Religion Matters lecture - Remapping Global Islam: Maya Muslim conversion in Southern Mexico

Remapping Global Islam requires moving beyond demographic and centreperiphery models that continue to position Latin America as marginal to Muslim histories, practices and intellectual traditions. This lecture examines how Maya Muslim communities in Southern Mexico challenge such assumptions by demonstrating that religious and cultural significance cannot be measured solely through population size, but must also be understood through lived practice, local interpretation, and social influence. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork onducted during Ramadan in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, the lecture explores how indigenous Muslims actively shape locally grounded forms of Islam through community leadership, Ramadan practices, food traditions, and mbodied forms of religiosity. Particular attention is given to conversion as both a religious and social process. In this context, conversion emerges as a response to alcoholism, illness, social marginalization, and demands for dignity, healing, and rights, particularly among women.

Biography:

Esteban René Ugalde Martínez is a Mexican researcher currently pursuing the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s in Religious Diversity in a Globalized World at the University of Groningen and the University of Coimbra. His research focuses on Maya Muslim conversion in Chiapas, Mexico, with broader interests in anthropology, religious studies, indigenous studies, and cognitive justice. He is the author of the book Los Recortes de Papel Amate de San Pablito: de la mercantilización a la justicia cognitiva (2024), and recipient of the Erasmus Mundis Scholarship (2024) and the GUF-100 prize (2005).

Unable to attend in the court room? You can also watch the lecture online via the livestream.