Greek Life and the Muslim girl

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In the Beginning

After converting to Islam, Abdul-Haqq’s problems began immediately. At her first college, North Carolina’s Bennett College for Women, she tried to join an established, historically Black sorority and was rejected because of the image associated with her beliefs. “Even though these girls knew who I was, I was perceived as an outsider because of my obviously Muslim appearance,” says Abdul-Haqq, referring to her hijab (headscarf) and conservative clothes.

Like other Muslim women, she realized that becoming a sorority sister could mean compromising her beliefs. “In searching for the close bond of sisterhood that a sorority offers I felt that my beliefs and lifestyle conflicted with the activities and whole pledging process of most sororities,” she says.

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But Abdul-Haqq was not one to give up. She left Bennett to start a family and then returned to Guilford College in 2005. It was there, with the help of her mother Althia Collins, that the now 34-year-old founded Gamma Gamma Chi.

Founding the sorority was a matter of getting involved in the total college experience, says Abdul-Haqq. Too many young Muslims today believe “being Muslim is not cool. Being Muslim is more or less looked at as being different and excluded from the crowd,” she explains.

Inspiration came in a Friday prayer sermon encouraging Muslims to become more active in the community. Determined to reinvigorate her peers’ zeal for Islam, she recruited her mother, a Delta Sigma Theta sorority member and former president of Bennett College, to help her create Gamma Gamma Chi.

Collins, president and executive director of Gamma Gamma Chi, recognized the importance of a sorority experience and wanted to save other Muslim women from facing the problems she had: Her 25-year career in higher education came to a “screeching halt,” Collins says, when her colleagues rejected her conversion to Islam in 1998.

“I firmly believe that a woman shouldn’t have to give up her career for her religion, or her religion for her career,” Collins says. So when her daughter came to her with the idea for a Muslim-friendly Greek sorority to make a comfortable niche for Muslim college girls, Collins was eager to help.