Islam in Chile

[citation needed] However, the census of 1895 registered the presence of 76 "Turks", 58 of them Muslims, who were primarily concentrated in the north of Chile in Tarapacá, Atacama, Valparaiso and Santiago.

They were 1,183 men and 315 women, representing only 0.04 percent of the population, although this was recorded as the highest percentage of Muslims in Chile's history.

The majority lived in Santiago, with the rest of the population scattered in the provinces of Antofagasta, Coquimbo, Valparaíso, O'Higgins, Concepción, Malleco, Cautín and Valdivia, without much organization among them.

In 1988, the construction of the mosque of Santiago named Mezquita As-Salam was initiated by Sheikh Taufiq Rumie', who had led the Muslim community for more than sixty years.

Due to the external interference, and especially to the strengthening of Shia Islam by part of the Iranian help in 1996, they inaugurated Centro de Cultura Islámica, in Las Condes, Santiago, where they consolidated a Shi'ite Muslim community who mostly arrived in Chile in the 19th century.

Muslims who maintained the faith met in the residence of Taufik Rumie' Dalu, a trader of Syrian origin.

Fleeing conditions in the Ottoman Empire, these Levantine immigrants and their descendants permanently settled in Chile and established the first Islamic institutions in the 1920s.