Mexico agrees to monitor foreign groups as Muslim recruitment rate skyrockets

Joseph Farah:

Islam is on the move in Mexico and throughout Latin America, making dramatic gains in converting the native population, increasing immigration, establishing businesses and charities and attracting attention from U.S. government officials who have asked their neighbors to the south to keep an eye on foreign Muslim groups.

The monitoring of foreign groups is intended to "avoid problems in Mexico that have an impact in the United States," said the head of the Attorney General Office's special terrorism investigation unit, Gen. Jorge Serrano.

"The ones who ... are being watched by migration (authorities) are foreigners," Serrano said, without revealing the number of people being monitored or their countries of origin.

Serrano said no Muslim terrorists have been found living in Mexico, though the office is investigating alleged terrorist activities being carried out by Mexicans.

The recruitment of new followers is especially active in southern Mexico and among the indigenous Mayans who are converting by the hundreds, according to a report in Der Spiegel. The Mexican government, the report says, is concerned about a culture clash in its own back yard.

About 300 Tzozil-Indians have converted to Islam in recent years and it's a development that is beginning to worry the Mexican government, said the Der Spiegel report. The government even suspects the new converts of subversive activity and has already set the secret service onto the track of the Mayan Muslims. Mexican President Vincente Fox has even gone so far as to say he fears the influence of the radical fundamentalists of al-Qaida.

Indeed, with Islamic "charities" under increasing international pressure and scrutiny to cut ties with terrorists, al-Qaida and other allied organizations are expanding operations throughout Latin America, establishing both legitimate and criminal enterprises to fund future operations.

According to U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Charles Shapiro, almost every extremist terror group is now represented in Latin America.

One tool of the Islamists in Latin America is the "small business loan."

Both newcomers to the movement and veterans of past operations are given loans to establish small businesses. These modest ventures involve food and clothing stores, transportation companies and other legitimate businesses stretching from minor real estate investments to funding of small airlines. In return these businesses repay the loans with cash accrued from their trading revenues. The money is collected by roving collectors who change from time to time to avoid being traced.

According to Islam, adding interest on loans is regarded as usury and is strictly forbidden. Instead the business owner is asked to add a donation based on the initial principal. This can range from a few to thousands of dollars in each case. Some businesses, identified as having been established by terror groups in the infamous Muslim triangle around the border region between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, often are plain newspaper stands, corner stores or family-run tailor shops.

In the so-called Muslim triangle, where the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet, a growing number of Arab-owned businesses are being forced to identify with the Palestinian cause.

In the business town of Punte Arnes, the home of many Palestinians in touch with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, stores carry names of Palestinian communities and are decorated with the colors of the Palestinian flag.

Bus companies owned by Islamic militants are also painting vehicles with the colors of Palestine, giving the vehicles Arabic names, which leave no doubt as to their ownership.

It's all an indication of the growing power and spread of Islamist ideology in Latin America.

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