The Rihla Fellowship
A journey of faith.
A return with purpose.
The Rihla Fellowship is a highly selective formation experience for Muslim American undergraduates, grounded in Umrah, shaped by knowledge, strengthened through community, and carried home through service.
Applications are not currently open
Madinah · 2024Fellows sit together for a lesson on Sira history at Masjid al-Qiblatayn in Madinah.
رحلة
[ Rihla ]
The meaning of rihla
An intentional journey.
A lifelong transformation.
“Rihla” means more than travel. It is a purposeful departure undertaken in pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and transformation. The traveler leaves what is familiar, encounters what is greater, and returns changed by the journey.
The Rihla Fellowship revives this tradition for a new generation of Muslim American leaders, bringing together sacred travel, intellectual encounter, community, and a responsibility to return with purpose.
The five pillars
A formation built on what lasts.
01
Sacred Journey
Umrah is the sacred center of the fellowship. Fellows receive meaningful preparation and guidance so that the worship is approached with sincerity, knowledge, humility, and presence rather than as an item on an itinerary.
02
Intellectual Encounter
Fellows engage with history, institutions, leadership, scholarship, development, culture, and contemporary questions through direct experience. The encounter itself is the curriculum.
03
Cultural Immersion
Fellows move beyond simplified ideas about Saudi Arabia and the wider Muslim world, meeting people and perspectives with humility, curiosity, and respect.
04
Leadership Formation
Fellows examine what leadership is actually for. The programme emphasises trust, service, character, responsibility, and the ability to lead across difference.
05
Return and Contribution
The journey does not end at the airport. Fellows reflect, remain connected, and consider how the rihla should shape their campus, profession, family, and community.
Pilot journey, 2024
The journey
that shaped Rihla.
In 2024, a student-led Yale Umrah journey brought together approximately thirty Muslim students for ten days across Jeddah, Madinah, and Makkah. That experience became the pilot from which The Rihla Fellowship was shaped.
It is the pilot the fellowship was drawn from, not a completed cohort of the fellowship itself.
Madinah · 2024 · Pilot journey
Mission
An education that cannot be found in a classroom
The Rihla Fellowship exists for the Muslim American student who has learned how to succeed by conventional measures, but senses that an essential part of their education cannot be found in a classroom, a transcript, a résumé, or a professional network.
The fellowship takes high-achieving Muslim American undergraduate students beyond the environments in which they have learned to succeed, and into the lands, histories, institutions, and living communities of their faith.
Beginning in Saudi Arabia and centered around the sacred journey of Umrah, fellows are invited to examine who they are, what they have inherited, what they have consciously chosen, what they are still seeking, what their education is for, and what they owe to their communities.
We do not travel to collect stamps on a passport. We travel to return with something worth carrying.
Why this matters
Reading about a world is not the same as standing in it
Muslim American students are asked, constantly, to explain a world most of them have only encountered through text, headlines, and family memory. The gap between what they are expected to represent and what they have actually seen is wide.
Direct encounter closes that gap. Standing inside institutions, sitting with scholars and practitioners, and moving through a society on its own terms produces a kind of understanding that no syllabus can substitute for.
The fellowship exists to make that encounter possible for students whose seriousness of purpose deserves it, regardless of whether their families could otherwise fund such a journey.
The fellowship is being designed as a fully funded experience.
For future fellows.
For future generations.
Rihla is only beginning. Help shape a fellowship for Muslim students who seek knowledge, live with purpose, and return ready to serve.
For prospective fellows
Discover the values, expectations, and anticipated selection process behind the fellowship.
Application PreviewFor partners and supporters
Help build a fully funded formation experience rooted in faith, knowledge, access, and long-term service.
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