(RNS) — Years before he became Yale’s first full-time Muslim chaplain, Imam Omer Bajwa was a graduate student and aspiring journalist who had little idea of what a chaplain does.
Then came September 2001.
“Our phones started ringing off the hook,” said Bajwa, who was involved with Cornell’s Muslim Student Association at the time. “We’re in Ithaca. There’s no mosque, no local Muslim leadership. All these high schools and public libraries and radio stations and college campuses are calling for panels on Islam and understanding 9/11… that was a pivotal moment.”
Energized by the teaching opportunities and interfaith engagement, he abandoned journalism to enroll in an Islamic studies doctoral program. But the academy soon began to feel too isolating. A few twists and turns later, he stumbled upon a perfect fit: Islamic chaplaincy.
Today, Bajwa is the director of Muslim life at Yale University, where he has been since 2008. With Muhammad A. Ali, Sondos Kholaki and Jaye Starr, Bajwa is also editor of the new book “Mantle of Mercy: Islamic Chaplaincy in North America,” a collection of 30 first-person accounts by a wide range of Muslim chaplains. The book captures a critical moment in a specialty that is steadily gaining momentum: Since 2010, at least four new graduate programs in Islamic chaplaincy have popped up across the U.S., and during the pandemic the decade-old Association of Muslim Chaplains doubled its membership to 234.
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