Murabit Benavidez
Level 2 Instructor

Murabit Benavidez is a teacher of Arabic and introductory subjects in the Islamic tradition. Upon his conversion to Islam at the age of 19, he relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to Damascus, Syria, to pursue studies in Islam. He then traveled to Mauritania and lived in the village of Murabit Al-Hajj, where he advanced his studies in fiqh (jurisprudence) and Arabic. In addition to teaching Arabic at Zaytuna College, he has also taught Maliki fiqh at the Ta’leef Collective in Fremont, California.

Elsa ElMahdy
Level 3 Instructor

Elsa ElMahdy is pursuing an M.A. in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language at the American University in Cairo (AUC), where she is also an Arabic instructor. She previously completed an M.A. in Arabic Studies at AUC, with a concentration in Arabic language and literature. She has also studied Arabic at Zaytuna Institute and UC Berkeley. Her research interests include topics in classical Arabic literature and linguistics.

Aymen Elsheikh
Level 1 Instructor

Aymen Elsheikh is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has taught courses on Arabic language and culture as well as on English as a second language; he has also trained teachers to teach foreign languages. His research interests include foreign language education, the sociopolitical and cultural contexts of second language learning and teaching, and critical ethnography.

Dawood Yasin
Level 1 Instructor

Dawood Yasin is a teacher and a religious leader. He pursued his formal studies of Islam and Arabic in Damascus, Syria, for five years. Dawood later helped found SHUKR, an online Islamic clothing store, and served as the imam of Masjid al-Islam in New Haven, Connecticut. He has also served as a teaching assistant of Arabic at Yale University (2002–2004), and was an Arabic instructor at the 2008 Zaytuna Summer Arabic Intensive.

Souhad Zendah
Level 2 Instructor

Souhad Zendah is currently a lecturer in Arabic at Tufts University, where she teaches intermediate and advanced Arabic, and a teaching fellow in Arabic at Harvard University. Souhad previously taught Arabic at the Middlebury College Summer Language Program in Vermont and at the Fawakih Summer Arabic Program in Indiana. She has also translated into English several Arabic poems, and has studied journalism and broadcasting at the University of Petra in Jordan and Birzeit University in Palestine.

Mohammad Abderrazzaq
Level 2 Teaching Assistant

Mohammad Abderrazzaq is a Ph.D. candidate in Islamic Studies at Boston University. He has served as a lecturer in Arabic at Boston University and Northeastern University (also in Boston), and he has taught courses on Introduction to Islam, Modern Standard Arabic, and Spoken Levantine Arabic.

Muhammad Abdul Latif Finch
Level 2 Teaching Assistant

Muhammad Abdul Latif Finch is an imam at the Lighthouse Mosque in Oakland, California, and an instructor at ILM Tree, a home-schooling cooperative in Lafayette, California. He is one of five students who comprised the first graduating class of the Zaytuna seminary program.

Rusha Latif
Level 3 Teaching Assistant

Rusha Latif is a private Arabic tutor from the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied Arabic at Zaytuna Institute and completed an advanced Arabic program at the al-Diwan Center in Cairo; she has also taught English at the Al Hayah Academy, also in Cairo.

Ebadur Rahman
Level 1 Teaching Assistant

Ebadur Rahman is one of five students who comprised the first graduating class of the Zaytuna seminary program. He currently studies at New York University, and he has also taught at the NYU Islamic Center as well as the MECCA, a Muslim educational organization in New York City.

Fareeha Syed
Level 1 Teaching Assistant

Fareeha Syed received a Master's degree in Arabic from the University of California at Los Angeles. She is also a graduate of the Qasid Institute for Classical and Modern Standard Arabic in Amman, Jordan, and has worked as a teaching assistant in Arabic at the University of California at Berkeley.