The Muslim Inter-Scholastic Tournament (MIST) consists of annual Regional Tournaments for high school students in the United States and Canada that take place in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, DC, Philadelphia, New York City, Florida, Houston, Southern California, Richmond, Nashville, Northern California, and Toronto. The winners from each Regional Tournament qualify to compete at the annual National Tournament.
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History
MIST was the brainchild of Shazia Siddiqi, a teenage freshman at the University of Houston who had a vision to start a tournament combining many aspects of the academic arena, including art, writing, and speech, that would bring high school students together from around the nation to develop leadership, promote communication, and inspire creativity while gaining an understanding of Islam and Muslims.
In February 2002, Siddiqi and her core team of volunteers at the University of Houston and alumni of the Muslim Students' Association at the University of Texas, Austin, implemented the first MIST with 118 students from Houston, Austin, and Dallas. Due to its success, other activists from around the United States expressed interested in bringing MIST to their cities. In 2003, Rasha El-Haggan worked with Shazia to create DCMIST in 2003 which encompassed the Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC region. Together they modified MIST by adding and refining many competitions that exist today. MIST next expanded to Atlanta via Ahmed Salim and Boston via Daniel Jou in 2004, New York via Maneeza Dawood in 2006, and Detroit via Shazia Siddiqi and Toronto via Hamzah Moin in 2008. In 2010, a new region was founded by Saarah Jafrey in Irvine, California. MIST's first National Tournament was held in Houston in 2006 and consisted of students who were ranked among the top five winners from each Regional Tournament. National tournaments have also been held in Washington DC, Toronto, Detroit and Atlanta. MIST currently has over 4,000 high school participants across North America.
Tournament
The tournament lasts two-three days, ending with the Awards Ceremony on the final night. MIST currently features 31 different competitions. The competitions consist of six different categories.
In addition to competitions, the tournament features an educational program full of workshops and activities. Both the competitions and workshops concentrate on the year’s theme, which is selected for timeliness and importance.