STorIES
OUR FOUNDER | URUGUAY 🇺🇾
ANDRES BIDEGAIN
As salaamu ‘alaykum!
My name is Andrés. I was born and raised in Uruguay, where I left agnosticism and accepted Islam during my Uni years. I got to know about Islam reading (and asking lots of questions!) online and offline, and pronounced the shahada -joining the 0.001% of the Muslim Uruguayan population- without having met any Muslim in person.
Since there was no mosque or hardly any Islamic books available in my country, my learning path took me to Madinah, where I had the chance to study Arabic and then graduate from the faculty of Theology and Dawah. Since then, I have collaborated and served in several Islamic NGOs in different continents and in different capacities, from direct outreach, new Muslim support to management.
All these years of work led me to appreciate the work that has been done, but also to learn that in order to secure long term development and success, we must empower local organisations and Duat to be more independent, aiming towards self sustainability. Organisations from far away may have some objectives today and others tomorrow, some might tend to want to show large metrics to the audience, or might simply not have new Muslim and community development experience first hand or in Latin America.
This is why ¡HolaIslam! was created. To support local, knowledgeable and experienced Latin American Muslim leaders and organisations develop their communities focused on trying to attain self sustainability in the long term. I want to invite you to be different and special, and support the growth where no one else does. Help the first Latin American Muslim communities grow and enjoy the reward. 😊
MEXICO 🇲🇽
HUSEIN
As salaamu ‘alaykum!
My name is Husein, and I am the most averse to social media in the whole team, so I will make my story short. 😅
I accepted Islam during my teenage years while I was still in high school in my country Chile. Since then, I graduated from the Arabic Institute in the Islamic University of Madinah and have studied in the faculty of Dawah and Theology as well. I then spent some years in Chile supporting the Muslim community there, but was then asked to help support the Muslim community in Guadalajara, Mexico, so I came here and even though it is very hard work teaching, doing the khutbah and receiving non-Muslim and new Muslim visitors due to the number of people interested and entering Islam, I enjoy it more than anything and feel like at home.
During my free time I like doing diverse works for the dawah. I developed a children’s colouring book with Islamic patterns and ahadith that is sold in Amazon, and I recently launched a book on Islamic sayings here in Mexico.
ECUADOR 🇪🇨
BASEM
As salaamu ‘alaykum!
I am Basem. I was born in a very religious family in a remote village in Yemen. I was taught the Qur’an since I was very little and memorised all of it as well, and by the age of 13 I was already an Imam and teacher at the local mosque. My life was all about my village. So when I kept asking Allah to make me one of those that call people to Islam, I never knew what was waiting for me, I thought perhaps I would continue educating my local people. Allah had much bigger plans for me.
My shaykh had heard of a new program that was sending some knowledgeable Imams to Latin America to live there. He even registered my name without telling me. One day, while I was still a teenager, he told me about it and said I had already been accepted! 😳 Apparently, we had to go to our capital city, Sana’a, to finish the paperwork. I had never traveled that far! But my shaykh said so, so I followed. I broke my traveling record by going to Sana’a, and I later flew over 8,000 miles to Ecuador!
I love it here. I never expected to be developing communities here before, but there is such a need for it that the work is so rewarding! I was lucky to come so young so I could learn the language very quickly and married a local Ecuadorian as well, and now we have two kids. I studied a degree here as well to perfect my Spanish. The dawah work has taken me to Ecuador’s mountains, the Amazon rainforest and the coast. I have been the Imam in the biggest city, Guayaquil, for several years now and I have no intention to leave. The community needs support and needs to keep growing long term.
Please help us to continue growing the community in the closest country to the sun. 😇
VENEZUELA 🇻🇪
SULEYMAN
As salaamu ‘alaykum!
My name is Suleyman Zebib. I was born as Christian Zebib, and raised as a Christian descendant of the significant Lebanese diaspora in Venezuela. When I finished secondary school, a Muslim acquaintance told me and another Christian friend that there was a university in Saudi Arabia offering free degree courses in anything we liked. We would be offered transport and accommodation as well as a small stipend for our monthly expenses there. Even though the long trip to unknown lands was startling, we thought we should give it a try. “Who would say no to a full scholarship and to such an experience!” we thought.
This was not too long after 9/11, so even though my youth spirit was pushing me to enjoy this one of a kind opportunity, I was quite worried. My (very wrong!) perception of Arabs or Saudi Arabia was that they were quite hostile to the West. I remember landing in Jeddah airport and then realising I still had a Coca-Cola can in my hand. I thought: “they might think I’m supporting the US and might not be allowed to enter the country!”, so I quickly went to the toilet and dropped it in the bin to then head to migration with a sense of relief.
Once I arrived at the university in Madinah, I was interviewed to see if I was fit to study there. Nerve wracking as I did not know any Arabic or hardly anything about Islam. Thank God there was a Mexican already studying there, and he gave me more than a hand during the interview. Still, I could not answer most of the questions. I did not know Al-Fatihah and did not know anything Islam related they were asking. Somehow, they probably thought I was a very new Muslim who was supposed to be given a chance. If they knew! I had only realised this was an Islamic university (offering only Islamic degrees) once I got there! Me and my friend thought we would be killed if they knew we were Christians, so we even started going to the mosque whenever we heard the call to prayer. 😅
During the next few days, we became very interested in knowing about the place and the Muslim way of life. We had met a handful of Latin American students (who thought we were very new Muslims) so it was a great chance to ask every question we could and read any book in Spanish available. It all made sense! By the grace of Allah, we both decided to accept Islam a few weeks later. We then decided not to escape to Venezuela whenever we had the chance, but to stay and learn more about such a beautiful way of life. We both graduated from the Arabic institute, and then I finished the degree in Theology and Dawah.
Alhamdulillah, hundreds have accepted Islam in Venezuela since I returned. It is a hard job to keep calling people to Islam, while teaching everyone who has already accepted it, while trying to build some infrastructure to be able to continue long term. We have already printed some Qur’ans with the help of the local community, have built a few teams to introduce people to Islam, and are currently working on projects to self-sustain the dawah.
Please help us continue the amazing work our teams are doing in Latin America. 😊
