First Muslim sorority hopes to form chapters across USA

The USA Today reports:

Christine Ortiz slips quietly from the Muslim prayer room on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and into a group of squealing young women. Some of them are Ortiz's Muslim sisters, the undergraduate pals who embraced her when she converted to Islam from her family's Roman Catholicism.

Less than a year after she graduated from MIT, Ortiz, 23, has returned to campus on a chilly night to help introduce them to a new concept in Muslim sisterhood: the first Muslim-oriented sorority, Gamma Gamma Chi.

The sorority, which was formed last year, has no campus chapters but is trying to drum up interest with informational meetings across the nation. It aims to be a sorority unlike almost all others by adhering to principles of Islam: no alcohol and no casual mixing between men and women.

Ortiz is a member of Alpha Phi, one of five traditional sororities at MIT. She says she wants her Muslim girlfriends to have the sorority experience without having to compromise their religious values. In theory, the existing sororities' policies are in line with Muslim beliefs, but in reality, she says, the sorority culture at MIT and other campuses “unfortunately is based on men and alcohol.”

Muslim women at MIT, the University of Kentucky, Rutgers, the University of Maryland-Baltimore and the University of Southern California have expressed interest in Gamma Gamma Chi, says founder and President Althia Collins, who owns an educational consulting business in Alexandria, Va.

Collins and her daughter Imani Abdul-Haqq, both Muslim converts, created the sorority in 2005.

The MIT gathering attracted 13 women — five in traditional Muslim head scarves and loose-fitting clothes but most with uncovered hair and typical campus attire of jeans and sweaters.

“I never felt attracted to sorority life,” says Tania Ullah, 20, a junior from New York City. “Aside from the drinking and partying, which I don't do, I didn't feel comfortable with pledging loyalty to the principles.”

Collins and Abdul-Haqq's idea for a Muslim sorority reflects both the increasing presence of the religion on U.S. campuses and the growth of multiculturalism, says Denise Pipersburgh, a lawyer in Newark, N.J., and president of the National Multicultural Greek Council.

It will be interesting to see the word wide reaction to this.