Five centuries after the Conquistadors forced Christianity down the throats of indigenous people throughout the New World, a new phalanx of evangelists is preaching the path to salvation from Mexico's southeastern uplands to the windswept Patagonian altiplano. This time, however, the exhortation is in Arabic, not the King's Spanish, and the message, a heavy-handed mimicry of the Judeo-Christian ethic, may aim to do more than just save souls. Owing the rise of global terrorism, fueled by a spreading extremist Muslim fringe, the implications for Latin America, the United States and the rest of the world are alarming.

"Allah is great. There is no other god and Mohammed is his emissary on earth," says Juan Tún, reciting from an Arabic text he has dutifully memorized and scrawled on a wall in his one-room mud-brick house. A few of his people are still being wooed by charismatic Christians and baptized on the shores of Lake Atitlán. Tún and many of his fellow Maya have heeded the call of a different doctrine hawked by newfangled crusaders, and are now seeking spiritual refuge in the very heart of Islam.

The apostles, Spanish-speaking Iranians, Moroccans, Saudis, Syrians and Yemenis, hold British, French, German, Italian, and US passports. Their mission: To seek out the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten, and find among them willing converts.

Many of the fresh disciples in Mexico's Chiapas region were forced off their lands in the wake of the Zapatista uprising in 1994, when Maya insurgents waged war against the Mexican government. Others are being recruited in Guatemala's Petén, and Honduras's desolate and poverty-stricken indigenous communities of Copán, Ocotepeque, Lempira, Intibucá and La Paz, where natives are still victims of de facto persecution.

Allah's emissaries are also said to be gaining some converts in the Talamanca region of Costa Rica, held back in time by its remoteness and where Cobra Commando periodically sow panic in Indian villages. Conversions also take place in isolated areas inhabited by the Aymara Inca of Peru and Bolivia. These compliant proselytes are among the thousands of converts to various Protestant sects who were exiled for defecting from the state religion --- a brand of Roman Catholicism spiced up with a generous sprinkling of ancient native rituals.

Conversions are also finding fertile ground in Brazil and Argentina, which have large Muslim populations --- descendants of Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian immigrants --- many of whom, aroused by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have since experienced a burst of atavistic self-identity and nationalism.

It is the political turmoil, despair, bitterness, the economic downturns and quickly shifting geopolitical dynamics that the missionaries are said to be exploiting to establish a foothold for Islam in Latin America.

Juan Tún, who lost nine-tenths of his family during the 34-year-old war in which at least 400,000 Maya were massacred, is the hamlet's imam, or spiritual leader. He helps preach a return to purist Islamic values. He says the group he has embraced was founded in Mexico by a Scotsman known as Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, an outspoken critic of the US, capitalism and western values. According to intelligence obtained by this writer, evidence of possible ties between the "shaykh" and al-Qaida is being studied.

Tún bristles at the suggestion that he and his small band of Muslim converts are being politically indoctrinated. "We are men of peace seeking to learn the ways of Allah."

Critics of the Muslim missions that have mushroomed throughout Latin America, however, offer a different reason for their success.

"They offer money, food, clothes and the promise of eternal bliss after death. So people convert. It's that simple,'' says Miguel Toledo, a Presbyterian minister who heads an umbrella organization of Protestant groups in Chiapas.

People in adjoining communities have accused Tún of courting refugees by offering them what they need most -- jobs. The missionaries have since opened bakeries, free clinics and carpentry workshops that offer to pay workers double the going rate of $4 a day --- on condition that they attended lectures on Islam. Tún denies that converts are offered financial incentives. He concedes that many are drawn by the "spirit of fellowship" inspired by Islam.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, many in Latin America began questioning the missionaries' motives. Local newspapers ran stories about the groups' alleged support for Islamic terrorist groups. Fear or lack of conclusive evidence has since blunted coverage but rumors are spreading.

A liaison officer with Interpol in Tegucigalpa who spoke on condition of anonymity said that terrorist sleeper cells "are slowly working their way throughout Central America. Although no irrefutable link between these 'front-line' preachers and Islamic terrorists has yet been established, we suspect they could have been planted by al-Qaida. Their disciples, posing as illegal immigrants, could eventually be smuggled into the United States."

An intelligence analyst, who asked that his name be withheld, offered additional insight. "They [terrorists] know they cannot win militarily. They are outnumbered. Their new strategy is to clone themselves in the poorest areas of the world and to infect society from the inside out. Subvert the mind and the body follows, feed the body and the mind surrenders."

Juan Tún, who has changed his name to Hassan and has never heard of Shakespeare, says in parting, "Hasan or Juan. What's in a name? When you are among the few, the lost and the forgotten, you kiss the hand that brings you bread and love. Islam IS love."

Tún is an alias used to protect his identity.

According to Dr. Philip Jenkins, professor of Biblical Studies at University Park, Pennsylvania, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world --- and the most radical, truculent and combative. "Of course, the world should distinguish between terrorism perpetrated by Islamic fanatics and Islam," he argues. But he also cautions that Islam is not the kind and merciful religion it purports to be.

Perhaps time has come to redefine fanaticism and terrorism, two inseparable and reciprocal components of the same dynamic process --- the suppression through violence and intimidation of free thought, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Only the religion of Islam could supply the motivation and stimulus for the countless acts of homicidal aggression the United States has endured, at home and abroad. It would be naive to imagine that people who willingly blow themselves up in discotheques filled with youths or crash airplanes at the loss of their lives and the lives of others do so for some exalted humanitarian cause. The courage comes solely from a doctrine unique to Islam's stated mission: It is the religious imperative of every Muslim to spread Islam by any means --- force, blood and extortion included.

More than 100 verses in the Koran advocate the use of violence to spread Islam. Allah commands Muslims to "take not the Jews and Christians as friends,… Slay the idolaters [non-Muslims] wherever ye find them&Mac226;… Fight against such &Mac226;… as believe not in Allah…." Though most Muslims would shrink from obeying such commands, this is official, statutory, unexpurgated Islam and Islam cannot change without confessing that Muhammad was a false prophet and a thug.

Although people of good will recoil from blaming a major religion for the crimes perpetrated in its name, the world must ask itself whether it can afford such romanticism.

While it is true that most Muslims are nonviolent and oppose terrorism, the religion they follow was founded on violence. From its earliest beginnings, it was spread and enforced with the sword. It is by torture, enslavement and slaughter that millions of Sudanese are forced to embrace Islam. Islam is the driving force behind the murderous riots against Christians in Africa, Pakistan, India and Indonesia. It is the enforcement of Islamic dogma that inspires the Taliban to deny all civil rights to those under its control and to punish with death any expression of individualism.

The foregoing report was prepared with the reticence and circumspection owed bad news --- that the conversions to Islam taking place in Latin America are political, not messianic in scope. Having said that, this writer accepts the risk that unwillingness by several reliable sources to speak on the record may dilute the report's credibility --- and thus retard swift and effective counter-terrorism measures. He also cautions heads of state in the region to act with prudence and discernment, and not to exploit the news as a pretext to launch a new wave of violence against indigenous minorities.

(W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist. On regular free lance assignment in Central America since 1991, he lives and works in southern California.)