The Islamic Center of Naperville, ICN, is part of a large suburban area in the Chicagoland that includes not just Naperville but, Naperville, Aurora, and all the surrounding cities, which include parts of Plainfield. So many of these cities don’t have adequate Islamic facilities and they look to ICN to provide them with all the services. ICN has seen strong growth in its community, as we have almost 20 percent growth over the last few years in our Muslim community and that is really a testament to how the ICN has been welcoming to all Muslim brothers and sisters from many different walks of life. The community has grown to such a level where we have multiple Jumma salah at 75th at Ogden and they’re full. In sha ALLAH the new 248 project, Masjid Al-Nur, will give us an opportunity to accommodate a lot more people and potentially relieve the burden from the other centers.

The story of ICN begins in the late 80s when there were community members that were gathering at houses to pray Salah together. By 1991, Alhamdulillah, we had the opportunity to purchase the Olesen property and at the time we would get approximately 500 people on our busy occasions. Since the community has grown exponentially in the last 19 years, we had the opportunity to purchase the Ogden property at around 2007-2008. At the time of purchase, that property was a church, however we were able to repurpose it afterwards for our Islamic needs.

During that time, we had the opportunity to purchase the 248 property. It has always been one of our goals to have our own center built from the ground up and Alhamdulillah ICN was able to acquire a piece of land almost 13 ½ acres in South Naperville. The land was acquired through community financing and alhamdulillah with that we’ve now been able to get to the actual phases of building the property which we call Masjid Al-Nur.

The 248 property, Masjid Al-Nur, will be built in five different phases and currently we are embarking on the first phase of that project. The first phase of the project will be building a mosque, and the mosque will have three levels, a basement, a first floor and a second floor. The first floor will have a board room, the imams’ offices, as well as a large prayer area with two-level prayer space. The second level will have a women’s prayer space, women’s own multi-purpose room, mothers’ room as well as a special needs room so this way the mosque can cater for the entire community. We have consulted different resources and people’s perspectives in the ICN community to get their input on what is needed or useful to have in the new property and in sha ALLAH we will have their needs met. Our second phase will be building a school, the third phase will be building gymnasium, the fourth phase will be building a multi-purpose Hall, and then lastly our fifth phase will be an expansion of the first phase mosque facilities. This plan is for the many years to come in sha ALLAH As a matter or fact, there maybe up to 10 years between each phase.