Zaytuna institute islam muslims

From Islamophobia to Conversion

‘‘I’m an American and I’m a Muslim and those things can go together,’’ says Nirav Bhardwaj, a 25-year-old sophomore at Zaytuna. ‘‘Unfortunately, people think being Muslim means hiding in a little pocket. That’s not what it’s about.’’

Bhardwaj is a convert to Islam. He was raised Hindu. Both of his parents are from Rajasthan in northern India.

Bhardwaj says he was ‘‘Islamaphobic’’ in college. But after graduating from University of California, Irvine, with a degree in business administration, he got what he describes as his ‘‘dream job,’’ working for a major league baseball team doing statistics for scouting and player development. While traveling with the team, he became disillusioned. ‘‘We had players who were married,’’ he says, ‘‘and that just went out the window when they were out at the clubs. It was all about seeking immediate satisfaction. I started asking myself, ‘What are you doing? What benefit does baseball provide society anyway? What is the purpose of life?’’’

Around that time, a Muslim friend shared some Islamic lectures with Bhardwaj. ‘‘I opened a Koran and started reading it, and it worked,’’ he says. Bhardwaj decided to travel in the Muslim world and quit his job. He and his friend went to Egypt. It was there that Bhardwaj converted, while studying with a local sheik in 6th of October City outside Cairo.

There was tension when he returned home. ‘‘I don’t think I’ve ever made my mom cry except for two times,’’ he says, ‘‘and one of those times was when I told her I converted.’’

Bhardwaj says his mother has become supportive after seeing how he has found his place at Zaytuna. B

On November 15, 2010, the morning I first visited Hamza Yusuf’s theology class at Zaytuna College, the nation’s first Muslim school of liberal arts, the room was overstuffed, even bursting, a fact made all the more obvious by some unseasonable fall temperatures.

The school had opened its doors late the previous August, after years of planning by its founders, Sheikh Hamza, Imam Zaid Shakir, and Hatem Bazian. A pilot seminary program run by Imam Zaid had paved the way, after a move from Hayward, California, to Berkeley, for the formation of a college—funded largely by donations from a growing number of American Muslims who trust and love these scholars. Knowing, in their words, that “Islam has never become rooted in a particular land until that land began producing its own religious scholars,” Zaytuna’s mission was to be the academic home for Islam in the United States, a place where, in the words of Imam Zaid, the text of the Koran could meet the context of American culture.

And now, the fifteen students in the inaugural class—nine women, six men—were all there in Hamza’s classroom seeing to that challenge. The school year was well underway. Others standing against the walls included members of Zaytuna’s staff: the administrator, Sadaf Khan; an editor I’d recently met, Najeeb; even the vice-president of operations, Omar Nawaz, whom the students had begun to refer to as “boss man.” They all sometimes would take advantage of their closeness to Sheikh Hamza by auditing the class, as it were. The rest of what filled the room, which is not huge, mind you, one could call enthusiasm, and a good portion of it was the sheikh’s. Many of the students still actually seemed a little stunned, or starstruck.

During a previous visit in October, around the time the college’s phones arrived, I’d caught Hamza rushing from his car through the entryway of the college on his way to the same class, the only one h

Professor Mahan Mirza looks out over his classroom, pausing from his lecture to gaze at the row of attentive faces stretched before him. The class is Freshman Rhetoric, and the students have just finished discussing the merits of a speech by president Ronald Reagan. Time is up, and people are already softly packing away their notebooks into book bags, barely listening as the professor ticks off the homework assignment for the next session — another speech, this time by Ted Kennedy.

The scene would probably feel commonplace to any American college student who has waited eagerly for a professor to end a lesson. But what Mirza does next is something altogether different: before dismissing the class, he closes his eyes, bows his head, and recites an Islamic prayer in Arabic.

All the students stop for a moment, then bow their heads solemnly as well — because every one of them is Muslim.

There are a few hints that this may not be an average college classroom, of course. The small lecture hall is split down the middle between men and women, a firm gender separation accented by flashes of Islamic tradition: some of the men wear Muslim garb and head coverings, and most women are wrapped in brightly colored hijabs. But a few wear their hair exposed and flowing, and a majority of the men are clad in hoodies, t-shirts, and the occasional Steelers jacket. What’s more, the dynamics are roughly the same as you would find in any co-ed college classroom, albeit with an unusually high level of gender parity: men and women spoke roughly equal time over the course of Mirza’s lecture, never once interrupting each other.

Such is the uncommon atmosphere of Zaytuna College, America’s first — and currently, only — accredited Muslim college, located in Berkeley, California. Founded in 2009, the tiny but growing school touts itself as singularly focused on fusing the western

Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, California

Zaytuna College is a privateliberal arts college in Berkeley, California and is the first accredited Muslim undergraduate college in the United States. It was built on the foundation of an educational institute, founded in 1996 by Hamza Yusuf and Hesham Alalusi as Zaytuna Institute. It formally changed its name to Zaytuna College in 2009 after the graduation of its first seminary class.

Zaytuna College seeks to integrate the institutions of the American liberal arts college and traditional Islamic education, drawing on their shared roots in the classical liberal arts. In the academic year 2014–2015, Zaytuna College had an undergraduate student body of about fifty students, most of whom lived on campus.

Zaytuna College offers a BA in Liberal Arts & Islamic Studies and an MA in Islamic Texts. Courses range from Arabic grammar and Islamic jurisprudence, to American history and ancient literature.

History

In 1996, Zaytuna Institute was founded by Hamza Yusuf and Hesham Alalusi and incorporated in California as a non-profit educational institute.

They named it after the olive tree (Ar: زيتونة zaytūnah), a plant that is mentioned in the Qur'an for its benefit. Based in Hayward, the institute's mandate was to teach courses on Arabic and Islamic Studies as well as to engage in community service and outreach. These part-time courses were popular both locally and in recorded form, but there was demand for a full-time option. In 2004, Zaid Shakir and other instructors conducted a four-year pilot seminary project from which five students graduated. With this experience, Zaytuna considered a move to Berkeley to collaborate with established institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union.

Following th