Islam's presence on Hispaniola goes back further than most people expect: as early as 1503, the colonial governor Nicolás de Ovando complained about enslaved "Black ladinos" maintaining independent communities with Islamic ties, decades before the transatlantic slave trade reached its peak. The community practicing openly today, though, grew out of twentieth-century immigration from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Pakistan, organized through the Círculo Islámico, which built the Al-Noor Mosque near Santo Domingo's National Police Palace and now also runs a free medical clinic and pharmacy alongside its prayer hall.
Estimates of the community's size vary widely — from as few as 5,000 to as many as 40,000 depending on the source — partly because the Círculo Islámico counts not only Sunni Muslims but a sizeable Ibadi minority concentrated in the Cibao region in the country's interior, an uncommon school of Islam to find represented at scale anywhere in the Americas.
Santo Domingo's Sunni majority follows the Islamic Society of North America's angles, the default reference across the wider Caribbean and North American Muslim community, while the capital's coastal latitude of roughly 18.5°N keeps its Fajr and Isha twilight periods well defined throughout the year.
It depends who you ask: the Círculo Islámico's own estimate runs as high as 40,000, split between roughly 30,000 Sunni and 10,000 Ibadi Muslims, while other sources put the total closer to 5,000–7,000, reflecting how hard religious minorities are to count precisely.
Ibadi Islam is a small, historically North African and Omani-linked school rarely found in the Americas, yet the Círculo Islámico describes it as the fastest-growing Islamic denomination in the Cibao valley in the country's interior.
Beyond serving as the capital's main site for daily and Friday prayers, the mosque complex built by the Círculo Islámico also runs a free pharmacy and medical consultation service for the surrounding community.
Yes — records from as early as 1503 show colonial authorities complaining about enslaved people with Islamic cultural ties forming independent communities, long before the later waves of Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian immigration that shaped today's Muslim population.