Islamic Scholarship Fund

Activity

The Islamic Scholarship Fund claims to be the largest American Muslim scholarship fund. As of April 2024, ISF has awarded over 570 scholarships worth over $3 million. ² In 2020, ISF awarded $163,000 in scholarships; nine percent of recipients were PhDs, 34 percent were graduate students, 22 percent were law students, and 35 percent were undergraduates. ¹ In 2022, 63 percent of scholarship recipients were female. ³

Most scholarship recipients work in fields related to Muslim-American advocacy, including opposing Islamophobia, supporting expansionist immigration policy, advancing human rights, practicing public interest law, and promoting left-wing “social justice.” ^{1 4}

ISF grantees have attended elite American universities including the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, the University of California Berkeley, Georgetown University, and Stanford University. ¹

ISF grantees have worked at the American Civil Liberties Union, Al Jazeera, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Human Rights Watch, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Asian American Advocacy Fund, Disney, Warner Bros, Sony Pictures, Hulu, the New York Times, The Guardian, Vox, ABC, CBS, CNN, Reuters, PBS, U.S. News and World Report, the United Nations, and various federal courts. ^{1 4 5}

Scholarship recipients work in the United States but come from all over the world. In 2020, there were scholarship recipients from 34 countries. ¹

Also in 2020, ISF created the first U.S. Congressional Muslim Fellowship. ¹ In 2021, ISF placed interns working for U.S. Representatives Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). ⁴ In 2022, ISF placed interns with U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). ⁵ By 2022, ISF had placed 62 Muslims into internships on Capitol Hill. ³

ISF also hosts education seminars on working in various fields, including political advocacy. ¹

ISF has increasingly funded art and filmmaking ventures. In 2022, ISF launched the Muslim Centered Writers’ Lab to support Muslim screenwriters. ⁶

Also as of 2022, 65 ISF scholarship recipients are practicing law. ³

ISF’s 2022 Annual Report favorably quoted radical left activist Ibram X. Kendi. ⁵

Leadership

Somayeh Nikooei has been the executive director of the Islamic Scholarship Fund since 2019. She has worked at ISF in a variety of roles since 2009 with the exception of the period from mid-2018 to mid-2019 when she worked as director of operations at the Our Three Winters Foundation, a group that campaigns against perceived anti-Muslim discrimination. Earlier, Nikooei served as a principal at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, a group on whose board she still sits. ^{7 8}

Hamid Rezapour is the founder and board president of ISF. He is a co-founder of the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, and the founder and president of Vertical Ventures, a private equity real estate investment and development firm. He has also operated numerous private dental practices and has been involved in angel investing in tech start-ups. ^{8 9}

Funding

Islamic Scholarship Fund has received funding from the Goats Foundations, the Foundation for Intelligent Giving, the Muslim Bar Association of New York, the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML) Scholarship, and the Islamic Institute of Orange County. ⁵