Zaytuna College

Thanks to John Hancock for calling my attention to the first accredited Muslim college in the United States:

http://goodgazette.blogspot.com/2015/03/zaytuna-college.html

It’s located in Berkeley, California.

I welcome this newly accredited school — I see it as an important addition to the richness and diversity of American higher education (note my somewhat related post from earlier today), and think that American Islam will profit from American-trained imams and muftis — and I wish its leadership, faculty, and students all the best.

I expect that the new college has taken its name in homage to the great Al-Zaytuna Mosque in Tunisia, which was founded somewhere around AD 703 and which is one of the ornaments of the intellectual history of Islam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Zaytuna_Mosque