Imam Khalid Shahu has a proven record as a community builder. He is one of the founders of Apex Mosque in Apex, NC, where he has served in several capacities since 2009, including as Imam from 2011 to the present. In addition to leading prayers and religious services, he has substantial experience in counseling, interfaith networking, and developing programs for a wide range of audiences, including youth and converts.
Imam Khalid is originally from Morocco, where he obtained a B.A. degree in Islamic Studies and Linguistics and an M.A. degree in Linguistics. He moved to the United States in 1996 and obtained another MA and a PhD in 2011 from the City University of New York. He is fluent in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish, has strong public speaking skills in all four languages, and has served as a foreign language instructor at both the high school and college levels. In addition to serving the Apex Muslim community, he has also worked as a lecturer of Arabic language and culture at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for the past several years.
Imam Khalid’s religious training in the Islamic Sciences has come from both traditional and modern scholars, with whom he has studied since 1990. He is a student of Imam Abdessalam Yassin, Founder of the Islamic School of Thought “Justice and Spirituality.” Other scholars with whom he has studied include Shaykh Mohamed Abbadi, Shaykh Mokhtar Maghraoui, and Shaykh Mohamed Ben Yahya Ninowy. Islamic sciences which he has studied and is authorized to teach include Fiqh /Jurisprudence, Hadith, Seerah, and Tafseer/Interpretation of Quran.
