Columnist Caille Millner writes about Zaytuna College in this week’s San Francisco Chronicle.

It’s a sickening cycle that echoed again this week with the Boston Marathon bombing: The unexplained terrorist attack, the unreflective accusations hurled toward any Muslims within reach, the unprovoked attacks and epithets, the bang of the revenge drum.

This familiar pattern doesn’t make me feel optimistic, but perhaps a small school here in the Bay Area - Zaytuna, the nation’s first four-year Muslim liberal arts college - can offer us a sliver of hope.

Author Scott Korb (who teaches at the New School and New York University, and is an acquaintance of mine) has written a new book about the fascinating and difficult first year of the school, “Light Without Fire: The Making of America's First Muslim College.” Since I’ve been reading it, these issues had been percolating in my mind even before Monday’s terrible events.

Read more here.