For 55 years, Muslim children have been coming to Muslim Youth Camp in Northern California, the country’s oldest Muslim summer camp. In addition to the normal American summer camp activities—swimming, sing-alongs, roasting s’mores, and playing sports—campers attend classes designed to help them grow in their faith, build a sense of community, and, at a time of heightened anti-Muslim sentiment, learn how to deal with and respond to bigotry. According to Amira Quraishi, daughter of the camp’s late founder, Marghoob Quraishi, “My father, he saw Islam as a force for good, equality, social justice and pursuing knowledge… He saw that these were new Muslims in a new country and they needed to try to figure out how they were going to be Muslim in America… The way my dad described it is that he just started walking and then after 20 years looked back and noticed people were coming with him.”
