo (a Puerto Rican Islamic leader) did—was beneficial for Latinx Muslims. There are many reasons why Latinx Muslims would want to develop relationships with immigrant Muslims. Perhaps for community’s sake while Latinx populations were too small to create communities, maybe appearing as an immigrant was easier to limit confusion, maybe it was to receive better treatment in society to associate with or appear as a “model minority” like south asians were deemed, maybe distancing from their colonial Spanish identity and associating with immigrant Muslim communities was an act of resistance against colonialism, or perhaps connecting to immigrant Muslim communities felt like reconnecting with their potential lost Moorish heritage for Latinx Muslims. For whatever reason Latinx Muslims found solace in Muslim immigrant communities, they have made their cultural mark on the American Muslim identity, with approximately 200,000 Latinx Muslims (as of 2013) continuing to shape this dynamic community.