The Fellowship
An education that cannot be found in a classroom
A fully funded formation and travel fellowship for Muslim American undergraduate students, beginning in Saudi Arabia and centered on the sacred journey of Umrah.
Madinah · 2024
Three fellows stand together outside Al-Masjid an-Nabawi during an evening in Madinah.
The manifesto
The fellowship exists for the student who has learned how to succeed by conventional measures, and senses that an essential part of their education is still missing.
Mission
An education that cannot be found in a classroom
The Rihla Fellowship exists for the Muslim American student who has learned how to succeed by conventional measures, but senses that an essential part of their education cannot be found in a classroom, a transcript, a résumé, or a professional network.
The fellowship takes high-achieving Muslim American undergraduate students beyond the environments in which they have learned to succeed, and into the lands, histories, institutions, and living communities of their faith.
Beginning in Saudi Arabia and centered around the sacred journey of Umrah, fellows are invited to examine who they are, what they have inherited, what they have consciously chosen, what they are still seeking, what their education is for, and what they owe to their communities.
The purpose is not simply to send students abroad. The purpose is to form spiritually grounded, intellectually curious, globally aware, service-oriented Muslim leaders.
Vision
A generation that walked through it
A generation of Muslim Americans who did not only read about the Muslim world, but walked through it.
A generation that understands Muslim civilization not as an abstraction, a romantic memory, or a collection of headlines, but as a vast and living world, able to engage complexity across countries, cultures, schools of thought, institutions, and contemporary challenges.
A generation that carries faith with intellectual depth, that sees leadership as service rather than status, and that returns from the journey with a deeper understanding of identity, responsibility, and purpose.
Tradition
A journey with precedent
- Rihla fi talab al-ilm
- Muslim scholars travelled to study with teachers, verify what they had learned, and encounter intellectual traditions across regions. Physically travelling in pursuit of knowledge is among the oldest habits of the Muslim intellectual tradition.
- The early journeys
- The movement of the early Muslim community, to Abyssinia and later to Madinah, is remembered as purposeful travel shaped by faith, community, and responsibility rather than by convenience.
- Ibn Battuta
- The classical rihla, understood as sustained travel across societies, courts, economies, and scholarly communities, and recorded as a work of observation.
- Muhammad Asad
- A modern journey in which travel, faith, identity, and the encounter between the West and the Muslim world became inseparable from one another.
These are the intellectual foundations the fellowship draws on. Historical detail is kept deliberately general; specific claims are verified before they are published.
The five pillars
Five commitments that shape every part of the journey.
01
Sacred Journey
Umrah is the sacred center of the fellowship. Fellows receive meaningful preparation and guidance so that the worship is approached with sincerity, knowledge, humility, and presence rather than as an item on an itinerary.
02
Intellectual Encounter
Fellows engage with history, institutions, leadership, scholarship, development, culture, and contemporary questions through direct experience. The encounter itself is the curriculum.
03
Cultural Immersion
Fellows move beyond simplified ideas about Saudi Arabia and the wider Muslim world, meeting people and perspectives with humility, curiosity, and respect.
04
Leadership Formation
Fellows examine what leadership is actually for. The programme emphasises trust, service, character, responsibility, and the ability to lead across difference.
05
Return and Contribution
The journey does not end at the airport. Fellows reflect, remain connected, and consider how the rihla should shape their campus, profession, family, and community.
What makes it different
One continuous formation, not a trip with add-ons
- Worship, study, and travel are treated as one experience rather than three separate activities.
- Preparation begins months before departure, and the return is a structured part of the programme.
- The cohort is deliberately composed so that fellows learn from one another across campuses and fields.
- Selection weighs character, curiosity, and service rather than credentials alone.
- The fellowship is designed to be fully funded so participation is never a question of means.
Why this matters
Reading about a world is not the same as standing in it
Muslim American students are asked, constantly, to explain a world most of them have only encountered through text, headlines, and family memory. The gap between what they are expected to represent and what they have actually seen is wide.
Direct encounter closes that gap. Standing inside institutions, sitting with scholars and practitioners, and moving through a society on its own terms produces a kind of understanding that no syllabus can substitute for.
The fellowship exists to make that encounter possible for students whose seriousness of purpose deserves it, regardless of whether their families could otherwise fund such a journey.
The fellowship is being designed as a fully funded experience.