The Goldziher Prize, a biannual award for excellence in the coverage of Muslim Americans by an individual or team of U.S. journalists, expands to include smaller publications

As in 2017 and 2019, this year’s prizes will go to national journalists and journalism students, but now the Goldziher team is reaching out to community journalists and contributors to organizational outlets, whose primary mission is not necessarily news reporting. The prize describes these journalists as “paid or unpaid contributors to local or national publications, such as church and synagogue newsletters, Lions Clubs, Boy Scouts…” the new category includes neighborhood-level media, as well as small blogs and podcasts.

The application portal opened on December 15, 2021, and applications will be accepted until January 31, 2022. 

The award was created by John Kiser, a businessman turned historian and writer. One of Kiser’s books helped inspire the 2010 movie “Of Gods and Men,” which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Deeply disturbed by attacks on Muslim Americans after September 11, 2001, Kiser, who is Chair of The William and Mary Greve Foundation, created the Goldziher Prize and named it for a Nineteenth-Century Jewish scholar of Islamic jurisprudence. The prize has been awarded biannually since 2010 to scholars, activists and journalists whose work counters rising fear and hateful actions toward Muslim Americans.

For 2022, six Goldziher Prizes will be awarded.

Two for professional journalists:

• One prize for written word: $10,000
• One prize for audio or video: $10,000 

Two for contributors to a community or an organization’s media outlet:

• Two prizes for stories or editorials in any medium, $2,000 each.

Two for journalism students:

• Two prizes for stories or editorials in any medium, $500 each.

Instructions and rules for applicants, information about the prize, judges and staff, as well as a form to submit questions, can be found at the prize’s website, Goldziher.org.

The full list of prizewinners to date:

• Leila Fadel, for NPR’s radio stories Muslims in America: A New Generation
• Hannah Allam, for Buzzfeed News stories, ranging from Here’s What Happens When Someone Burns Down Your Mosque to Inside A Summer Camp Where Kids Figure Out How To Be Muslim In America,
• Aymann Ismail, for Slate Magazine’s video series Who’s Afraid of Aymann Ismail?
• Sana Ullah, for her photography series Places You’ll Pray
• Journalism students Zainab Sultan and Si Chen, for their documentary film Worthy of Love
• Joshua Seftel, for the series of short non-fiction films, “The Secret Life of Muslims.” 
• Samuel Freedman, for a selection of columns in The New York Times
• Robin Wright, for her New Yorker series, “Muslim Heroes, Writers, Artists and an Athlete in America,”
• Activists — Daoud Abudiab (2016), Bernhard Werthan (2016)
• Scholars — Josef Meri (2014), Rabbi Burton Visotzky (2012), Mark Cohen (2010)

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