Don't Believe the Hype about Zaytuna College

Don’t Believe the Hype about Zaytuna College

Hatem Bazian

Despite the media’s enthusiasm over the recent news that Zaytuna College in Berkeley has been accredited, the size and quality of the school have been greatly exaggerated. Writing for Campus Watch, Stephen Schwartz reveals the truth behind the story: a Muslim college founded by a trio of Islamists, including UC Berkeley’s Hatem Bazian, with a small footprint but big friends in the press and academe. Schwartz’s article appears today at American Thinker:

The accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) of tiny Zaytuna College, an Islamist project with seventeen professors and fifty students in Berkeley, California that has been called “America’s first Muslim liberal arts college,” has been lauded -- and misrepresented -- in the mainstream press. A Religion News Service article reprinted in the Washington Postand elsewhere, including the Christian Century, described Zaytuna as “A college that requires the study of both Wordsworth and the Quran for graduation... now the first fully accredited Islamic university in America.”

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Winfield Myers

Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.