As the end of Ramadan approaches, Rebekah Coffman, Curator of Religion and Community History, writes about the Ojalá Islamic Center in Berwyn, Illinois, the first Latino-led mosque in the Midwest, and how it formed to be a space for Latino Muslims in the Chicago area.

Ojalá community picnic, 2025. Courtesy of Ojalá Foundation

At sundown on Thursday, March 19, 2026, Muslims around the world are expected to conclude the month of Ramadan with celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the festival that breaks the fast. Here in Chicago, 3–4% of Chicagoans identify as Muslim. Within the Chicago metro area’s diverse Muslim communities, a small but growing group is the Latino Muslim community. In a 2023 study published by the Institute for Social Policy & Understanding (ISPU), roughly 1 in 5 United Statesians identify as Latino. As of 2020, 9% of Muslims in the United States identify as Latino, up from 5% in 2017.

The Grand Mezquita of Córdoba, an example of Umayyad architecture and culture in Spain, September 7, 2012. In the 16th century, a Renaissance-style Catholic cathedral was inserted into the building, making it today known as the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba. Photograph by Nicolas Vollmer, Wikimedia Commons

While there has been a noted uptick in Latinos converting to Islam over the last two decades, Islam is not entirely unfamiliar to Spanish-speaking communities. Historically, Spain was under Islamic rule in the southern Al-Andalus region through the Arabic-speaking Umayyad Dynasty from the 8th to the 15th centuries. Through this, Spanish history and culture is intertwined with Muslim influences. While Spanish colonization of the Americas is often discussed through a Catholic-dominant lens, cultural remnants persist of this Arab Muslim presence. A clear example is in the Spanish language itself, which retains some 8,000 words that have Arabic roots. In fact, one of the most common Spanish expressions—Ojalá, which is typically used like the word “hopefully” in English—means “God willing” and is related to the Arabic phrase “Insha’Allah.”

Sign outside the Ojalá Foundation: Latino Muslims of Chicago building in Berwyn, Illinois, 2026. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman

This linguistic cultural tie has become a marker for Chicagoland’s Latino Muslim community. The Ojalá Islamic Center in Berwyn, Illinois, is the first Latino-led mosque in the Midwest. A central part of their mission is to build bridges between the Latino and Muslim communities. In our exhibition Aquí en Chicago, we trace the many diverse ways Latine communities have created and maintained space for themselves in the city, including through diverse spiritual practices. The Ojalá Foundation: Latino Muslims of Chicago came through the unification of different communities of practice realizing the specific need to connect and support these burgeoning communities.

From left: Alma Campos, Imam Christopher Abdul Kareem Pavlicek, and Vilma Lopez, cofounders of Ojalá Foundation: Latino Muslims of Chicago. Courtesy of Ojalá Foundation

Twenty years ago, there was little representation of Latino Muslims in the Midwest. This began to shift through the organizing efforts of two Latina women, Vilma Lopez and Alma Campos. Vilma Lopez was born in the Dominican Republic, where she lived in the second largest city—Santiago—and attended Catholic school. Growing up Catholic, Vilma felt drawn to religious practice and after high school joined a convent with the intention of becoming a nun. However, some months in, she realized this wasn’t her path and instead joined her parents to come to the United States in 1991. They initially settled in New York, and it was there that she was first exposed to Islam and started attending the Islamic Center of New York. A year later, she embraced Islam. In 1997, she came to Chicago to join her then-husband. She initially attended the Muslim Community Center in the Irving Park neighborhood. At MCC, she began to meet other Latino Muslims, including Alma Campos.

Alma came to Islam when she was in her early twenties as a college student. Both Alma and Vilma experienced challenges of being new to Islam and feelings of isolation from their broader Latino communities. They felt an urgency to create the scaffolds of support in which they wanted to raise their families, so together they founded “Latino Muslims of Chicago,” a grassroots organization to do just that. Importantly, they anchored this network of care in their identities as women, as Latinas, and as Muslims. They knew to be sustainable, they needed to continue to embrace their Latinidad through food, language, and culture. This included being able to practice in Spanish and to have access to resources like the Koran also in Spanish.

Ojalá’s Neighborly Deeds Initiative. Courtesy of Ojalá Foundation

For more than 20 years, Latino Muslims of Chicago centered their efforts in civic action. An example is a program called Neighborly Deeds, which responds to the needs of Chicagoland’s unhoused populations through providing warm meals and basic supplies like blankets and hygiene products. Another example is Andando y Limpiando, where community members walk through a neighborhood and pick up trash as an act of service. They especially wanted to ensure non-Muslim family members and friends felt welcome to participate and be present.

Sylvia Morales (left) at the Muslim American Society Annual Convention. Courtesy of Ojalá Foundation

Several years after Latino Muslims of Chicago were informally gathering and centering the experiences of Latina Muslim women in Chicagoland, similar efforts began to connect Latino men and other converts to Islam. Imam Christopher Abdul Kareem Pavlicek, the third cofounder of Ojalá Foundation, was pivotal to these efforts. Imam Pavlicek grew up in Rogers Park and Naperville, then moved to the Southwest Side of Chicago in his adolescence. Though himself of Croatian background, he felt embraced by the Latino community when he lived in Pilsen, and this continued to be true after he embraced Islam a few years later. In cofounding Ojalá Foundation in 2018, he wanted to ensure the experience of Latino Muslims and those new to Islam was uplifted amidst the increasingly diverse Muslim community. When it started, Ojalá was predominantly serving men. Soon after, Sylvia Morales, a community member originally from Texas who came to Chicago in 2010, suggested Ojalá and Latino Muslims of Chicago combine efforts to strengthen their shared mission of supporting Latinos and new Muslims. In 2023, this partnership was formalized through updating their incorporation documents with Imam Pavlicek, Alma Campos, and Vilma Lopez as listed leadership.

Eduardo Castaneda, owner of Lalo’s Mexican Restaurant Chain, in front of Lalo’s on South Harlem Avenue, Berwyn, Illinois, March 25, 1993. ST-11002576-0034, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM

For several years, Ojalá remained itinerate, but in 2024, they began looking for a permanent home. They desired to be in the near west suburbs to be close to Latino communities. Community leaders looked at locations in Cicero and Berwyn, which are 88.8% and 60.2% Latino today, respectively. After an initial location was scouted in Cicero, the community came close to purchasing a property at Harlem Ave and Cermak Road, the previous site of an old standby Mexican restaurant, Lalo’s. However, the purchase did not move forward, and the community continued its search.

Exterior of the former First Reformed Church of Berwyn, now the Ojalá Foundation, 1900 Oak Park Avenue, Berwyn, Illinois, 2026. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman

Soon after, they found their new home—a former church building on Oak Park Avenue and 19th Street in Berwyn. The space was originally built in 1948 as the First Reformed Church of Berwyn, which initially served a predominantly Dutch heritage community. This congregation originated in the 1840s and ’50s when families from the Netherlands immigrated to Chicago and began forming Dutch Reformed congregations. Initially meeting in homes, the First Reformed congregation had several church buildings in Chicago before moving west to the suburbs as part of white flight from the city during the 1920s–40s. During the 1920s, Berwyn became the fastest-growing suburb in Chicagoland, and it experienced another period of significant growth after World War II, the same period First Reformed Church was constructed. Berwyn remained predominantly Euro-American until the 1990s, when the number of Latino residents grew. By 2000, 38% of residents identified as Latino, and within the last 25 years it has become a Latino majority community.

Ojalá’s main prayer hall, 2026. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman

Women’s prayer section in the Ojalá prayer hall, 2026. Photograph by Rebekah Coffman

In 2017, First Reformed Church merged with Bethel Reformed Church of Chicago to become CrossRoads Community Church, and in 2024 they stopped worshipping in Berwyn to focus their ministry in Chicago. Ojalá closed on the sale of the building on May 5, 2025, after months of fundraising, and began adapting the sacred space into their new home, an example of architectural conservation known as “sacred shift.” This included sympathetically adapting the former sanctuary into the new prayer hall by removing pews and installing new carpet, refreshing the fellowship hall, and making plans to adapt the restrooms to include more space for wudu, or ritual washing. In 2026, they are celebrating their first Ramadan in the building, including nightly iftars to break their fast together and to welcome others from the surrounding community—Muslim and non-Muslim alike. This includes crucial work to support Latinos across Chicagoland during a period of targeted activities by ICE. Today, the Ojalá community includes hundreds of congregants and supporters, ensuring Latino Muslims have a supportive home in Chicagoland for the future.

With thanks to Alma Campos, Vilma Lopez, Sylvia Morales, Karen Rios, and Imam Christopher Abdul Kareem Pavlicek for speaking to the author, and to the Ojalá Foundation for their hospitality.

Additional Resources

• Listen to interviews from our Chicago Muslim Oral History Project, which includes stories of Latino Muslims such as Andrea Ortez
• Read the Chicago Sun-Times article “Berwyn mosque becomes Midwest’s first geared toward Latino Muslims,” March 5, 2026