‘Bienvenida a la gran familia de Islam’
After the call to prayer and the sermon in three languages, after members of the Southwest Houston mosque hailed one another with the traditional greeting of Assalam Alaikum and the sort of warm embraces familiar to Latino gatherings, the imam beckoned to the new convert.
Delmi Realegeño, a newly-arrived immigrant from El Salvador, walked to the center of the musalla, the prayer room, and spoke her shahada – the Muslim testimony of faith.
The 51-year-old housekeeper arrived in this country just five months ago and does not yet speak English, so she repeated the words in her native tongue, led by Imam Abdurahman Vega, who is from Colombia.
“I bear witness that there is no god except Allah. And I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
Then Realegeño repeated her profession in faltering Arabic – a language she is working to master. With that, Realegeño, who first began to research Islam after the 9/11 attacks, was ushered into a new faith.
“Bienvenida a la gran familia de Islam,” Vega said, as women wearing hijabs in lemon yellow, cobalt blue, deep black and bright floral patterns wrapped Realegeño in a cocoon of hugs and congratulations.
Welcome to the great family of Islam.
It was a welcome, as well, into a family within that family – into the ranks of the approximately 250,000 Latino Muslims in the United States, the fastest-growing segment of Islam in this country, and into the shelter of the Centro Islamico, believed to be the nation’s only Spanish-speaking mosque.
Here, worshippers with roots in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and other Latin American countries commune over potluck dinners of empanadas, arroz con gandules and halal tamales. They celebrate Cinco de Mayo and Ramadan. They pray in Arabic, Spanish and English.
“It’s a wonderful sight to see,” said Isa Parada, Centro Islamico’s educational director and first full-time imam. “That’s how you break down stereotypes and misunderstanding.
And, in a time of fractured politics and heated rhetoric, they serve as a much-needed bridge between communities often separated by suspicion and hostility.