Armando Abu Kaila Qattan, a doctor in industrial chemistry, an Islamic preacher, a Salvadoran businessman of Palestinian origins who go back specifically to Bethlehem, comes from a Christian family, but he converted to Islam during his youth, and he is credited with building a number of El Salvadoran mosques and supporting Central American Muslims.

He was born in El Salvador in 1944 and died there in 2015.

The Qattan family is one of the wealthy and influential families in El Salvador economically, socially and politically, especially since his son Najib Abu Kaila assumed the presidency of the country after winning the presidential elections in 2017.

Birth and upbringing

Armando Abu Kaila Qattan was born on December 16, 1944 in San Salvador, the capital, from a Christian family. His father is Humberto Abu Kaila Salman from an Orthodox family, and his mother, Victoria Qattan, from a Catholic family. They are Palestinian immigrants from Bethlehem, who settled They settled in El Salvador in 1921.

He married Olga Ortiz, with whom he had Najib Abu Kaila (President of El Salvador in 2017), Karim, Ibrahim and Youssef, and later had 4 daughters and two sons from 5 other marriages.

Study and formation

In his childhood, Kattan attended the Marian Catholic Christian School in San Salvador, which was supervised by monks and priests. He was known for the many questions he raised about religion and beliefs, until he was expelled from classes by a teacher on multiple occasions, and described him as a “Muslim” despite His lack of knowledge of this religion, and without any connection to Islam, and this "stigmatization" caused him a lot of bullying and exclusion, even by his peers from the students, when he was 11 years old.

Kattan attended the "Salvadoran High School" and in 1960 entered the University of El Salvador, where he continued his academic education. In 1969 he obtained a Ph. He concluded a distinguished academic career in which he obtained the highest academic degrees.

Qattan's curious personality bullied him in his Catholic school, which led him to Islam (communication sites)

His conversion to Islam

Even in his youth, Qattan was accompanied by the doubts that had swirled in his head since his childhood about religions, especially his teacher’s accusation of Islam against him. So he began to study and search for this religion, and read all the articles and books he had in his hands related to Islam.

These readings pushed him to his Arab-Palestinian roots, until he found the answers that flooded his mind in the Holy Qur’an, so he declared his conversion to Islam in 1975.

Intellectual orientation

At the university stage of his educational career, Qattan was known to be proud of his Arab roots, and he never hesitated to declare his enthusiasm and support for the Palestinian cause.

In the early sixties of the last century, the Israeli ambassador visited the University of Social Sciences in El Salvador, and Kattan was among the dozens of students present, but he was the only one who embarrassed the ambassador with his questions that revealed his convictions and his position on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Ivo Priamo Alvarenga, who was president of the General Assembly of El Salvador Students at the time, says that Kattan entered into an argument with the Israeli ambassador, and that his violent voice and gestures suggested that his patience had run out, and that his convictions could not budge regarding Palestine, yet he did not cross the limits of politeness and decency towards ambassador.

Kattan headed the Liberal Democrats Front at the University of Chemistry when he was a student, and his thinking tended to be conservative, but with a critical tendency with industrial economic tendencies, due to his belonging to a family that made its wealth from the textile and garment industry in San Salvador.

In the early 1970s, the newspaper "The Painted Bird" (La Pájara Pinta) issued a special issue on the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Kattan contacted the newspaper's director, Roberto Sia, and asked him to buy 100 copies to distribute to Palestinian immigrants who "were not aware of what was going on in Palestine or of organized movements." Palestinian Liberation," according to Kattan.

Until the end of the eighties, there were no places of worship for Muslims in El Salvador due to their small number, and on one of his trips to the United States, Qattan saw a mosque frequented by Muslims in America between the eighties and the nineties, and when he returned to his country, he opened in 1992 a mosque called Al-Nour Mosque.

And the almost absence of Muslims in the vicinity of Qattan made him allocate the activities of the mosque to preach and introduce Islam, by organizing dialogue circles, as he believed that discussions were the best way to break down barriers and introduce Islam and Muslims.

Kattan was not satisfied with the mosque, but produced a television program entitled "Explaining Concepts" to introduce Islam and his homeland, Palestine, with an emphasis on his belonging to El Salvador and his attachment to it.

And he contributed effectively to the spread of Islam in El Salvador through the charitable works that he was doing, relying on treating all residents of different beliefs and religions on an equal footing, which made many gather around him to learn more about this religion as many declared their conversion to Islam at his hands, and during his life he built 4 mosques in El Salvador and a mosque in Guatemala and Honduras.

Najib Abu Kaila, the eldest son of Kattan, assumed the presidency of El Salvador in 2015 (Getty Images)

Jobs and responsibilities

The scientific path pursued by Kattan and the professional life of his family made him an advocate of supporting local industries, and emphasizing the imposition of duties on goods imported from outside El Salvador.

While managing the textile factories belonging to his family, Kattan succeeded in persuading the government to reduce and abolish customs duties on local products, and thus the textile industry and other industries witnessed a great prosperity in the early seventies.

Kattan took over the management and presidency of his own company, Obermet.

He also established businesses in textiles, commerce, medicine, advertising and the media, and his fortune in the last days of his life amounted to 20 million dollars.

literature

Kattan wrote two books during his career:

  • ABC OF ISLAM, in which he introduced the teachings of Islam and included pictures of the largest mosques in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

  • Clarifying Concepts in Physics.

his death

Kattan died on November 30, 2015 in San Salvador, after a struggle with illness, at the age of 71.