Harvard Will Open New Muslim, Hindu Prayer Spaces After Years of Uneven Access

For years, Harvard’s only dedicated spaces for Muslim and Hindu worship were in a dormitory basement — but the University will open two new prayer spaces this fall following April recommendations from two internal task forces to overhaul its approach to religious life on campus.

The University will designate room on the Smith Campus Center’s second floor as a permanent musallah, a prayer space for Muslim affiliates to gather for daily worship and reflection. The new space will replace a temporary location on the third floor of Sever Hall and a smaller prayer room in the basement of Canaday Hall.

While the Sever space will be returned to Harvard College for general use, the location in Canaday will be repurposed for Harvard Dharma, a recognized student organization that maintains a Hindu prayer space, as attendance at their worship sessions continues to grow.

Shakira Ali ’28 — who serves as co-director of internal relations for the Harvard Islamic Society, a recognized student organization — said the creation of a permanent prayer space publicly signaled the University’s renewed commitment to its Muslim students.

“As a Muslim student, having a place where I can go to pray without scrambling for a space or worrying about where to lay my travel mat — I think it’s just such a relief,” she said. “It just reminds me that my faith is respected there, and it’s not something I would take for granted.”

Ali said that because the space in Sever was always temporary, it felt like Muslim students “were being pushed around from area to area.”

“Sometimes we would have prayers at the SOCH quad, and we would have to take the Crimson Cruiser, and go all the way there,” she said, referring to the Student Organization Center at Hilles, which is more than a 15-minute walk from the heart of campus. “And then sometimes we would have it at Sever, and it would just go back and forth.”

Muslim students at Harvard have said since 1995 that their space in the basement of Canaday is too cramped to accommodate daily prayers. The University’s Muslim chaplain, Khalil Abdur-Rashid, announced the permanent musallah’s creation in a Wednesday email to students on their mailing list.

Khalil wrote in an emailed statement that he was “truly grateful” for the new space and that he was already working on furnishing and decorating the musallah, including by installing a foot bath for ritual washing before prayer.

“We anticipate that the new prayer space will be a source of peace, spiritual upliftment and comfort for our campus Muslim community,” he wrote. “We are also optimistic that it will promote and contribute to a pluralistic environment on campus.”

Concerns about equity between religious spaces have persisted for years, with students and University chaplains both acknowledging limited and uneven access to dedicated worship areas on campus. But the war in Gaza has put Harvard under immense political pressure — and pushed University officials to focus on religious inclusion amid accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The announcement of the new prayer spaces as Harvard continues to grapple with the April reports from the University’s twin task forces on bias against Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates. Among many other recommendations, the task force on Islamophobia urged Harvard to create “permanent prayer areas for Muslims.”

Though efforts to establish a permanent musallah predated the task force recommendations, Khalil wrote that he was “grateful for their recommendations which support the direction the University was already discussing.”

Co-president of the Harvard Islamic Society Adam Latif ’27 said the decision to open a permanent musallah was “a great first step” in ensuring Muslim students feel represented on campus.

“I think it really helps with Muslim visibility on campus,” he said. “I’m sure other people in the community still feel that more can be done, but it’s at least a good concrete first step.”

And with the former space in Canaday being reallocated to Harvard Dharma, the group can better accommodate the growing number of Hindu students on campus, according to co-president Aarna Sitani ’27.

The group currently operates out of a different room in Canaday, which is much smaller than the former Muslim prayer room, Sitani said.

The basement room in Canaday Hall B that Hindu students have used as a prayer space for years. By Angela Dela Cruz

“I remember our first weekly prayer, there were so many people — so many incoming freshmen — and we were not able to fit everyone into the room,” she said. “We realized this is definitely not an environment that people should feel like they can practice their religious and cultural values in.”

“Super excited about that progress and really that the greater space won't turn people away from doing things that make them feel at home,” she added.

In the past, Harvard Dharma has restricted weekly aartis to undergraduates because there was not enough space to accommodate graduate students, too.

The new prayer spaces are part of a broader wave of changes to Harvard’s approach to religious life announced this summer amid ongoing federal accusations that it maintains a hostile environment for Jewish students.

The University deepened its ties to Israel in July by establishing a study abroad program with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and introducing a Harvard Medical School postdoctoral fellowship for Israeli scientists.

Harvard declared they would create new partnerships with Israeli universities as part of a January agreement, which settled antisemitism allegations just days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. That same week, it quietly resolved a lawsuit alleging anti-Palestinian bias — a settlement the University did not publicize.

Harvard has publicly committed to expanding Jewish and Israeli studies, but so far it has not announced similar commitments for academic programs on Islamic, Arab, or Palestinian history or culture. The Harvard School of Public Health broke off a partnership with a Palestinian university last winter.

Two days after Harvard announced the new partnerships in Israel, the University launched a new presidential initiative on interfaith engagement, which seeks to “foster respect for diverse identities, build relationships between communities, and encourage cooperation for the common good,” according to its website.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.