Harvard student helps focus the nebulous path of Muslim chaplains
In 2014, when the Islamic Society for Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) was seeking a new imam, it cast a wide net. The Roxbury center, the largest mosque in New England, convened a 17-person search committee that represented as many demographic facets of the community as possible, from immigrant mothers to middle school students. However, as this volunteer group began to plan and discuss what it wanted in an imam, or Muslim cleric, it faced a fundamental problem, a problem that Harvard is now facing as it begins its search for the University’s first Muslim chaplain. In the United States, at least, there are no determining criteria for a Muslim religious leader. For Nancy Khalil, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, this posed an interesting problem. Khalil, who has served as a Muslim chaplain at Wellesley College, studies the process of Muslim authority — specifically...