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Accepted Paper:
Mission and modernity in Morelos: the problem of a combined hotel and prayer hall for Muslims in Mexico
Mark Lindley-Highfield of Ballumbie Castle
(University of Strathclyde)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I examine the contest between the competing identities of a combined hotel and prayer hall for converts to Islam in Mexico, how this predicament mirrors the wider experience of Mexico's converts to Islam, and the resultant implications for the Mexican Muslim convert community.
Paper long abstract:
A recent visitor to Mexico, from Muslim Aid, commented on the necessity for religious projects to exhibit self-sufficiency. The dependence on external aid should, now, never be taken for granted. In such a climate, the need for entrepreneurial ingenuity is essential to the successful operation of any religious enterprise. Dar as Salam is the product of a pioneering Mexican project to bring a place of worship and conference centre to the Mexican Muslim convert community. To provide itself with some revenue, it opened the doors of its residential accommodation to the public for visitors to the popular Mexican weekend retreat of Tequesquitengo in Morelos. With this coincided a critique of the relationship between the place's Mexican and Muslim identities. Tequesquitengo provides the Muslim converts of Mexico with a retreat from the ordinary pressures of Mexican life, which has been likened to the hijra, or exile, performed by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Yet, non-Muslim visitors who come to stay have brought with them the indulgencies of their modern lifestyle, including the drinking of alcohol, and fornication. Some Muslim visitors to the mosque have therefore been critical of the haram, or forbidden, nature to some of the activities taking place there, yet the centre remains dependent on such sources of revenue for its existence. In this paper, I examine how the dual nature of this conflict between being Muslim and Mexican mirrors to some extent the experiences of the wider Mexican convert community, yet how this predicament is an inevitable product of the desire of external investors to minimize a venture's dependency on external resources in a context where the Muslim community is developing.
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed
Tourism as social contest
EPapers