CAIRO – Hundreds of Latino Muslims have gathered in America’s first Spanish-language mosque, the Centro Islámico, to celebrate their Latino culture and Muslim faith.

“We’re like a family,” Ana Ortiz, a Puerto Rican Muslim originally from New Jersey, who was serving food at the festival’s Puerto Rico tent, told The Guardian on Monday, May 9.

Ortiz was attending the mosque’s first-ever Cinco de Mayo celebration on Saturday, where community members with roots in Colombia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, and other countries served halal variations of their traditional foods, while celebrating their shared identity as Muslims.

“We used to gather in different masjids,” said Magidel Morris as she served halal tamales in the mosque’s parking lot on Saturday.

“But then we got together and decided we had to have a place for Hispanic people to get together and learn about Islam.”

Since it opened on January 30, 2016, eighteen people like Flores have taken the shahada at the mosque in Houston.

Alfonso Flores, a 29-year-old dental technician, is one of the new reverts who has just taken the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith.

Last Saturday, she accepted hugs and handshakes from other members of the Centro Islámico during the event.

With the Centro Islámico, America’s Latino Muslims now have a home of their own.

“[Latinos] want to learn about Islam,” said Jalil Navarro, who donned a Mexican luchador mask while distributing Spanish-language Qur’ans in the masjid’s parking lot.

“But sometimes they step into a masjid and there is no people to serve them if they don’t speak English.”

Islam in Spanish, the organization that founded the mosque, was formed to fill that gap.

Founded in 2001 by Colombian American convert Jaime Fletcher, the organization produces Spanish-language programming and Islamic educational materials that are distributed throughout the Americas

There are more than 55 million people of Hispanic origin in the United States, and more than 3 million Muslims.

Estimates of the number of Latino Muslims in the US range from 30,000 to 300,000.

Merging Identities

The interior of Houston’s Centro Islámico is decorated with motifs that echo the striped arches of la Mezquita de Córdoba, a tenth-century mosque that is still standing in southern Spain.

“They’ve been able to really define very significant and strong Latino and Muslim identities, and to merge the two together,” said Ken Chitwood, a PhD student at the University of Florida who studies and writes about the growing Latino Muslim community.

“And they are very intentional about that.”

In his research, Chitwood has found that most Latino Muslims are converts from Christianity.

“Typically, there is some sort of spiritually wandering that occurs,” Chitwood said.

“There is some type of spiritual dissatisfaction with their present religious outlook, be that Catholic or Protestant or whatever. And then they go looking.”

“We have it in our roots,” said Navarro, who has been a Muslim for three years, one month, and ten days as of 10 May 2016 – he’s counting.

“Islam changed my life.”

Merging both Latino and Muslim identities, Latino Muslims do not see a contradiction between both identities.

“You can practice Islam and remain a Latino … We want Latinos to be proud of where they come from, to have a strong sense of identity for themselves,” Fletcher said

“They are doing the work of identity construction,” Chitwood said.

“They are imagining a common homeland for themselves, that is shared across Latino Muslims and is rooted in more traditional Islamic history. When you say ‘the Islamic world’, nobody thinks of Puerto Rico or Cuba.”

Magidel Morris, whose hijab was striped with the colors of Mexico’s flag: red, white, and green, is a living example on merged identities.

“We change our religion, but we don’t change our culture,” she said.

“We’re still Mexican.”