Bosnian Educational & Cultural Center of America

Serving the Bosnian American community of greater Chicago from its home in Evanston along Illinois' Lake Michigan shore, the Bosnian Educational and Cultural Center of America provides mosque, school, and community functions for a population whose roots reach back to the Muslim communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the western Balkans. Bosnian Muslims, traditionally known as Bosniaks, embraced Islam during the Ottoman period beginning in the fifteenth century and developed a distinctive European Muslim culture expressed through the region's beautiful stone mosques, such as the Gazi Husrev beg of Sarajevo and the Ferhadija of Banja Luka, and through a rich literary and devotional heritage in Bosnian, Arabic, and Ottoman Turkish. The genocide of the 1990s, culminating in the massacre at Srebrenica, brought waves of Bosnian refugees to the United States, where Chicago became one of the largest Bosnian American settlements alongside Saint Louis and New York. Evanston itself is a university town immediately north of Chicago, home to Northwestern University and characterised by tree lined streets, historic architecture, and a diverse population. The Bosnian centre adapts or purpose builds its facilities to serve its congregation, typically including a prayer hall with a qiblah wall facing southeast towards Makkah, classrooms for children's Bosnian language and Quranic instruction, a hall for social gatherings, a kitchen for preparing traditional Bosnian dishes, and offices for the imam and administrative staff. Calligraphic panels adorn the walls reproducing verses from Surah Al e Imran and the Ayat al Kursi, and photographs of the Gazi Husrev beg mosque and the Ottoman era Sarajevo often grace the community spaces as reminders of the homeland. The five daily prayers are observed, Jumu'ah draws a substantial congregation of Bosniak families, and the blessed month of Ramadan brings nightly taraweeh with iftar featuring cevapi, burek, and baklava, dishes familiar to every Bosnian. The two Eid congregations, known in Bosnian as Ramazanski Bajram and Kurban Bajram, gather the community in festive attire followed by traditional bajram visits exchanging greetings and sweets. Bosniak families gathering here after the Srebrenica remembrance each July ensure that their Chicago rooted children grow up knowing every chapter of the homeland's story.