I've been following news of a Muslim college by the Zaytuna Institute in the Bay area for some time now, but I thought it was going to be years before it started. Apparently, enough funds have been raised and the first Muslim college in the US will open as soon as the Fall of 2010. It will first use rented buildings at Berkeley before it reaches its goal of raising an endowment of $30 million and another $20 million to purchase properties. This is important in two major ways: this is part of a trend of Western Muslims seeking to indegenize Islam based on their own experiences as Muslims living in Western societies. This is how the Website describes it: "Islam has never become rooted in a particular land until that land began producing its own religious scholars." The Swiss Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, has been quite vocal about the need to create "the Muslim personality in the West" that is politically, financially, and intellectually independent from outside influences. The establishment of a Muslim four-year accredited college is also significant as new nodes of religious authority are created outside traditional centers of Islamic scholarship like Al-Azhar. The college will be seeking the accreditation of Al-Azhar, but it seems this is more a marketing tool than an ideological endorsement.