Crescent University is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of knowledge as a leader of the international community of higher learning. Together with other faith-based universities in America, Crescent University is committed to the promotion of intellectually informed faith and religiously informed education. Its purpose is to establish and maintain clear standards of intellectual integrity in reviving the perennial values of the world’s civilizations as guidance for building a just peace.

Crescent University is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of knowledge as a leader of the international community of higher learning. Together with other faith-based universities in America, Crescent University is committed to the promotion of intellectually informed faith and religiously informed education. Its purpose is to establish and maintain clear standards of intellectual integrity in reviving the perennial values of the world’s civilizations as guidance for building a just peace.

The foundation of such civilizational renewal is the spiritual inspiration of young Americans in their quest for personal perfection in awareness of the transcendent source of ultimate purpose and meaning. Crescent’s learning environment conveys both knowledge and the wisdom essential for spiritual maturity, moral virtue, and strength of character.

Crescent teaches its students that knowledge is power and that the power bestowed by the Creator on persons and human communities requires responsibility. A Crescent education inspires students to live generously with sensitivity to others both as individuals and as fully committed participants in a changing society. Life at Crescent prepares men and women for worldwide leadership by integrating academic excellence and spiritual commitment within a caring community.

As an American university created to fulfill the vision of America’s founders, Crescent provides the traditionalist framework that led to the American Revolution and to the founders’ conviction that it is America’s destiny to become a moral model for the world. The framework or paradigm of traditionalist American thought consists of the mutually interdependent and reinforcing principles of order, justice, and freedom. When freedom is construed to be independent of justice, there can be no justice and the result is anarchy. When order is thought to be possible without justice, there can be no order, because injustice is the principal cause of disorder. When justice is thought to be possible without order and freedom, then the pursuit of order, justice, and freedom are snares of the totalitarian mind.

Crescent is dedicated to the study of the Great Books of all civilizations in order to preserve their continuity of wisdom in championing religious, political, and economic freedom as the essential pillars of a just and stable world.

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SIXTEEN FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS

What Is Crescent University?

Crescent is a university in the classical sense because it seeks to explore and teach the totality of knowledge accessible universally to humankind by integrating academic excellence and spiritual awareness within a caring community.

Why Do Muslims Need Their Own University?

All faiths in America, except Islam, have established centers of higher learning in order to enrich the wisdom of other religions and denominations with their own unique insights and vision and to enrich their own adherents with the knowledge and methods of thought available in other traditions. In a still secularizing world, the best of classical American and classical Islamic thought can be revived only by cooperation in addressing the key issues of conscience.

Why Is There A Need for Crescent University Now?

Extremism in all the world religions is rising in response to felt injustices and to the arrogance of alienated, utopian, and totalitarian minds. Such extremism and the violence that often results from it flourish in an intellectual vacuum. Freedom, justice, and stability can be secured against the pervasive threats in the modern world only by producing leaders who are educated to appreciate the best in all the world?s civilizations so that they can bring their common paradigm of wisdom to bear on the task of building a better world. Producing such leaders is both the vision and the mission of Crescent University.

Why Would Students Attend Crescent University?

Crescent was founded to attract the “best and the brightest” to its vision and mission. Those who share this vision will provide each other with the stimulating intellectual and social environment that they all seek.

Is Crescent University Solely for Muslims?

As a university in the classical sense, where knowledge is sought wherever it may lead, a substantial proportion of both students and professors must always be non-Muslim. In a pluralistic world, leadership must build on the insights of all religions and cultures.

Is Crescent University Solely a Religious School?

Crescent was founded to overcome the narrow-minded exclusivism of Muslim madrassas by promoting intellectually informed faith and spiritually inspired education. It joins with all other faith-based centers of higher learning to counter also the exclusivism of secular fundamentalists. Crescent is secular in the sense of openness to the use of reason in exploring all the fundamental questions of life, but religious in the sense of encouraging awareness of the transcendent dimension of reality.

What Role Will Religion Play in This University?

Religion in the sense of sectarian direction will play no role at all. Religion in the life of each individual is entirely a free choice. Religion as a commitment to explore all possibilities in every aspect of life is encouraged, including the commitment of self-styled atheists to follow their own spiritual paths.

Is This University for American Students Only?

This university is primarily for the American-born who feel a calling to lead America back to its roots as a Great Experiment so that it can become what its founders envisaged as a moral model for the world. Students from abroad are welcome so that they can share the American vision and bring it home to help build a global civilization based on universal human rights and responsibilities.

What Is Crescent University?s View of Non-Muslims?

All persons, whether formally Muslim or not, are equal in dignity based on the sincerity of their search for the truth. The Qur?an teaches that all persons should be respected, and in Christian terms will be “saved,” only on the basis of their good works and on their acknowledgment of a Supreme Being with power over ultimate justice.

Is Crescent University Affiliated with a Specific Sect or Religious Denomination?

Crescent University is strictly ecumenical and non-denominational. It respects and invites members of all religious groups who respect non-members. It does not welcome anyone who wants to play God by proclaiming who is or is not going to heaven. Crescent makes no distinction between Shi?i and Sunnis or among the various schools of law in Islam. Crescent employs the Great Books curriculum, with emphasis on the great books of all faiths and civilizations.

Is Crescent University Allied with any Islamic Political Movement?

Crescent University focuses on developing ecumenical paradigms of thought in order to shape the direction of entire civilizations. Graduates may apply this learning in shaping political agendas, which in turn will control governmental policies. Crescent is not allied with, and in fact opposes, any movement that exploits religion for political purposes, especially the purpose of gaining power as an end in itself under the guise of being “Islamic.”

What is Crescent University?s Attitude Toward Co-Education?

Gender equity is fundamental to Crescent University?s commitment to human rights. Women are expected to play roles equal to men in the administration of the university, as well as in the faculty and student body. This is particularly important, because Muslim women must take the lead role in overcoming the patriarchal distortion of Islamic law, and because the women of Crescent should be equally equipped with men to exercise leadership roles in American society and government. Women and men may pray together in Crescent?s mosque, the women on the left and the men on the right, without any partitions. Modesty in dress is expected, but this does not require women to wear hijab. The only segregation is in the student dormitories.

Will Crescent University be Liberal or Conservative?

The political terms “liberal” and “conservative” are irrelevant to Islam and to Crescent. Crescent is liberal in the sense of promoting freedom of thought and compassion for the marginalized in society. It supports Maimonides? dictum that the best charity is the justice of teaching persons to be productive in society so that they can share in its benefits. Crescent is conservative in the sense of respecting the traditionalist emphasis of America?s founders and of the enlightened scholars of classical Islam on the interdependent pursuit of order, justice, and liberty.

What Makes Crescent University Distinctive and Unique?

Crescent University is the only university in the world founded on the enlightened tradition of classical Islam and directed toward the perfection of America.

What Is Crescent University?s Perspective Toward Academic Excellence?

Crescent insists on holding students accountable for objective, uniform standards of academic performance. The avoidance of grade inflation assures that high performance at Crescent means something. This, in turn, will help assure that Crescent will remain a leader in higher education and that its high performers will have access not only to its own graduate schools but to those of the world?s best universities.

What Are the Long Range Goals of Crescent University?

Crescent University is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of knowledge as a leader of the international community of higher learning. Its purpose is to establish and maintain clear standards of intellectual integrity in reviving the perennial values of the world?s civilizations as guidance for building a just peace.

Crescent seeks to promote such civilizational renewal by inspiring young Americans in their quest for personal perfection in awareness of the transcendent source of ultimate purpose and meaning. Crescent?s learning environment conveys both knowledge and the wisdom essential for spiritual maturity, moral virtue, and strength of character.

Crescent?s long-range purpose is to teach its students that knowledge is power and that the power bestowed by the Creator on persons and human communities requires responsibility. Life at Crescent is designed to prepare men and women from around the world for global leadership by integrating academic excellence and spiritual commitment within a caring community.