New College Teaches Young American Muslims : NPR: I don't know what I expected to find when I arrived at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, Calif., the country's brand new Muslim liberal arts college. Women in headscarves? Yes, for the most part. Men with heavy beards? No. A lot of prayer and fasting, since it's Ramadan? Absolutely.What I didn't expect was 24-year-old Jamye Ford.
'I grew up as an AME, African-American Episcopal, in a very religious Southern family,' Ford says in the campus quad. 'I went to church every Sunday for hours at a time, I went to Bible study, did all of those things. And from a young age, I had curiosity about religion in general and other religions.'
Ford bought a Quran at a secondhand bookstore when he was 9 and memorized a few sura or passages, which he always remembered. He entered Columbia University at 16 and graduated with a double major in neuroscience and history. But he was drawn to the poetry of theQuran, and this summer, he began studying Arabic at Zaytuna.
'That was my first opportunity to be in a Muslim environment, and within a short time, a week, two weeks, I felt changed by that experience,' he says.
