Ojala Islamic Center, the first Latino-led mosque in the Midwest, opens in Berwyn

In the basement of one of the Chicago area's newest places of worship, all the fixings of a traditional Mexican meal were laid out to enjoy.

“We have mole, birria, spaghetti verde, arroz. We even have flautas,” Cesar Cortina, 39, said Sunday evening at the space.

It’s a spread one might find following services at any of Chicago’s many predominately Mexican Roman Catholic churches.

But this was not at a church.

It was at the first mosque in the Midwest geared toward Latino Muslims, and one of only a handful nationwide. Ojala Islamic Center opened Feb. 17, the first day of Ramadan. The center is in a former church in a quiet neighborhood in west suburban Berwyn.

“It just feels more and more like home to me,” said Cortina, who became a Muslim a year ago. “I love it.”

“This is needed now because our community is growing at numbers that we've never seen before,” said Imam Christopher AbdulKareem Pavlicek, 48, the center's director.

“We knew eight years ago when we started this work that there was a need," Pavlicek said. "As we continue to do work in the community, the community just started growing at such a rapid rate. We didn’t necessarily have places to meet on our own. Having this place, it was a perfect time for us.”

Latinos make up a small but growing part of the Muslim population in the U.S., with Pew Research polls showing practicing members of the faith rose from 6% to 8% between 2011 and 2017.

The effort that eventually led to the mosque opening last month started more than a decade ago when there wasn't much for Latino Muslims in the Chicago area and no space of their own.

In 2018, the nonprofit Ojala Foundation was formed as a way to foster connections between the Latino and Muslim communities. Pavlicek is a co-founder of the foundation.

Foundation members have spent time serving to the needs of those less fortunate, including providing food to the homeless in Chicago’s Latino neighborhoods, including Little Village, Pilsen, Humboldt Park and Marquette Park.

After eight years of raising funds, the Ojala Foundation took possession of the church structure on May 5 of last year. Soon after, it began removing all the symbols and wooden benches you’d typically find in a Christian church.

Just a few weeks ago, workers completed installing carpet in the main prayer space.

“I've been in this work for over 20-plus years. When we started doing all of this work, it was because there was a very sincere need from our side, as new converts to the faith, not being able to find anyone that was like us,” said Alma Campos, who sits on the Ojala Foundation board and was a co-founder.

Campos converted to Islam nearly three decades ago after being brought up Catholic. Nearly 80% of Mexicans are Roman Catholic, according to a 2020 survey by the Mexican government.

Her best friend introduced the religion to her.

“It’s been an ongoing effort for a very long time," she said. "Seeing it culminate in this, and us being able to purchase our own space where we could have all of the things that we were not able to have and provide that for the community — it's an amazing feeling."

Ojala member Christopher Nevarez-Azdar’s family is from Mexico and also grew up in a Roman Catholic household.

Nevarez-Azdar converted in 2018, the first in his family, as an undergraduate student at University of Illinois Chicago.

He said part of the mission of the mosque is to reach out to the Latino community and to help those who wish to convert to Islam. But non-Latinos are welcomed as well, he said.

“The idea of Ojala is to be a space where people who become Muslim feel comfortable. Most of us happen to be Latino, but a lot of them are not Latino," said Nevarez-Azdar, 28, an assistant public defender in Cook County.

"We also have folks that are part of our community, that aren't Muslim but may be interested in Islam. You have people from our community. We have South Asian representation, Arab representation, West African, North African."

Nevarez-Azdar sees a lot of similarities between Islam and the Catholic faiths.

“You have a lot of family values that are very universal to both religions. The importance of women and respecting women and respecting one's mother. It's truly very important," he said.

Ojala Islamic Center, he said, allows Latino Muslims to practice their faith in a language they understand by offering sermons, lectures and classes in Spanish.

“The way that we present Islam to people, it's a universal message. But it's presented in a way that we would understand it. That's why we think that there was that need for a Latino mosque, especially in a super Latino area," he said.

For Ojala’s 200 or so members, the opening of the mosque comes at a perilous time.

Since last fall, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have targeted Latinos nationwide and in Chicago in President Trump’s aggressive deportation initiative.

And, over the weekend, Trump partnered with Israel in ordering an attack on Iran.

Those who are Muslim and Latino could feel they’re being targeted on two fronts.

Pavlicek said he’s heard hurtful comments from people targeting Ojala’s members for being both Latino and Muslim.

“There were people making comments like, 'Double deport. Deport them for both reasons,'” he said.

It impacted fundraising for the new center. Some events had to be done virtually for the safety of Ojala’s members in September, he said.

"We have a lot of people in our community that are undocumented, and other people that are here completely legal. But they're getting picked up too," Pavlicek said. "People were really hesitant to come out and come be a part of things. It greatly affected us."

Alma Campos said it’s a challenging time, but that's no different than any other time.

“Being a Latina that is first generation born and raised here, I never thought that I would see the day that I would hear the stories of earlier generations when ICE was really ‘la migra.' I never thought that I would see the day where I would be able to see that for myself," she said. "It's something that definitely weighs heavy on us because, at the end of the day, these are our brothers and sisters in humanity. So we are here for our Latino people. We are from the Latino people.”

Michael Puente is a reporter and weekend anchor for WBEZ. Reach him at mpuente@wbez.org.