HAMZA YUSUF AND ZAYTUNA COLLEGE

 

Biography of hamza yusuf

Hamza Yusuf serves as president of Zaytuna College. In addition to teaching several subjects in Zaytuna’s curriculum, he has authored several encyclopedia entries, academic papers, and articles on Muslim bioethics, legal theory, abortion, and many other topics. His books and translations include The Content of Character: Ethical Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad; The Prayer of the Oppressed; The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi, Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms, and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart; and Caesarean Moon Births: Calculations, Moon Sighting, and the Prophetic Way. He is a member of the Supreme Fatwa Counsel serving under his mentor, Shaykh Abdallah b. Bayyah, and serves as vice president for the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, an international initiative which seeks to address the root causes that can lead to radicalism and militancy. He holds licentia docendi in several Islamic subjects, a BA in Religious Studies, and a PhD in North and West African intellectual history.

A Muslim College Mixes Subjects to Achieve an American Feel

The traditional curriculum at Zaytuna College seeks to orient students like Madeeha Gohar, left, toward the United States.Credit...Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times

BERKELEY, Calif. — I was a bit late for my meeting last week with 19-year-old Mussab Abouabdalla, who I hoped would explain to me why anyone would attend Zaytuna College, an unaccredited three-year-old Muslim institution with about 30 students and not even 10 professors. I found Mr. Abouabdalla at Caffe Strada. He had arranged his books on the table as if to answer my question.

By his right hand, on a neat stack, was the Koran, the Muslim holy book. Beneath it was the quadrivium, the Renaissance curriculum, comprising arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. And at the bottom was the trivium, comprising grammar, logic and rhetoric, traditionally taught before the quadrivium. These seven arts were once the basis of a European education, and they have recently become popular with some Christian home-schoolers.

Now, at Zaytuna College, the Greeks, the scholastics and the whole Western tradition are being taught alongside the Koran.

“I believe the liberal arts are key to understanding Islam,” Mr. Abouabdalla said, as he began to sip his tea. Reading scripture alone, he suggested, could lead to closed-mindedness, fear, violence. “We need to understand our tradition trans-historically. When someone makes a lampooning of the Prophet Muhammad, why do we react with violence? Why don’t we react with art and literature?”