Ossama Bahloul

Both the imam families call and the chaplain on campus.

Dr. Ossama Bahloul is Resident Scholar of the Islamic Center of Nashville, where he has guided the community's religious life since 2016 and gives most of the Friday sermons. He is also Muslim Chaplain at Vanderbilt University, and he sits on the Fiqh Council of North America.

He holds a BA, an MA and a PhD from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the doctorate in Comparative Religions. Before Nashville he served as Imam of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro from 2008. He has spent more than sixteen years in interfaith work, including peer-reviewed research and university teaching.

That combination is unusual and it is the reason this conversation happened. Most people are one or the other: the imam families call first, or the chaplain trained to sit beside clinicians. He is both, and a seat on the Fiqh Council means the hardest questions a client brings have somewhere to go.