From Religion News Service
by Julie Poucher Harbin
(RNS) Many of the country’s most prestigious universities have hired Muslim chaplains in recent years to offer spiritual support to their Muslim students. Middlebury College, one of America’s oldest liberal arts schools, outmatched them all.
The small rural Vermont school hired Beau Latif Scurich and his wife, Naila Baloch, in the summer of 2014 to share the full-time Muslim chaplaincy position.
The 30-somethings, who were previously chaplains at Tufts and Northeastern universities, are the first married couple to share a full-time Muslim chaplaincy position at a U.S. college.
Baloch is a religion and astrophysics graduate with a master’s in theological studies who grew up in a mixed Sunni-Shia household in Pakistan; Scurich is an American Muslim convert from California with a degree in Islamic studies and Arabic.
They met in Northern California four years ago at the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism and were married in 2012.
“As a pair they bring a great mix to the table, because their own journeys represent in particular ways what some of our own students are experiencing,” said Laurie Jordan, chaplain of the college. “Naila was an international student at Williams College so she knows what it is like to come to a small rural school from a far away country and try to navigate something completely different from the large urban setting where she grew up, and where Islam is the cultural norm and background for daily life. Beau on the other hand went to a California high school and is an American convert to Islam — so he is familiar with the kind of backgrounds and experiences of our domestic students who are Muslim.”
Baloch said they don’t share the same views on everything, and they have to make sure one doesn’t overshadow the other. Scurich said they often ran meetings and attended events together this year, but admitted they are working on curbing overwork by dividing their responsibilities and their time more equitably.
