In the late ’60s and early ’70s, New York was alive with revolutionary spirit. Coming off the heels of the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests, the decolonial mission of the Third World movement was making itself felt inside major U.S. cities, where political organizations like the Black Panther Party and Young Lords Party were organizing urgently for the self-determination of colonized peoples living within the U.S.
At the tail end of the ’60s, the Young Lords set up their office in New York’s Spanish Harlem. Organizing explicitly under the banner of anti-imperialism, the Young Lords addressed the systematic neglect of Spanish Harlem’s living conditions and socioeconomic dispossession of Nuyoricans through survival programs and daring direct actions, like the 1970 Lincoln Hospital occupation.
Coming of age in these radical heydays, four young members of the Young Lords Party — Mark “Abdus Salaam” Ortiz, John “Yahya Abdul-Latif” Figueroa, Freddie “Ibrahim” González and Ramon “Umar Abdur Rahim” Ocasio — found themselves at a crossroads in their revolutionary path. They were in search of a spiritual grounding for their political struggle.
After a chance encounter with Abdullahi Rodriguez — one of the first Puerto Rican converts to Islam — in 1975, the quartet began to explore Islam, each eventually converting. In 1987, they came together to establish the Alianza Islámica.
Rooted in the same socialist, internationalist principles of the Young Lords, Alianza Islámica was the largest Latino Muslim organization in the U.S., which focused on melding faith and culture as tools to organize Latines and Muslims and promote community self-development. Alianza established the first Spanish-speaking mosque in New York City; organized GED and ESL programs; facilitated public health, nutrition and martial arts workshops; and made waves as the first Islamic organization to perform the ritual washing of Muslims who died of AIDS, as well as the first to start a recovery group for former addicts and converts to Islam.
“One Ummah, One Barrio,” curated by Maia Villalba and currently on view at El Barrio’s Artspace PS109, stages archival materials and community art submissions to explore the legacy of this revolutionary Muslim Nuyorican history. Spanning nearly 40 years of Latine Muslim history, Villalba invites viewers to consider how faith and culture can be anchoring points in guiding revolutionary struggle.
“The ‘One Ummah, One Barrio’ name speaks to the inherent neighborly character and foundation upon which Alianza was built upon, in that you love for your brother when you love for yourself,” Villalba said. “It signifies the common united struggle against U.S. imperialism, racism, colorism, Islamophobia…the title is a love letter to the whole ummah, Muslim and non-Muslim, who see a common united struggle in the collective fight for liberation.”
A call for unity is at the heart of Alianza Islámica’s religious and organizing practices, and makes itself present in the exhibit’s opening pieces. As visitors descend the stairs leading into PS109’s exhibition space, they’re first greeted with two parallel group portraits capturing the diversity of the Muslim community. On the right is a blown-up scan of Newsweek’s July 2007 cover, “Special Report: Islam in America,” which features founding member of Alianza Islámica, Ibrahim González. To its left hangs a 2026 restaging of the image shot by 1495, a New York-based production company.
The images capture a community that is diverse, yet united by a singular faith. The collectivity depicted in these images, however, would not have been possible without a history of struggle undertaken by groups like the Alianza. As they were first emerging as a Latino Muslim organization, they had to advocate for recognition from the Muslim and Puerto Rican communities, which struggled to accept the mixing of their cultures.
“Alianza Islámica was truly at the frontier of building a new Islamic culture, in that they were first turned away from their local mosques and told, ‘you can’t speak Spanish here.’ And they were like, why can’t I express my love for Allah through the tongue that I was taught to know and to love and to communicate in?” Villalba recounted. “And I think that they expressed a very unique blending of Puerto Rican, New Yorkian, and Islamic faith and culture in the beautiful, vibrant tapestry of the urban cityscape, with the deeply rooted faith they lead with in every sphere of life that they enter.”
Downstairs, a long wall filled with archival documents, photographs and newspaper clippings — taken from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies’ Ibrahim González Papers collection — vividly charts Alianza Islámica’s origin story and contributions to developing Muslim Nuyorican culture. Split into five parts, the exhibit first tells the story of Alianza Islámica its revolutionary origins, the obstacles it faced in establishing itself as a legitimate group, the cross-cultural solidarity it insisted upon, and the culture and infrastructure it created for Latine Muslims before dissolving in 2005. The last part moves into the present era, as works created by Latine Muslim New Yorkers fill the other walls of the gallery room.
In the corner of the gallery sits Silla de Al-Andalus (2026), knit and designed by Frey Ranaldo. In the early stages of planning “One Ummah, One Barrio,” Villalba asked Ranaldo, a knitwear designer and childhood friend of hers, to reimagine the Monobloc chair — a staple of the cookouts she grew up on. Ranaldo then wrapped the chair in an orange and blue fabric — a nod to the Islamic architecture of Andalusia — which he designed as an ode to Palestinian tatreez. The chair rests atop a Tunisian prayer mat gifted to Villalba from a friend of hers.
“Alianza Islámica drew a lot of inspiration from the Reclaimando Nuestra Herencia Islamica; Reclaiming Our Islamic Heritage. That heritage that they’re speaking to is from Andalusia,” Villalba said. “They drew a lot of strength from that community way back when, when people were like, you’re not Boriqua, you’re also not Muslim, you’re also not this and that. And they’re like, well, no, we can draw a history all the way to Andalusia, that we’ve existed and we’ve been here.”
The exhibit features poetry, photography, illustrations, mixed media works, henna art, mosaic tile work, and textile art, each of which remixes elements from Latine and Muslim cultures. Arabic calligraphy and beadwork is stiched into a Yankees cap by Iman Abdul-Rassoul, who brings her Puerto Rican and Lebanese ancestry into symbols of New York culture. Accompanying Abdul-Rassoul’s piece are two kufis crocheted by Shane Araujo, which depict the Puerto Rican and Cuban flags.
“I think…[of] one of my favorite quotes by Toni Cade Bambara, who says ‘the role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible,’” Villalba said. “The exhibition is as much an invitation to revolutionary struggle. To pick up that pen, to pick up that paintbrush, to start that project that that you’ve been procrastinating on, and to start making something irresistible for the sake of revolution.”
Two works are featured from the visual architect of Alianza Islámica, Jorge “Fabel” Pabon. The first is a pair of painted machetes — a symbol of anti-colonial Puerto Rican struggle — which act as a recreation of a pair once touted by Pabon while he was in the Alianza. Hanging from the ceiling above is a painted “shahada umbrella” crafted specifically for the exhibition. Pabon’s signature graffiti lettering style served as the inspiration for a banner co-created by Villalba and Justin Romero, which reads, “One Ummah, One Barrio.”
For Villalba, a Chinese-Cuban New Yorker who’s been organizing across the city since their youth, the story of the Alianza Islámica came to them at a time when they were at a similar spiritual crossroads in their path. An undergraduate student at NYU at the time, Villalba was active in organizing with the student pro-Palestine movement, and asking herself the same questions about how to make a revolutionary movement that lasts. As she personally grew interested in converting to Islam and grounding her struggle in a greater faith, a professor shared the story of the Alianza Islámica with her.
“It just felt like I was reading a story of my own ancestors. It felt like a story, a legacy that I was the new generation of, and that was really exciting to me because it felt like I had a starting point,” Villalba said. “I had an entry point into understanding how to build revolutionary struggle from a point of faith.”
In representing the history of the organization, Villalba encourages visitors to take seriously the lessons that histories of revolutionary Islamic organizing can offer to grassroots political movements.
“We are in a moment of transition, of thinking about how to create long-lasting movements that are built on strength and love and not fear. And I think Alianza Islámica is a love letter to the people,” Villalba said. “Faith is a tool…[Muslims and non-Muslims] can learn from the Islamic example because at its root is humility, is belief in something bigger than yourself. And what is resistance, and what is fighting for liberation, other than believing in a better world than this.”
