New Suffolk mosque to break ground, serving growing Muslim community

A 34,000-square-foot mosque broke ground in Shirley, marking one of Suffolk County’s largest new faith projects and a visible sign that Long Island’s Muslim community has outgrown older spaces. The Islamic Center of Mastic-Shirley said the building is meant to serve about 400 members drawn from Shirley, Mastic, Mastic Beach, Patchogue, Bellport, Moriches, Manorville and East Moriches.

The new mosque is expected to be the second-largest on Long Island, a scale that reflects how much the region’s Muslim population has changed in a generation. James Abdul-Lateef Poulos said that when he began studying Islam in the mid-1980s, there were only four mosques on Long Island; today, he said, there are about 40. Newsday said the project is being driven in part by a younger generation of Muslims on the island, a community it put at about 100,000 people.

The growth is not limited to Shirley. Newsday said several new mosques are going up in Suffolk County, including in Dix Hills, Wyandanch, Mount Sinai and Medford-Coram. In Melville, the Islamic Center of Melville says it was established in October 2000 with the purchase of 1.3 acres, then added another acre next door, and now has a new center in process. Together, those projects point to a Muslim population that has moved from scattered prayer spaces toward larger, more permanent institutions across the county.

The Shirley project also fits into Suffolk’s broader civic and planning landscape. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Suffolk County’s population at 1,546,090 as of July 1, 2025, a scale that helps explain why a single religious campus can carry countywide significance. A building that large will affect traffic patterns, parking, neighborhood circulation and the daily routines of families who travel in from across the South Shore and central Suffolk for worship and community events.

The land-use history around Muslim institutions on Long Island gives the Shirley groundbreaking added weight. U.S. Department of Justice materials say Muslims on Long Island have worshipped at a mosque in Bethpage since 1998 and needed more space for prayer, religious education, ritual washing and religious counseling, a conflict that became a federal RLUIPA case involving the Town of Oyster Bay. In that context, the Shirley mosque is more than another construction project. It is another marker that Suffolk’s religious map is changing for good, with Muslim families building institutions large enough to endure.