Imam Ammar Abdul Rahman has been appointed as the Fordham University director of Muslim life at Campus Ministry. Rahman comes from the Interfaith Center of New York, where he worked on initiatives such as arranging shelter for asylum seekers. He spent the last 12 years serving the Bronx Muslim community with a focus on youth engagement.
Growing up in Ghana, Rahman comes from a long family of Imams and Muslim scholars.
“I grew up in a household of Imams. I learned and studied, first under my mom, and then I studied under my grandfather,” Rahman said. “I was taught every book that my grandpa’s students would learn. I got to learn with them, as I would sit in a circle whenever they were learning.”
It was after Rahman’s move to America that he pursued formal leadership. After becoming an Imam, he began to serve the Bronx Muslim community, particularly in youth and community engagement. In addition to being the director of student life at Fordham, Rahman is also the director of engagement and youth activities at Al Haram Masjid, a Bronx mosque.
Working primarily with youth, Rahman’s works to young people’s connections to their faiths, especially in their struggles to fit in while being openly Muslim.
“I realize that there is a disconnect between the young Muslims and Muslim identity, right? A lot of them either didn’t know much about praying or Islam, or they knew it, but they were too shy to be a Muslim. And it was somehow that if you’re Muslim, you cannot be American, and if you’re American, you cannot be Muslim. I made the goal myself to bridge the gap between being American and being a Muslim,” he said.
Rahman was drawn to Fordham because of its engagement in the Bronx community such as Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) programs such as the annual Back-to-School Festival. He became directly connected with Fordham through working with them on community engagement programs.
“Fordham has been engaged and involved in the communities around Fordham,” said Rahman. “I was involved with the Gambian Youth Organization which is a local non-profit that works directly with community members to provide education and the resources — that’s how I learned about what Fordham does.”
When working with students at Fordham, Rahman seeks to encourage them in their Muslim faith throughout the challenges and setting of a university. He also believes in encouraging respectful, inter-faith dialogue and coexistence between the various faiths here at Fordham.
“My work with the youth has always been to empower youth to be who they are holistically, while still being unapologetically Muslim. Especially in a university setting, it’s also very, very important that people who have faith to be able to express it without [being] shame oriented,” he explained.
“The other thing is just having a strong intellectual ability to coexist with people who you may disagree with in the realm of multi-faith dialogue… I’ve had the experience of working within that community for a long time. I’ve got to learn a thing or two that I think I could bring on board here at Fordham, modeling what it means to disagree with someone. That is something very key to my vision and my goal here at Fordham, so that people can be able to survive through this polarized society that we find ourselves in.”
Rahman has worked with organizations such as the Muslim Students Association to organize prayers open to the Fordham community — a Halaka (Arabic for circle) prayer on Mondays and a Jumma (Arabic for Friday) prayer. This Monday, they held their first Halaka prayer in the Campbell Tower.
Rahman is active in outreach with the Fordham community, openly inviting students and faculty to speak with him one-on-one.
“I introduce myself to them and say, ‘Hey, my name is Ammar, I’m the new Imam. I would like to talk to you.’ And I invite them to come for coffee, for tea, whenever I’m around, and they stop by and enjoy the conversation,” he explained.
“I feel like the first step for what I’m going to do is creating that strong, meaningful relationship between myself and the community that I’ll be serving. And I just want to plug in here that the work that I’m doing here is not exclusively for Muslim students — all our events are open to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, so long as folks will be respectful and observe whatever rules that come with the activity we’re doing.”
Looking forward, Rahman wants to strengthen the Muslim community at Fordham even further.
“The goal would be to create a very vibrant Muslim community on campus that all Muslims feel a community where they belong, regardless of their level of faith or their level of practice.”
