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October 5, 2007
ISNA’s first president Ilyas Ba-Yunus passed away
Dr. Ilyas Ba-Yunus (1932-2007), a pioneering Muslim American sociologist, a founding member of Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the first president of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), passed away on Oct. 5 in Miami, Florida. He was president of ISNA during 1983-85. He was one of the founder members of MSA in 1963.
A pioneer of the Muslim American community and an advocate for protecting the Muslim family and community, he was honored with the ISNA Community Service Recognition Award in 2006. An American flag was flown in his honor at the United States Capitol.
Ba-Yunus, born in Aurangabad, Hyderabad, was a 1960 Fulbright scholar at the University of Minnesota, where he completed an MA in geography. He then went on to earn an MA in sociology (University of Illinois) and a Ph.D. in sociology (Oklahoma State University). Over the years, he established standards for studying Muslim Americans.
An active member of the University of Minnesota’s Muslim association right after his arrival, he recalled for “Islamic Horizons” in 2003 how the MSA was founded: “It was a stormy and icy morning, the first day of January 1963, when change came for the Muslim American community. The Muslim student group--at that time the Islamic Cultural Society--at the University of Minnesota had just received an invitation from the Muslim Student Association of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)--another of the few Muslim student groups scattered across the nation at the time--asking us to join an effort to form a national organization of Muslim students in the U.S. and Canada. It would be called ‘the MSA’--Muslim Students Association. Along with 13 other local Muslim student organizations from around the country, we answered the challenge.”
Ba-Yunus spent nearly all of his free time working for MSA, traveling to various campuses, lecturing and organizing programs nationwide. In 1969, he was elected MSA vice president, but soon had to assume the presidency when the then-president was debilitated in an auto accident.
After completing his Ph.D, Ba-Yunus began teaching at Bradley University. Among his proposals and projects was a report advocating the establishment of a community-based organization to succeed MSA, as more Muslim students were finishing their studies and settling in North America. Out of this discussion came the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an umbrella organization consisting of the MSA, the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, the Islamic Medical Association, and other Muslim organizations.
In 1972, Ba-Yunus settled into his career, teaching at the State University of New York at Cortland as a tenured professor until his retirement in 2003.
As ISNA’s first president (1983-85), he oversaw the organization’s earliest growth and formative periods while living at the headquarters in Plainfield, IN. Since then, he served on its Majlis al-Shura board in various capacities, most recently as the chairman of the Islamic Media Foundation (IMF). He also started the ISNA Matrimonial Referral Service, which emerged directly out of his research on divorce among the Muslim community in North America.
Many of Ba-Yunus' research and publications focused on the demographics and sociology of Muslims in North America. In 1989, he helped develop the curriculum of the International Islamic University (IIU) in Malaysia. He also traveled to Turkey numerous times to discuss his writings on Islamic sociology. During his career, he wrote six books; was published in several others; and contributed to numerous publications, journals, and magazines, among them “Islamic Horizons.” His most recent book, “Muslims in the United States (Greenwood Press: 2006), co-authored with Kassim Kone, was formally introduced at the 44th ISNA Convention, where he spoke during the "Meet the Author" session. He was in the process of completing his final edits for his latestbook, “Ideological Dimensions of Islam,” co-authored with his son Asad, which has yet to be published.
His most recent achievement was the formation of the ISNA House of Community Representatives, a body meant to increase the direct participation of affiliated Muslim communities in the ISNA Majlis al-Shura.
He was survived by Sayeda, his wife of thirty-nine years, his son Asad, and his two-year old granddaughter Hafsah.
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