America's First Muslim Seminary

[SedesDomi]

The Zaytuna Institute – America’s first Muslim seminary – believes that both America and Islam will be poorer if American Muslims continue that narrative. So for their recent event in Chicago they chose a location which told a very different story – the magnificent Museum of Science and Industry, just blocks away from the University of Chicago. The message was clear – Muslims need to place themselves at the heart of what is happening here and now, to conceive of themselves as citizens who contribute to matters at the center of things, not people who pass through on the margins.

                                                                                                                                          In other words, it is time for the narrative to shift. American Muslims can no longer see themselves as primarily an immigrant group. We have to see ourselves as a community indigenous to America, a contributing member of a [pluralist society](http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/eboo_patel/2008/06/muslims_and_the_destiny_of_ame.html).