FRESNO, Calif. — Thalia Arenas of Fresno sometimes is asked, “How are you Muslim if you’re Mexican? I don’t understand.”
It’s a perplexing question to the 28-year-old Fresno woman, but one she answers willingly.
“Islam is for everybody,” she says. “Matter of fact, only 20 percent of Muslims in the world are Arab. Most of them are actually from other countries.”
Arenas is in an unusual position in the wake of recent executive orders by President Donald Trump calling for travel bans from seven predominantly Muslim countries, more deportations, and a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico — a country that many of her family members immigrated from.
“As a woman, as a Muslim, as a Latina — in all of these ways I feel like anything he (President Trump) does is going to affect me.”
She is concerned that Trump eventually may extend his ban to include green card holders from Mexico, which would include some of her immediate family members.
Arenas shared these concerns during a MEChA club meeting at Fresno State earlier this month, where she also told the group that the “Muslim Hispanic community is growing.” She personally knows around 15 Muslim Hispanics and says mosques in cities such as Los Angeles now hold services in Spanish. She wants people to know that followers of Islam are a larger and more diverse group than they are often perceived.
She has overheard offensive conversations about Muslims by people who don’t realize she is a follower of Islam because she doesn’t wear a hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women as a tenet of their faith to dress modestly. She says she doesn’t wear a hijab for functional reasons — she works at an animal shelter, and doesn’t want to get the garment dirty — but also because she is afraid.
Arenas also considers herself a “Catholic Muslim.” She was raised Catholic and started researching different religions as a young woman.
“Once I got into college I realized I was my own independent person — my mom wasn’t going to take me to church anymore. … If I wanted to have a relationship with God, I had to look for it, and I did.”
While searching for her spirituality, she joined three clubs that represented Catholic, Christian and Muslim students. She found similarities between the religions and liked what she learned. She decided to become Catholic and Muslim. She goes to Catholic Church one weekend and a mosque the next.
Arenas’ mother didn’t take the news well that her daughter identifies as both Catholic and Muslim, but her husband — also Catholic and Mexican — has been supportive.
Arenas doesn’t feel like she has to pick between Catholicism and Islam.
“I don’t want to compromise my marriage or my relationship with my parents when I already believe in it (Catholicism) and grew up in it, so why would I have to leave it? I feel like it’s easier to accept both,” she says.
