Dr. Tamim Saidi, a Muslim chaplain for local Twin Cities hospitals and the resident scholar for the Islamic Resource Group (IRG), has been contracted to help support Muslim students in their religious and spiritual lives while at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
“It will be a blessing not only for our Muslim students but for our university community as a whole to benefit from Dr. Saidi’s gentle pastoral presence and very thoughtful contributions to interreligious dialogue in the coming year,” said Father Chris Collins, SJ, ’93, vice president for mission at St. Thomas.
A refugee from Afghanistan, Saidi was forced to leave his homeland and family behind to flee to Pakistan before coming to Minnesota as a teenager in 1990.
“I came straight to Minnesota because I had family here,” Saidi said. “I had my maternal uncle, who had come here in the ’70s and then even before him, his uncle had come here in the mid-’60s.”
Saidi earned his Master of Divinity from Bayan Islamic Graduate School, affiliated with the Chicago Theological Seminary, and he completed a two-year multireligious fellowship program at Collegeville Institute where he analyzed similarities and differences in the Bible and Islamic teachings.
He serves as a volunteer imam and delivers weekly sermons at multiple local mosques around the Twin Cities, as well as conducts weddings, funerals and other rituals.
Members of the St. Thomas community may be familiar with Saidi, as he has been part of Encountering Islam, an initiative in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Theology at St. Thomas that fosters mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims through building bridges of understanding and breaking stereotypes and misconceptions of Islam.
In addition to being an imam, Saidi is a pharmacist. He received his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Minnesota.
A self-proclaimed “soccer dad,” Saidi balances his profession and being a husband and father of four. He is also a counselor for Muslim Youth of Minnesota.
As a result of his commitment to service, Saidi was selected as one of 24 Bush Fellows out of 758 highly qualified candidates from across the Midwest region for a 2018 Bush Fellowship, which recognizes exceptional leaders driven to help change their communities.
He also sits on the board of CAIR-MN and has held board positions with the NorthWest Islamic Community Center (NWICC) and Masjid Al Kareem, a mosque in Plymouth.
