Imam

The Imam turned up at church this evening. I thought there were two in fact, you know, the uniform, but one was just there out of interest.

It was interesting. He was definitely the good face of Islam.
He had a Qu'ran written in Arabic, therefore it was back to front. The front cover, was on the back.
I think he was a bit wary of us. Every time he mentioned Jesus's name, he had to say, 'Peace be upon him,' but then, he said that after the name of any prophet.
Jesus is mentioned 25 times in the Qu'ran. Mohammed is mentioned 5 times.

He was keen to impress upon us that he was a Shia Muslim, and the other brothers - he was Iraqi - well, he didn't understand why they couldn't see the peaceful message of Islam. He would like to sit down and break bread with the Danish journalist and show him what real Muslims were like.
He was equally keen to impress upon us how much Mohammed respected women and exhorted his followers to value them. We asked if there were any women Imams and he assured us there were, although he seemed to be talking about learned people. I pushed him. He said there were women Imams as religious leaders, his own wife was one.

In other Muslim news, I received one of those forwarded e-mails explaining how much Islam was in the background of Barack Obama. I didn't forward it, or even pay it too much attention, except I thought to myself that this needed checking out, remembering the e-mail that did the rounds giving completely false information about Britain taking the Holocaust off the National Curriculum.
Indeed. By the time I got home, there was another forward from the same person with a refutation. None of it had been true, who'd have thought?

Anyway, better go, gotta watch 'Little Mosque on the Prairie'.