Author: Sarah Souli / Source: Atlas Obscura
Honduras is a country of churches. There’s the buttercream facade of Santa Rosa de Copan’s Roman Catholic cathedral, the Mission revival-style St. Peter the Apostle cathedral in San Pedro Sula, and the geometric grid of the Latter Day Saints’ church in Tegucigalpa.
Crosses dangle from necks and rearview mirrors and are you adorn tombs in graveyards across the country. Christianity—be it Catholic, Protestant, or, increasingly, Mormon—dominates the landscape.But nestled on a quiet street in the country’s second-largest city of San Pedro Sula is a different kind of religious sanctuary. Half shielded by palm trees, it’s set back from a parking lot, so it’s not entirely noticeable at first glance. The gold-covered qubba (domes) pointing upwards and topped with crescent moons are unmistakable, though, and if you strain your ears on a Friday afternoon you might hear the faint call to prayer. Welcome to the only mosque in San Pedro Sula, and one of just two in Honduras.
Pakistani factory owners, converted Honduran military generals and Cuban flaneurs are just a few of the people who attend jumu’ah (Friday prayers). Imam Mohammed, who leads the service, estimates there are around 1,500 Muslims in Honduras, though Pew Forum research put the number closer to 11,000 in 2009. Regardless of the total, only around 30 people attend prayers at the mosque on a weekly basis.
Arnaldo Hernandez, a Garifuna fisherman, drives three hours from his home in the coastal town of La Ceiba to attend Friday prayers.
He converted to Islam from Christianity 26 years ago, though, as he is quick to point out with a huge grin, “we are all Muslims.”Hernandez is one of the older members of the community, before there was even a physical mosque. “We used to pray in a room close to the hospital,” he explained after jumu’ah. It’s not uncommon in non-Islamic countries for Muslims to pray in makeshift locations when proper mosques are nonexistent. In towns across Italy, Muslims pray in warehouses and supermarkets; in Hong Kong, devotees worship in a former car repair shop.
Latin America has the largest Arab population outside of the Arab world. For many years, Honduras was the only Latin American country without a mosque—despite the fact that up to 25 percent of San Pedro Sula’s population is of Arab descent. Now, there are two: the one in San Pedro Sula, and a smaller one in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.
The introduction of Islam to Honduras is linked to the waves of Arab immigration, explains Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, a historian at San Pedro Sula’s Museu de Antropologia e Historia.
“In 1870 the national railroad pact was signed with the British,” Fasquelle said, while giving a tour around the museum’s exhibit of 19th-century artifacts. “It was a great fiasco—it never got past the mountains—but it did connect San Pedro Sula to the coastline. And as the city became an internal port, it became crucial to trade with the outside world.” Goods came, and so…
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