We seek to provide an inclusive community and meaningful programs for all students, Muslims or otherwise, who seek a home away from home.
In the 1950s, the Harvard Muslim community consisted of a few foreign graduate students. It was at this time that Syed Hossein Nasr, a doctoral student in Islamic cosmology and science, and Yusuf Ibish, a post-doctoral student working on translating the works of the Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun, recognized the need for a student organization to serve the Muslim community and to advocate for it to the administration. The Harvard Islamic Society was established in 1955 to fill this role. American-born Muslim students first enrolled in the university in the 1970s, and by the late 1980s, the Islamic Society had grown into a vibrant organization with a substantial enrollment of both Muslim undergraduate and graduate students.
