Muslim Leadership Lab Integrates Faith, Service, and Social Justice

In 2018, Dwight Hall partnered with Jackson School World Fellow Abdul-Rehman Malik to found the Muslim Leadership Lab (MLL), a community designed to invest in Muslim students on campus through workshops, retreats, speaker series, and trainings on civic leadership skills and spiritual literacy. “By equipping students with the confidence, tools, and spiritual grounding to lead from where they are, MLL catalyzes lasting impact that travels with them—into their professional, civic, spiritual, and community lives.” Program Director and founder Abdul-Rehman Malik created a program complete with a range of workshops and lectures for the Lab last semester, and he is looking forward to the new year and the upcoming events MLL is hosting. 

When Abdul-Rehman first came to Yale as a Jackson School World Fellow, he recalled that “Muslim students on campus were engaging in service-oriented work, community organizing, and social justice causes, but they were not quite sure how to integrate their Muslim identities, ethics, and values into those spaces.” Especially during this time, around 2017, Abdul-Rehman noticed that students were frustrated with the political situation and were looking to serve the community yet were unsure how to integrate their beliefs into service. Seeing the need for a group that integrated community service and faith for Muslim students, Abdul-Rehman and Dwight Hall launched MLL. 

MLL is “a place for critical thinking about the big issues of the day,” Abdul-Rehman explained; “more importantly, MLL is a space where self-identifying Muslim students and their allies can organize and level up in terms of their skills so that they can be involved more meaningfully in the kind of social justice work they want to do.” The program’s focus goes beyond campus, as the group studies global issues, as well. “What we were finding is that students were not only engaging in issues from their own communities but were also engaging in broader issues of social justice and organizing, and they were doing so more confidently in their Muslim identities,” Abdul-Rehman added. This year, MLL hosted two on-campus retreats for first-year and sophomore students, allowing students to explore their involvement with their communities.  

“We started co-creating, with students, staff, and faculty, developing a program every year that would prepare students for a life of public service and building a more socially just world.” This unique initiative, Abdul-Rehman explained, has helped shine a light on salient  issues and pieces of history. For example, on January 30, 2026, MLL is hosting its annual Dr. Betty Shabazz and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) Memorial Lecture. Running for seven years, the lecture celebrates the living legacies of these pivotal historical figures.  

Similarly, MLL established the Annual Imam Hussein Lecture on Social Justice. “We established this lecture to focus on social justice, and every year we’ve had remarkable, young, bright scholars from around the world reflect on the legacy of Imam Hussein,” Abdul-Rehman shared. “It was important for us to ensure that the voices of engaged Shia activists, artists, and scholars were not marginalized within Muslim communities,” he explained. 

In anticipation of Ramadan and Valentine’s Day, MLL is also hosting Dr. Martin Nguyen and Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman, leading scholars of Islamic intellectualism, for a February 11th lecture on the topic of love and celebrating the life of Malcolm X. On February 21, MLL is holding its annual pilgrimage to the graves of Dr. Betty Shabazz and Malcolm X. On April 6, MLL is hosting its Imam Hussein Lecture. “We have scholars and students coming from all over the country,” Abdul-Rehman said. 

“While the focus of MLL has been on self-identifying Muslim students, what we have found through the years is that our space is open to all faiths and to those who do not adhere to a specific faith,” Abdul-Rehman said. Focusing on service, history, and Islamic intellectual traditions, MLL is proud to have cultivated an environment where anyone can engage with the lectures and materials. “It has been important to provide spaces where students of all backgrounds can discuss and be given context on [pressing geopolitical issues],” Abdul-Rehman shared. He also stated that this year, MLL is in the process of reviewing its programming to continue crafting a rigorous curriculum and further building a network of Muslim mentors to facilitate the professional skill-building aspect of the program’s mission.  

MLL provides an organized space for students to discuss these pressing issues by bringing in speakers from countries struggling with conflict to discuss potential solutions. “We are living in a highly interconnected world where decisions taken in the United States, Europe, Africa, or elsewhere have an impact all over the world…  Part of our work is education [and] for students to have robust and critical conversations about these global issues,” Abdul-Rehman said. In the future, MLL is looking to create programs incorporating spiritual travel. Abdul-Rehman explained that the program is particularly excited about hosting pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam. 

In addition to lectures, workshops, and pilgrimages, MLL is a space where students can find community and support for their own projects and ideas. Abdul-Rehman shared that he views himself as an advisor to all of the students in the program, and he works to connect students with other mentors. To learn more about the Muslim Leadership Lab, additional articles can be found here and its Instagram, @yalemll, which regularly publicizes events. 

The Muslim Leadership Lab exemplifies the Grow pillar of Dwight Hall’s Engage, Grow, and Advance program delivery model, developing students’ intellectual, moral, civic, and creative capacities to the fullest through reading circles, conferences, lectures, and more.