Light Without Fire: The Making of America’s First Muslim College

Korb (Life in Year One), a writer who teaches at N.Y.U., explores the origins and founding of Zaytuna College, the first Muslim four-year undergraduate liberal arts college in the United States. Zaytuna was founded in 2008, so Korb has access to the founders and the first cohort of students, and details some of the triumphs and struggles of establishing a college, with a writerly eye for local color and character detail. The idea behind Zaytuna is to provide a place for integrating Islam and the West, and to cultivate a generation of truly American Muslim scholars. Korb’s account delves deeply into these ideas, also exploring the daily life and religious practices of Muslims, as well as the religious philosophies and backgrounds of Zaytuna’s founders, all of them prominent Muslim thinkers, clerics, and writers. Some of Korb’s discussions are overly ambitious for a book of this size and detract from the intended main focus on Zaytuna College. Nevertheless, readers interested in Islam in America or the dynamics of Islamic education will find the book fascinating. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Apr.)