500 Books on Islam Donated to University

Cal State Northridge is receiving a gift of more than 500 books on Islam from the personal library of a retired Harvard scholar--enough, say elated officials at Northridge, to form the basis of a Center for Islamic Studies.

The news comes as Muslims in Southern California and around the world prepare to celebrate Eid al-Fitr today, beginning with several large prayer gatherings in the Los Angeles area that mark the end of the 29-day fast for Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month.

The envisioned campus center--which still must be formally proposed to university administrators--would be an academic institution, not devotional. But new Cal State Northridge faculty member Amir Hussain said the books and papers of Wilfred Cantwell Smith will form a solid foundation for substantial studies of Islam.

“Because of our budget restrictions, we’d never be able to get this kind of significant increase in holdings unless it was a gift,” said James Goss, president of the Northridge faculty and chairman of the religious studies department.

Goss said he knows of no Islamic studies program in Southern California. Cal State Northridge, with 10 full-time religious studies professors and a Jewish studies program, is believed to have the largest undergraduate enrollment in courses about religion in the state university system--more than 1,500 students each semester, including about 40 religion majors.

Goss and Hussain said the new library resources will help not only to deflate old stereotypes of Muslims but also to enhance nontraditional intellectual approaches by Muslims to contemporary issues in western society, such as the role of women.

“There are some wonderful thinkers in North America who are challenging some of the traditional assumptions by Muslim scholars,” said Hussain, 32, who defies expectations himself.

Although he was born in Pakistan, his family moved to Canada when he was 4. A fan of music from jazz to country, Hussain recently wore a suit jacket with a short string of pearls hanging from his handkerchief pocket (a tribute to Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls”) and has four photos of music personalities on his desk, including one autographed by country singer Reba McEntire.

Hussain’s graduate studies in comparative religion at the University of Toronto led in part to the donation by Wilfred and Muriel Smith, fellow Toronto residents, to Cal State Northridge.

“He’s arguably the greatest Islamic and comparative religion scholar in Canada,” Hussain said. Smith created the Institute for Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal, then spent two decades, until 1984, teaching comparative religion at Harvard Divinity School. For nine years, he directed the school’s Center for the Study of World Religions.

The Smiths, now in their 80s and moving to smaller quarters, said they thought first of donating their books and articles to McGill or Harvard.

“But McGill already has one of the best collections on the continent” and Harvard has extensive library resources, Wilfred Smith said in a telephone interview.

Hussain, hired by Northridge last March, had dinner with the Smiths in early August and suggested that they donate the collection to the Northridge campus.

“We knew the books would be helpful to a library that was starting out,” said Muriel Smith, “and it would be nice for the Muslim community to have access to books about their own tradition.”