Contemporary Muslim communities in South America have been primarily composed of early and mid-twentieth century immigrants and their descendants from Lebanon, Syria, and, to a lesser extent, Palestine. There are, of course, significant numbers of South Asian Muslims in the circum-Caribbean nations of South America, namely Suriname and Guyana, as well as recent converts to Islam throughout the region, but these communities are not addressed in this entry (see Ahsani 1984, Bruijne 1979, Manuel 2000, William…