From August 6-8, 2025, the US Muslims & Higher Education Research Lab, under the supervision of Professor Nancy Khalil (Department of American Culture), held the Accreditation Paths for Muslim Seminaries convening. The convening brought together leaders from 18 Muslim seminaries across the United States to discuss challenges and opportunities associated with creating an accreditation board for Muslim seminaries. These challenges emerge from current inequities in accreditation opportunities in the United States that result in the regional accreditation bodies being prohibitively resource-demanding for many small seminaries and existing faith-based accreditation boards being limited to Christian and Jewish institutions.
Several of the Muslim seminaries had started separate conversations with Professor Khalil, whose research focuses on Muslim seminaries and imams in the US, about the possibility of creating a separate faith-based accreditation board for Muslims. Given the interest among seminaries about such a project, Professor Khalil, along with her research team, invited all Muslim seminaries in the United States for a three-day convening.
The convening began in the evening on August 6, 2025 with dinner. During this dinner, participants had the chance to hear from Professor Khalil about the objectives of the convening and the importance of gathering together. Following Professor Khalil’s introduction, members of The research team that were in attendance introduced themselves and shared their interest and role on the project. The participants heard from Professor Demetri Morgan (Department of Education), Dr Ermin Sinanovic (Executive Director of the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World at Shenandoah University), Abdullah Jangda (Co-Founder of Qalam Seminary), Shazeeda Khan (President of the Muslim Endorsement Council), Reverend Daniel Aleshire (former Executive Director of The Association of Theological Schools), and Hasher Nisar (Department of Political Science). After these introductions, participants from each seminary briefly introduced themselves and then had dinner. Many participants noted the significance of such a gathering, as it was the first time that Muslim seminaries had been given an opportunity to discuss the issue of accreditation with one another in a formal setting.
The convening continued on the morning of August 7, 2025 with a full day of sessions. Before participants had an opportunity to hear from the research team, each seminary gave a short presentation where they introduced their institution and their progress with accreditation. This session gave all participants the opportunity to get to know their peer institutions better and to learn about their accreditation interests, goals, and progress. Following the introduction of seminaries, Professor Khalil and Reverend Aleshire provided an overview of US Muslim higher education and structure of US accreditation. Professor Khalil shared her research on where each Muslim seminary stands with accreditation, while Reverend Aleshire discussed the history behind the current structure of accreditation processes in the United States.
After lunch, Mrs. Khan focused on what constitutes a good Islamic education. She presented the overall framework that the Muslim Endorsement Council uses to send qualified chaplains to institutions that are interested in hiring them, as well as what they recommend for chaplains who do not meet their standards. Following Mrs. Khan, Dr. Sinanovic focused on the commonalities between the different Muslim seminaries in attendance, such as shared values, concerns, and future. He offered recommendations for how the current meeting could evolve into opportunities for collaboration and exchanges, such as pooling resources, holding an annual conference, and training administrative staff. We ended the day by hearing from the seminaries. In small groups, participants discussed the benefits and challenges of pursuing accreditation.
On August 8, 2025, the third and last day of the convening, participants began the day by hearing from Professor Morgan, an expert on governance matters in the education space. He discussed what the governance of a potential accreditation board would like in terms of its fiduciary and board responsibilities, as well as how an accreditation board would impact the governance of Muslim seminaries. Following Professor Morgan’s talk, we held the last session of the day, which focused on summarizing the discussion of the past two days and charting next steps.
In this last session, Professor Khalil discussed how the convening had revealed the need for developing standards of excellence for Islamic education. Since many of the Muslim seminaries in attendance do not have formal settings to discuss challenges and issues of running an educational institution, participants agreed that there was a need for organizing an annual meeting to network and collaborate, holding trainings for administrative staff, and developing shared standards for what qualifies one to be a Muslim leader. Many agreed that working toward a Muslim accreditation board would help address these challenges. The convening confirmed the need for continued discussions on accreditation of Muslim seminaries.
In the closing session, the participants agreed on creating a consortium that works towards the goal of creating a Muslim accreditation board. Some actionable steps that emerged were the following: 1) meeting quarterly virtually to share ideas and discuss progress; 2) holding an annual meeting in person to start defining standards for Muslim education; 3) creating a website with resources for Muslim seminaries.
We would like to thank Islamic Relief USA and the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan for making this convening possible. If you have any thoughts and recommendations for the work that we are doing, please contact Professor Nancy Khalil.
