Muslim Student Association
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The Muslim Student Association (MSA) is a group dedicated, by its own description, to Islamic societies on college campuses in Canada and the United States for the good of muslim students. A mostly non-political group, the MSA is involved in providing Muslims on various campuses the opportunity to practice their religion and to ease and facilitate such activities. MSA is also involved in social activities, such as fund raisers for the homeless during Ramadan.
External links
- MSA of the US & Canada (http://www.msa-natl.org)
The Muslim Students Association of the US & Canada is also known as MSA-National. It is an umbrella organization for all of the chapters at various campus's across the continent, that deal with Muslim Students. These chapters are not required to have the name MSA, and many of them have similiar names (Islamic Students Association, Islamic Students Society, Muslim Student Union, Muslim Discussion Group, etc.). The organization is best known for their continental conference held every year on Labor Day weekend, which has an attendance of 40,000.
The US and Canada is divided into 5 zones, 3 in the US and 2 in Canada. Each zone has a zonal representative which is chosen by the chapters in their zone. The chapters are set at different universities. In some states, the chapters form a regional council to better work togather.
MSA-National was formed in 1963 at the campus of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). At this point representatives from different campus's came togather since they felt the need for a national organization. Each individual chapter was going through the same struggles and issues, and having a national organization would allow for each chapter to share it's knowledge, and experiences with each other.
In the 1970's the Muslim population in the US/Canada had grown to the point that their were many people who were not students, but still wanted to be involved. At this point it was decided to form a national organization which would deal with non-student issues. This national organization came into effect in 1980, and was named The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).