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Tom Facchine will serve the Hamilton Muslim community as imam. He has held that position for the Utica Masjid (Muslim Community Association of Mohawk Valley) since August, 2020.

One of Ferdous Dehqan’s earliest memories is one of fear. He recalls holding hands with his mother while walking past a Taliban checkpoint in Kabul, Afghanistan. “What if they stop us?” he thought to himself. “What if they hit my mother?” Dehqan is one of five young Muslims participating in an interview-based theater production —“Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity”— which focuses on their experiences both before and after the morning of September 11, 2001.

With extensive media coverage of gruesome acts committed by ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Jihadists, the Taliban and the Boko Haram, to name a few, many Americans wonder why Islam lends itself so readily to violent extremism. The same question has been recently raised on-campus by the Enquiry, a weekly opinion editorial sponsored by the Alexander Hamilton Institute, prompting the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Arabic and Middle East Club (AMEC) to invite a panel of experts to campus in an effort to deepen the community’s understanding of the connection, or lack thereof, between Islam and extremism.

Hamilton College will host a panel titled “Islam: A Religion of Extremism?” with a panel of experts, including former U.S. ambassadors and faculty with expertise in the Middle East, on Wednesday, Feb. 11, at 4:15 p.m., in the Chapel. The discussion is free and open to the public.

The question of what it means to be “American” has never been easy to answer. For marginalized groups, issues of competing identities and stereotypes can lead to discrepancies between self-identification and phenotypic identification. Shabana Mir, professor of anthropology at Millikin University, presented the findings of her research on the post 9/11 experiences of Muslim American women in American higher education in a Hamilton lecture on Sept. 23.

Girl Rising, a documentary film made by the 10x10 Campaign, a global initiative to educate and empower girls, will be screened on Monday, Oct. 21, at 4:15 p.m., in the Red Pit, KJ.  The film will be followed by a panel discussion.  The screening is free, open to the public and sponsored by the Days-Massolo Center and Muslim Student Association.

The Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the College chaplaincy recently unveiled Hamilton College’s new Muslim prayer room. Located on the second floor of the Chapel, the prayer room is the first space on campus that MSA has been able to call its own.

In her education blog on the USA Today website, Mary Beth Marklein reported on how some colleges have promoted religious and cultural awareness “even before Florida preacher Terry Jones announced plans to burn the Quran this weekend.” Included in a summary of how “colleges have been seeking ways to counter anti-Muslim sentiment on campus and promote understanding of religious and cultural diversity” was a description of Hamilton’s recent in which 170 Muslim and non-Muslim students participated in a fast and post-fast dinner. One of the reasons for holding the annual event is to offer non-Muslim students the opportunity to experience what Muslims practice for an entire month.

Approximately 170 students, Muslim and non-Muslim, participated in the annual "fast-a-thon," sponsored by the Muslim Students Association on campus on Sept. 8. The day of fasting during the month of Ramadan, ending on Sept. 9, brought students of several faiths together. One of the reasons for holding the annual event is to offer non-Muslim students the opportunity to experience what Muslims practice for an entire month.