Source: Hartford Courant
Like the famous chaplains who defined Yale throughout its 300-year history, Shamshad Sheikh stands ready with a reassuring word or a religious article for inquisitive college students looking for divine counsel.
However, the words from the holy book Sheikh quotes and the prayer beads she hands out are quite different from the support offered by her predecessors at the Ivy League college, which was, after all, founded as a Christian divinity school in 1701.
Sheikh, 48, uses phrases from the Koran for emphasis and usually has a set of blue Subha in her pocket for students to use in salat - the five daily prayers in which the 33 beads are used to repeat the 99 names for God, including the Wise, the Compassionate, the Merciful and the Good.
"Every day I try to do one thing that will make a difference in someone's life," said Sheikh.
Late last spring, Yale hired two associate chaplains in a groundbreaking move. The first, Callista Isabelle, a graduate of the Divinity School and a Lutheran, fell in line with Yale's Christian roots. But the second, Shamshad Sheikh, represented a historic choice for the school: She is Yale's first Muslim associate chaplain, and one of very few Islamic women chaplains in the world.