Islamic Society of Greater Houston

The Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH) is a system of mosques in Greater Houston. It is headquartered at the Eastside Main Center in Upper Kirby in Houston.

As of 1990 the ISGH served as the main Sunni mosque system in Houston, As of 2000, most Sunni mosques are a part of the ISGH. As of 2007 the ISGH included 17 mosques and had both Sunni and Shia members. As of that year, its president was Rodwan Saleh, a Sunni. In 2007 Saleh stated that he estimated that 15% of the members were Shia. As 1990, the Iranian Shia in Houston primarily used the ISGH mosques for occasional needs including marriages and funerals. As of that year, the ISGH had multiple branches in Houston. As of 2012, it is the largest Islamic community organization in Greater Houston. The current president of ISGH is M.J. Khan and the vice president is Mohammad Amin Moola.

In 1969 several families who used a house in the Texas Medical Center as their place of worship started the ISGH.

In the 1970s a three bedroom house in northern Houston was the only mosque in the city, and it served 30 families. Those families pooled funds and purchased a 1.5-acre (0.61 ha) plot of land in late 1980 so a mosque could be built there; the plot was near two major arteries. At first the mosque was in a 1,500-square-foot (140 m²), three bedroom double-wide trailer, purchased for $43,000 ($124988.29 when accounting for inflation). Five families donated money to pay for the down payment, with each family paying $1,500 ($4360.06 when accounting for inflation). Public fundraising dinners and anonymous donations provided the funds for the construction of the permanent Al-Noor mosque.

Before the mid-1980s the religious leaders of mosques and the ISGH administration had separate roles: the leaders of mosques administered the teaching of Islam, the leading of prayers, and other religious matters while the board of directors of the ISGH focused on administrative affairs such as the construction of new mosques and financing; this resulted in parallel power structures. As new mosques came in, the ISGH believed that having huffaz with divergent points of view disrupted the unity in the community, and the organization saw new huffaz as threats to their own power. A hafiz could influence his members to vote and affect policies in the entire ISGH system. In the mid-1980s the ISGH leadership created the Ulama community to unify the leadership and consolidate its power.

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