ARAB NEWS: WASHINGTON: The long history of Islamic scholarship has just gotten a novel addition: a college in California that seeks to educate Muslim leaders.
Zaytuna College held its inaugural classes Aug. 24 and aims to become America's first four-year, accredited, Islamic institution of higher learning.
Founded by three Muslim-American scholars, Zaytuna focuses on renewing Islam's intellectual tradition while placing it in the context of American society.
"As the years pass, the founding of Zaytuna College will prove to be a milestone in bringing about both a sounder understanding of Islam and better relations between Muslims and members of other faith communities here in the United States - God willing," founder Zaid Shakir said in a news release marking the college's opening.
Dustin Craun, a student from Colorado in Zaytuna's first class, said the college will help Muslims navigate their role in the United States.
"I think that we, as Muslims in America, have to figure out how to learn what Islam is for us as Americans, and that is part of what this institution is about," Craun said. The college is "about being standard-bearers for the Muslims in this country."
Craun and the 14 other students in Zaytuna's initial class can choose from two majors: Islamic law and theology or Arabic. The school's founders expect some of them to become leaders of their communities as imams or in other capacities. Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that would be an important achievement because some foreign-born imams do not understand American culture and society.
"Importing works great for carpets. It doesn't work particularly great for imams in an American context, where they might need to know just as much about marital counseling," Safi said. Future Muslim religious leaders in America "are going to have to be completely up on the world of Facebook and [teenage singer] Justin Bieber, just as they are on the classical aspects of Islamic law."
Other U.S. colleges offer courses in Islamic studies, but Hatem Bazian, the academic affairs chair and a co-founder of Zaytuna, said the fledgling college takes another approach.
"At institutions that teach about Islam, it is teaching from the outside looking in, and often it is from a deconstructing approach," Bazian said. "We will be looking at Islam from within and with a sense of not to seek to deconstruct, but how to take that valuable core of the tradition and build upon it." >>> M. Scott Bortot | Saturday, August 28, 2010
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES: America's first Muslim College opens in Berkeley >>> IB Times Staff Reporter | August 26, 2010
* One would have to be naïve to believe this!
