In Dearborn, home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the US and also known as the capital of Arab America, mental health issues are exacerbated because of the stigma that often surrounds mental illness in Muslim communities.

Harnada Hamid Altalib, president of the Institute for Muslim Mental Health said: “You have challenges in all cultures, including a stigma about mental health and a resistance to talking about it, but there are some things that are particularly salient to Muslim culture.”

“You have a mistrust of the system if you’re an immigrant and not in your home country, and there’s a reluctance to see a doctor. Specific to Muslims, there’s a concern about Islamophobia in the system.”

Dearborn police, the city’s Department of Public Health, and the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (Access) have been working together to address mental health issues affecting the city.

Source: Middle East Eye

The aim is to provide higher education for immigrant Muslim communities and to tackle concerns about the spread of extremism among Muslim youth. Academics say the establishment of Islamic universities, along with creating an academic framework for Islam within universities, will see more opening in the West.

A liberal-arts school in Berkeley in California has become the first Islamic institution of higher learning in the US while plans are underway to create Italy’s first Islamic university. Meantime, France plans to double the number of university courses teaching Islam.

US: First accredited Muslim higher education institution

America has many religiously affiliated colleges, but the vast majority are Christian, including Liberty University, the University of Notre Dame, Kenyon College, and Boston College. In addition, some Jewish higher education institutions such as Brandeis University and Yeshiva University have been operating for many years. Last month, Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal-arts school based in Berkeley, was formally accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of the six official academic bodies responsible for authorizing public and private colleges and universities in the US.

Italy’s first Islamic university

The city of Lecce, known as the Florence of the South, is set to become the location of Italy’s first Islamic university. The goal is to open the university complex within three years but there are plans to begin teaching a small number of theology students next October at the recently established Islamic University Foundation. A report last month by the International Islamic News Agency said Giampiero Khaled Palladini, a Muslim convert and president of Confime, a confederation for Mediterranean businesses, was behind the project.

Under the plans, the university would have a capacity for 5,000 students and would teach philosophy, literature and theology, with further disciplines, including a faculty of agriculture and a medical school, to start later. It would be set up on similar model to the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan and be open to students from Italy and abroad.

Other European Muslim universities

Among other Islamic universities operating in Europe, two have been established in the Netherlands to meet the social and religious needs of the 900,000 Muslims living there. These include the Islamic University of Rotterdam which aims to encourage its students to “live as a Muslim and as a responsible citizen of Dutch society”.

The Islamic University of Europe plans to train the spiritual and intellectual leaders for the growing Muslim community in the Netherlands, combining a knowledge of Islamic tradition and the contemporary European environment.

Academic framework for Islam. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in January, when Muslim gunmen killed 17 people, France announced plans to double the number of university courses teaching Islam in an effort to counter the rise of Islamic and far-right extremism.

France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim population with five million people and about half from the Maghreb countries. The French decision to boost the teaching of Islam in universities follows similar moves by other leading universities in Europe, as was set out in a 2013 report Islam Conquering Higher European Education.

Source: Ummah Link

1. While U.S. Muslims overall are largely an immigrant population (58%), Muslim Millennials are somewhat less likely to have been born abroad than are older Muslim adults (52% versus 64%), according to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey. (Within the general public, 15% of all Millennials are immigrants.) Racially and ethnically, 40% of Muslim Millennials identify as white (including Arabs and people of Middle Eastern ancestry), 29% as Asian (including people of Pakistani or Indian descent), 17% as black and 11% as Hispanic.

2. Muslim Millennials are as likely as older Muslim adults to say religion is “very important” in their lives and that they attend religious services at least weekly. This differs from the generational dynamic in some larger U.S. religious groups. Among Catholics, mainline Protestants and members of the historically black Protestant tradition, for example, Millennials are significantly less likely than their respective elders to say religion is very important to them, or that they attend religious services weekly.

3. Muslim Millennials are more likely than older American Muslims to say homosexuality should be accepted by society (60% versus 44%).

4. Muslim Millennials, like older Muslims, lean heavily Democratic (69%) – more so than Christian Millennials (47%) and the U.S. Millennial population as a whole (56%).

5. Muslim Millennials are less likely than older Muslim adults to say the American people are “generally friendly” toward Muslims in the U.S. (45% versus 65%). This does not mean that most Muslim Millennials find the American people unfriendly toward U.S. Muslims, however.

Source: Pew Research Center