CAIR Georgia encouraged Atlanta Muslims to support Zaytuna College during a fundraising banquet at the Omni Hotel on April 9th. Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, co-founder of the first accredited Muslim college in the United States, headlined the event.
“It is truly difficult to overstate the significance of Zaytuna College to the Muslim American experiment,” said CAIR Georgia Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell. “Over the past three decades, Muslim Americans have made incredibly strides forward, building mosques in every state, engaging in community service, forming political organizations, and opening primary schools across the nation. But Zaytuna College, the first accredited college in the United States of America, is a remarkable sign of progress for all Muslims.”
Zaytuna College brings Muslim-Americans up to speed with other minorities who founded specializes schools catering to their youth, like Brandeis University, Catholic University and historically black colleges like Morehouse and Spelman.
“These schools are important because they give students time to both study and strengthen their internal ethnic, cultural or religious identity before using the best teachings of that identity to go out and improve the world around them,” Mitchell said. “Students at Zaytuna study a thousand years of Islamic tradition, develop a command of the Arabic language, immerse themselves in Islamic sciences, all while receiving the traditional benefits of a classic liberal arts education, studying everything from history to philosophy to mathematics and astronomy.”
Graduates of Zaytuna College can also play an important role in reshaping public opinion about Muslims, Mitchell said.
The April 9th banquest raised well over $100,000 for Zaytuna College, alhamdulillah.