Nation’s only Latino mosque expanding in Houston

On a recent afternoon, Jaime “Mujahid” Fletcher, the CEO and founder of the Houston-based nonprofit IslamInSpanish, greeted construction workers at Centro Islámico, known as the nation’s only Latino mosque.

The nonprofit raised nearly $3 million in recent years to expand the mosque on the 2.5-acre property in Alief. Crews finished the parking lot as Ramadan began last year and have since been building a new prayer area, a café and lounge, a 3,600-square-foot production studio to produce bilingual media content and a museum showcasing educational contributions from Muslims in Spain.

They continue to push through pandemic-era supply chain issues and frustrations that can come with obtaining permits in hopes of completing the 10,200-square-foot interior of the mosque by year’s end.

“We’ve gone beyond accepted; we’re respected based on the change that we have brought into the Muslim community,” Fletcher said earlier this month. “We’ve elevated the convert care and overall inspired a more keen hosting treatment of youth, and of course the core audience of hosting Latinos at our center.”

For one, the expansion project reflects Fletcher’s growth as a Muslim leader in Houston. The Colombian-born Catholic was a teenage gang leader in Alief before converting to Islam only days before the 9/11 attacks and establishing the nonprofit more than two decades ago. He has since led different mosques citywide and opened Centro Islámico in 2016, garnering attention from CNN, Harvard University, Univision and VICE News.

With more converts, he sought to expand the mosque. During construction, he has delivered weekly sermons in Spanish and English at Masjid Istiqlal Houston, an Indonesian mosque in Sugar Land. Community members also gather to learn the Quran at other local mosques during the transition.

Colombian immigrant Jaime Fletcher went from gang leader to Muslim proselytizer.

Houston’s Muslim leaders have praised IslamInSpanish’s expansion of Centro Islámico and its ongoing production of online educational videos about Islam for a growing number of Mexican Americans and other converts. They also touted its future plans to build a basketball court, a soccer field, a playground and a pavilion on the property for Muslim families.

“IslamInSpanish is highly regarded throughout the Muslim community in Houston,” said William White, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Houston, a civil rights and advocacy group. “I turn to Jaime for leadership advice and how to get things done in the nonprofit space. He is an essential asset to the Muslim community.”

IslamInSpanish has benefited from Houston’s shifting demographics, and the expansion of the mosque reflects that, as well. Latinos and Hispanics account for 44.5 percent of the city’s 2.3 million population and between 250,000 and 500,000 Muslims live in the region of 7.34 million.

It is expanding the mosque to draw more converts as 9 percent of Muslims in the U.S. identified as Latino in 2022, up from 5 percent in 2017, according to a study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.

Erum Ikramullah, the senior research project manager at ISPU who co-authored the study, said earlier this month in an email that Muslims are “younger than other faith communities, half are immigrants and half native-born in the U.S., and are the most ethnically diverse faith community in the U.S.”

ISPU research found that Latinos have lower levels of Islamophobia than other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. and the general public and also hold relatively favorable views of Muslims, she said.

In a recent study in which Ikramullah asked Latino Americans (who are not Muslim) about their views of Muslims, the responses included “a common experience around discrimination and stereotyping, a common thread around partaking the immigrant experience and partaking the American dream, positive interactions with diverse people in neighborhoods, communities and workplaces, and positive views around religious devotion,” she said.