University appoints Hindu and Muslim chaplains

The Office of Religious Life has hired the University’s first Hindu chaplain and its first full-time Muslim chaplain.

Sohaib Sultan has been chosen as the new coordinator for Muslim life. Sultan was the Muslim chaplain at Trinity and Wesleyan for four years and has also worked at Yale and written several books on Islam.

Vineet Chander will serve as the coordinator for Hindu life. Chander has served as a chaplain to Hindu groups at Rutgers and is a religious communications consultant for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. His position is a half-time, one-year trial, which may become a full-time position next year, Dean of Religious Life Alison Boden said in a University statement.

The chaplains will be responsible for promoting programming for each community, counseling students, participating in interfaith initiatives and leading or enabling worship of each religion, Boden said in an e-mail last April.

The appointments will both be effective Aug. 15.

Recognizing the need to expand

The new positions were created in response to the growth of Princeton’s Hindu and Muslim communities in the last decade.

“Our Friday prayers used to only gather about 10-20 [students] a couple years back,” Wasim Shiliwala ’09, president of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), said in an e-mail. “Now the numbers are up to around 40, even at times 50 students. As the Muslim population increases, it becomes more and more important that there be a figure on campus who can address their needs.”

Last year, Khalid Latif was appointed the University’s Muslim chaplain on a one-year, part-time contract as part of a pilot program in response to requests from many Muslim students. When the chaplain began working, nine students were involved in the program. By the end of the year, the number had increased tenfold.

“It was so successful that we now have established the position as a full-time, permanent job,” Boden explained in an e-mail in June. Having seen the improvements in the Muslim community with the presence of a chaplain, Hindu students requested the same opportunity, she said.

“We look forward to seeing if [it] will be just as successful,” she added.

Boden said these appointments were not made in the past because only a small number of students sought Hindu and Muslim spiritual guidance and because these communities do not have national networks that provide personnel at universities.

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The University also granted chaplaincy to Rabbi Eitan Webb of the Jewish organization Chabad in May, making Webb the third newly designed chaplain and the University’s second Jewish chaplain.