Emory University’s first Muslim chaplain, Rahimjon Abdugafurov, stepped into his new role last fall, but he was already a familiar face on campus.
Abdugafurov earned his PhD in Islamic civilizations studies at Emory in 2020 and has lectured on Islamic law at Emory School of Law, instructed in Arabic at Oxford College and taught courses in Middle Eastern and South Asian studies in Emory College of Arts and Sciences. Along with serving as chaplain, he will direct the Emory Interfaith Center’s interfaith academic partnerships.
Abdugafurov is excited for this homecoming after serving as Muslim chaplain and associate director of religious and spiritual life at Macalester College in Minnesota. He believes his life’s purpose is to contribute to greater understanding between Muslims and others.
“I am like a fish in the right water,” he says. “I am very excited. Some of my biggest hopes are to contribute to the interfaith community at Emory, to increase awareness of how spirituality and religion can promote harmony and coexistence, and to be there for Muslim students for one-to-one caregiving.”
Looking back on his first semester, he says he’s been able to do just that.
Supporting Emory’s multi-religious community
By hiring chaplains who are Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian and now Muslim, Emory has expanded support for spiritual life that reflects and represents the university’s multi-religious population today. The chaplains’ offices are in the Emory Interfaith Center, and their work operates through the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life.
The chaplains are resource persons for Emory’s educational and service work as they support their communities and bring students, faculty, staff and alumni together across differences. Interfaith engagement supports Emory’s educational mission of service to humanity.
“Chaplain Rahimjon supports Muslim students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and also helps the whole university to engage with Islamic traditions through prayers, holidays, educational events, community outreach, service projects and pilgrimage,” says the Rev. Dr. Gregory McGonigle, university chaplain and dean of religious life. “He has already developed vibrant Muslim life programs.”
Abdugafurov spent his first semester as chaplain building relationships with students and immersing himself in the Muslim and interfaith communities at Emory. In addition to providing pastoral care to students, he advises the Muslim Students Association on its programming and spiritual wellbeing and helps facilitate the Inter-Religious Council, a weekly gathering where students from different faith traditions discuss their religious backgrounds in an open dialogue.
“The community is working together and coming together,” Abdugafurov says.
He has also collaborated with other Emory departments to host culturally enriching events. In September, he played a key role in welcoming a South Asian Sufi music concert with the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies — an event he says was a personal highlight of his first semester.
“He’s been very busy,” McGonigle says. “I think he has been the perfect person to bring a deep understanding of Emory to the work of being our first Muslim chaplain. It’s been beautiful to see the way he has renewed and built relationships person-by-person.”
Emory’s Muslim community is one of its most active religious communities. In addition to students, it includes many among Emory faculty, staff and alumni. The community’s support “was certainly a significant factor in why I chose Emory,” says first-year student Suhayb Ahmedin, who plans to major in computer science and Arabic. “Being able to find a community you can ‘plug in’ to is crucial when acclimating to the challenges of college, and I am glad to say I have found that community with Emory's Muslims. They have allowed me to start to weather college's ups and downs and supplied crucial relationships I hope will last long after I graduate.”
Another active Muslim community member is Islamic studies PhD student Kareem Rosshandler, who says Abdugafurov “is in an ideal position to bridge the gap between Muslim students and the university …. As an Emory graduate, the chaplain is in a position to help Muslim students navigate university life from the perspective of their own faith tradition. He is very energetic and is wasting no time building consensus and student-led programming.”
Emory Muslim Chaplain Rahimjon Abdugafurov prepares to lead the congregation in Friday Prayers in Cannon Chapel.
Photo by Becky Stein.
Focus on humanity and holistic care
Abdugafurov came to the United States to pursue graduate education after growing up in Uzbekistan as the seventh of 11 children.
His early life experiences growing up in the Soviet Union have stayed with him. One of the Soviet Union's main agricultural areas was Uzbekistan, and it required its people — even a 7-year-old future Emory chaplain — to work the fields. As a chaplain, "I remind people of the value of our freedoms and our national independence," Abdugafurov says.
Over the summer, he will lead a group of students to his home country through the Journeys of Reconciliation program, an interfaith travel learning program that explores how people from different faith backgrounds live and work together. Ira Bezdow, executive director of the Emory Purpose Project, will co-lead the trip.
Abdugafurov‘s experiences in Uzbekistan and beyond led him to a lens of humanism — a commitment to the value and freedom of all human beings — and to his doctoral thesis, “The Islamic Humanism of Abd al-Karim al-Jili,” a Muslim Sufi mystic from the 1300s.
“Jili’s views on human centrality, human equality, human freedom, and human potential, were revolutionary for his time,” Abdugafurov says. “The way he interpreted the Islamic sacred sources and offered alternative discourses on the equality of all human beings regardless of their social or religious characteristics continue to remain important today.”
As a chaplain, Abdugafurov now focuses on holistic care; he usually opens an individual pastoral care meeting by asking about a person’s diet, exercise and sleep patterns.
“I put the human even before religion,” he says. "A person can be spiritual and human at the same time, but they are human fundamentally, and all humans are created equal regardless of their religion or beliefs.”
Interfaith academic work
While his academic focus was on Islamic studies, Abdugafurov also completed a graduate certificate in Jewish studies. He created a documentary film on the dispersed Jewish population of the ancient Uzbek city of Bukhara, a historically significant center of Islamic intellectual life.
“Rahimjon impressed me with his intellectual curiosity, particularly his interest in learning about a diversity of faith traditions,” says Eric Goldstein, associate professor of history and Jewish studies and former director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies.
“This wide range of interests and training will prepare him well for the work of an Emory chaplain, which entails both working with a specific faith group and in interfaith contexts,” Goldstein adds. “Rahimjon is also such a warm, friendly, and outgoing person. I know he will connect well with Emory students and become an important factor in university life.”
“I cannot think of a better person to serve the Emory community in this capacity,” notes Devin J. Stewart, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and chair of Middle Eastern and South Asian studies. “Rahimjon is enthusiastic, learned and considerate. He has extensive experience in many regions of the Islamic world, and he embodies a humane approach to religion that fits in with the liberal arts mission of Emory.”
While he was a doctoral student, Abdugafurov was a teaching and research assistant for Deanna Ferree Womack, associate professor of history of religions at the Candler School of Theology.
“I greatly admire the combination of pastoral caregiving, pedagogical skill and intellectual rigor that he brings to his work,” says Womack, who also directs the Master of Arts in Religion and Leadership program. “In addition to his experience as an imam and a chaplain, Dr. Abdugafurov is a bridge-builder from whom all of us at Emory can learn much.”
Emory Muslim Chaplain Rahimjon Abdugafurov led a visit to the Al-Farooq Masjid in Atlanta as part of the WISE Interfaith Pre-Orientation program in August 2024.
Courtesy of Gregory McGonigle.
Journeys of Reconciliation to Uzbekistan
Abdugafurov says Uzbekistan is a unique kind of melting pot. Now an independent country, it was once a key part of the Silk Road, the Macedonian Empire under Alexander the Great, the Tang Dynasty of China, the Arab Caliphate, the Mongol Empire and — most recently — the Soviet Union.
Journeys of Reconciliation began in 1986 and was one of Emory’s first study-abroad programs. Abdugafurov and Bezdow are both looking forward to adding another chapter to its history and co-leading this year’s trip.
McGonigle says participants will see firsthand how Uzbekistan’s cultural and religious diversity positively influences people living and working together.
That idea is also modeled in the trip’s leadership. In addition to his role with the Emory Purpose Project, Bezdow is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. He says the trip will allow students to “move beyond conceptual discussions about faith, culture and identity and have genuine encounters in different communities to learn how people live together.”
“Uzbekistan was on the edges of different civilizations, and it was a place of intercultural learning, mixing and interaction,” McGonigle says. “One theory is that that led to more open interpretations of religious traditions because they were interacting with each other.”
The group will visit mosques, synagogues and churches and meet with local leaders to learn more about Uzbekistan’s heritage. Abdugafurov looks forward to sharing with students the country’s vibrant cultural offerings — from the famous blue tiles that curl around ancient domes to the intricate processes of silk weaving and paper making. He’s particularly excited about enjoying some local delicacies he hasn’t tasted in a while, such as a proper serving of plov, a hearty rice dish. He also notes that Uzbekistan has more than 100 different kinds of bread.
“We are traveling in May,” he adds with a smile, “which is cherry and strawberry season.”
McGonigle says that Abdugafurov’s knowledge of the people, landscape and history of the country will help make the trip a special experience for students.
“I feel that travel and intercultural learning is always the most meaningful with the opportunity to build relationships,” McGonigle says. “The fact that Chaplain Rahimjon is from there, that he has preexisting relationships that will be part of the trip and that he has emerged from that culture to be an interfaith leader himself will make it inspiring to have him as a guide.”
“I hope students will take away that people from different religious traditions can live together harmoniously,” Abdugafurov says. “It will be a life-transforming experience.”