Islamic Society of Milwaukee’s new fitness and aquatics center opens Monday

Photo by Yaseen Najeeb

Hundreds of people toured the Islamic Society of Milwaukee’s new Salam Fitness & Aquatics Center, 8800 S. 102nd St., Franklin, last weekend during its open house. It opens for use Monday.

“For the first time ever in Milwaukee” and “one of the largest private gyms in the United States!” Southeastern Wisconsin’s Muslim community’s social media influencer “Shako Mako,” Mustafa Ghazai, of Greenfield, hyped the 54,000-square-foot facility ahead of the open house with drone footage and exterior shots. On Saturday, he posted an interior video.

“A strong ummah (community of believers) starts here,” proclaimed a banner over the entrance. Straight ahead, stood the registration desk, trimmed with strings of silver, blue and white balloons, where staff members welcomed visitors, explained membership plans and enrolled new members.

Photo by Sandra Whitehead

Friends greeted each other in the lobby, where vendors sold tasty shawarma, sweets and other Arabic fare, iced coffee and chai. Henna tattoo stations and merchants circled the track on the second floor, selling everything from jewelry and clothing to keffiyehs (Palestinian checkered scarfs). 

The spacious facility has private men’s and women’s workout areas, a lap pool, an activity pool and a large hot tub. It offers childcare and designated prayer rooms. Its management is currently developing exercise classes and programs for adults, teens and children, and hiring trainers, instructors, lifeguards and other staff.

Photo by Yaseen Najeeb

The facility’s workout equipment, fitness class spaces and swimming pools “is comparable to fitness clubs in the area,” said ISM Director of Facilities Josef Schaub, in an interview yesterday with the Wisconsin Muslim Journal. “We were very intentional about securing the equipment most people use. I think it will meet everyone’s expectations.

“But, it’s more than a gym,” Schaub said. “When most people go to a gym, they walk in, use the machines and go home. Our vision is for it to be a center for the ISM and Salam School communities.

“Here you’re able to go to a gym that aligns to your Islamic values,” he continued. “There’s a place to pray when prayer time rolls around. The locker room etiquette promoted the tinted glass around the women’s area so it is not visible from the men’s section, everything aligns to our Islamic beliefs. It offers a lot more peace of mind to families. 

“We want to make sure it’s a place where everyone, regardless of gender, is able to feel safe,” he added. “That’s something very important to us.”

Photo by Yaseen Najeeb

Membership is open to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee’s and the Salam School’s communities. The fee for individual students and teachers (at any school) is $35 per month. For other individuals, it is $55 per month. Membership for a family of four is $120, with $20 for each additional child. 

For more information about or to join Salam Fitness & Aquatics, call (414) 255-3111 or email salamfitness@ismonline.org.

Photo by Yaseen Najeeb

A dream come true

“I’m so happy; I’m so happy,” ISM president Salah Sarsour said over and over, while greeting visitors during Salam Fitness & Aquatics Center’s open house. In an interview with WMJ Wednesday, Sarsour explained why. 

“We are not in the fitness business,” he said.  “We choose to be in this business for the sake of the community. We choose to do this to protect our daughter and our sons, to give them the best services in the best facility.

“We decided as a shura (the governing board) to do this for the good of our community, although it is above our budget. We are counting on our community to support it, not just because it’s a nice facility, and it is beautiful, with all kinds of equipment and swimming pools, but because it is our community’s project to secure the best future for our children. I invite the entire ISM community to join us.

“ISM, as a mother organization, focuses on developing the services our community needs,” he continued. “We are very careful in how we choose projects and what we prioritize.

“We started with mosques. Now we have ISM main, ISM-Brookfield and ISM on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. Next, we built Salam School and expanded it with two large campuses to continue our mission of education.

“There is a big need, especially for our sisters and daughters to have a private area where they can practice sports and fitness. The big question was where?” he said. “This is not a new idea.”

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The new facility, with two large pools, is “a dream come true,” said Yasser Ahmad of Greenfield, the father of six now-grown daughters, including two prominent political organizers and spokespersons, Reema Ahmad and Halah Ahmad. The longtime ISM community member had long been an advocate for a swimming facility for young women. He had been a competitive swimmer at his university in Kuwait and was champion of the 100-meter breaststroke.

In an interview last week with WMJ, Ahmad recalled several times over the years when the idea of building a pool for the ISM community was raised. He and his wife, Judy Jent, made sure their daughters all learned to swim through recreation department and YMCA programs, but once they were teens, Islamic requirements for modesty, combined with the lack of women-only pools, limited their opportunities to swim.

“Our kids, especially daughters, don’t get to do stuff like this,” he said. “That’s not right. They were deprived. A hadith (teaching) from Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him, says to teach your kids swimming, archery and horseback riding. It’s in the tradition of our religion that we teach these things to our children, and it doesn’t mean only sons.”

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Like swimming, proposals to create more opportunities for women to exercise had been broached over the years. “Twenty-five years ago, we opened a small building on 27th Street,” Sarsour said. “We spent a few thousand dollars and put a few machines there. It served the community well for a few years” but was soon too small for the growing community.

“When we purchased the cinema property in Franklin in 2024 for Salam High School and saw that it shared the same parking lot with this facility, we started thinking about how to purchase it,” Sarsour said.

“What we have now is a dream,” Sarsour said. “That’s why I saw many sisters and many of our daughters crying when they saw the space—the machines, private areas, a pool with women-only days and a track just for them. I’m a father and grandfather in this community with so many great people. I’m so happy when I see myself and others in leadership doing the right service for our community.”

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Customizing the gym and aquatics center

When ISM purchased the 13-acre property for the Salam High School in 2024, a gym called Innovative Health and Fitness shared its parking lot. “It was more than 20 years old,” said ISM Director Othman Atta. “The HVAC and water heater were the originals. 

“It would be a big challenge for our community,” Atta said. “The old owner had 7,000 members and still ran into difficulty. But we decided to move forward. It has spaces to rent out for physical therapy or a salon, things like that. And we hope within a year to have 1,000 members.

“There’s nothing like it, especially for women,” Atta said. ISM purchased the property in Spring 2025. The previous owner leased the space until June 26, when ISM took over.

Renovations have included exterior doors, upgrades to the entrance, privacy film on windows in the women’s area, and general improvements to the appearance of the interior spaces. “We did it in the best kind of finishing, with quality,” Sarsour said. “We purchased fitness equipment from the previous owner but replaced whatever was needed with new equipment.” 

“The biggest expense going forward will be staffing,” Atta added.

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ISM hired two full-time, onsite operation managers: Ala Shehadeh to manage the women’s floor and Jamal Musleh to manage the men’s. Shehadeh has a bachelor’s degree in sports coaching and management at Hashemite University in Jordan and worked as a personal trainer in two Wisconsin gyms, in addition to working in sales for Spectrum. She was on her high school basketball and track and field teams.

In addition to the facility’s privacy features, the gym will implement a modest dress code, she said. “Women will be able to do what they want upstairs, as long as it’s not too much,” she explained. “That’s the whole point of having private areas for women—to be comfortable.”  Many women who usually wear hijabs (Islamic hair covering) want a place where they can take them off to exercise, she said.

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Yoga pants, tight-fitting exercise clothes, sleeveless tee-shirts—most everything women wear to be comfortable exercising is fine, she explained. If anything is “too much,” it will be addressed on a case-by-case basis, she said. “Downstairs you will have some type of cover-up.”

Women have excellent equipment for everything they need for exercise—weight machines and cardio equipment, she said. “We have equipment to strengthen every single muscle in the body. There are lots of options. Two racks. Free weights, female barbells, dumbbells, everything you want

“The main thing for me is having our own private women’s area,” Shehadeh said. “I’m a trainer. I’ve worked in gyms. I wasn’t too comfortable on the floor where guys are. To do squats or whatever freely, without having to worry about who’s watching—that’s gold right there. That’s what I love.”

Photo by Sandra Whitehead