Free Republic

Zaytuna College, which plans to be the first accredited Muslim college in the United States, is set to open next fall in Berkeley, California. The college has been hailed as a victory for moderate Islam, a place to promote religious understanding by "blending traditional Islam and American culture and establishing a permanent place for the religion in American society," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. But Zaytuna College may not be as moderate as it seems--or moderate at all. The college's founders, Hamza Yusuf Hanson and Zaid Shakir, are similarly lauded as even-keeled Muslims who, according to the Chronicle,...

Who would imagine that a convert to Islam calling himself Hamza Yusuf Hanson, living in the San Francisco Bay Area and in his late ‘40s, would be listed as number 38 among the "Top 50 Muslims in the World" by a leading government body in Jordan? Or that the same Hanson would have announced recently, in grandiose terms, the prospective launch of an American Islamic institution of higher education to be called Zaytuna College, and aimed at becoming a "Muslim Georgetown" in academic prestige? "Shaykh Hamza," as he prefers to be known, achieved so high a rank among the "Top...