• About
    LeConte-Menu-sm-300.jpg

    In 2009, Zaytuna College was founded in Berkeley, California, with a mission that called for grounding students in the Islamic scholarly tradition as well as in the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society.

  • Academics
    student-book-writing-small.jpg

    As a Muslim liberal arts college in the West, Zaytuna offers a curriculum that provides its students with a foundation in the intellectual heritage of two major world civilizations: the Islamic and the Western.

  • Admissions & Aid
    teacher-students-sisters-small.jpg

    Our mission is to educate students to become morally, intellectually, and spiritually accomplished individuals ready to contribute to our contemporary world in ways that are proportionate to their gifts and to the needs of human society.

  • Campus Life
    sisters-looking-out-window-small.jpg

    Zaytuna’s campus is on Holy Hill and students enter the College as part of a cohort, a community of learners that travel together through the curriculum.

About Zaytuna College

Zaytuna_Seal_Burgandy.png

Our Mission

Zaytuna College aims to educate and prepare morally committed professional, intellectual, and spiritual leaders who are grounded in the Islamic scholarly tradition and conversant with the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society.

In 2009, Zaytuna College was established in Berkeley, California, on the foundation of a thriving community committed to studying the Muslim classics. Combining this vigor of learning with the best practices in academia, the College opened its doors with a mission to produce God-conscious learners who are conversant in both past and present, through a traditional liberal arts education.

Liberal arts, in its original sense, meant a rigorous study of learning skills (trivium) and specific subjects (quadrivium). The same structure characterizes the traditional education of the Muslims–indeed, liberal arts education came to Christendom from Islam, as the late George Makdisi demonstrated in his seminal work, The Rise of Colleges. By understanding grammar, rhetoric, and logic, a student is equipped with the tools to approach any discipline. 
 
Zaytuna College seeks to recapture this tradition through both the BA and MA programs, with a curriculum that draws both on the Muslim classics and on the Euro-American classical tradition that grew from and alongside it. Its aim is to cultivate young men and women committed to truth, goodness, and beauty, in the obedience of our Creator and service to His creation. 

Student Achievements

Accreditation

Employment

The Zaytuna College Campus

In summer 2015, Zaytuna completed its move to the neighborhood of Holy Hill, a multi-faith academic community in Berkeley, California, where the College owns three buildings, collectively known as the lower campus.

Zaytuna’s lower campus is adjacent to one of the premier research universities in the world, the University of California, Berkeley. Holy Hill is also home to the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), the largest consortium of seminaries and academic centers for the study of religion in the nation.

This community gives Zaytuna’s students and faculty an unparalleled opportunity to engage inside and outside the classroom with educational communities from different faith traditions.

The lower campus comprises three buildings:

2401 Le Conte Avenue (Zaytuna Bookstore, the Sanctuary, and administrative offices)
2479 Le Conte Avenue (student apartments)
1712 Euclid Avenue (male students' dormitory)

Zaytuna’s second location, the upper campus, is a nine-acre property in the Berkeley Hills at 2770 Marin Avenue, consisting of eight buildings (including a women’s dormitory, classrooms, permaculture garden, and administrative offices) and a stunningly beautiful natural environment conducive to serious study.

"The greatest, truest, and only permanent good bestowed upon humanity is that of true knowledge. From such knowledge, all other goods flow, even faith. And this is why, at Zaytuna College, we have adorned our seal with the prayer Qul Rabbi zidnī ‘ilman (“Say: O Lord, increase me in knowledge”).

For it is our knowledge of the world alone that enables us to discern a creator; hence true knowledge will always lead to true faith. The greatest Qur’ānic commandment is “Know that there is no god but the One True God.” It is knowledge alone—and most importantly, knowledge of God—that differentiates us from beasts, making us unique among God’s glorious creation."

– The Qur’anic quotation is from sūrah Tā Hā, verse 114.

 

What Our Supporters Say

Join a Legacy with an Endowment Gift

"Those who give, out of their own possessions, by night and by day, in private and in public, will have their reward with their Lord: no fear for them, nor will they grieve."

(Qur'an 2:274)