IT BEGINS: First Muslim College Opens In U.S.

America is asleep at the wheel....

BERKELEY -- The Quran is the primary textbook at this city's newest institution of higher learning.

Zaytuna College will open today to its first class of 15 students, who will strive to become the first graduates of a Muslim four-year, liberal-arts college in the United States. The school, which hopes to enroll 2,000 students a decade from now, is seeking accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the same organization that licenses schools such as UC Berkeley and Saint Mary's College.

The endeavor will be a challenge for Zaytuna's three founders, who started down this path with the 1996 opening of a Hayward institute to teach Islam. New nonprofit liberal-arts colleges are rare, and Zaytuna's leaders will be counting on fellow Muslims to sustain the school.

"The Muslim community in the United States is growing," said co-founder Hatem Bazian, who teaches at UC Berkeley, Saint Mary's College in Moraga and Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union. "As such, it is increasingly needing an institution of higher learning.

"We feel that the community we are in will be able to provide the resources" needed to succeed, he said.