What do Imams and soccer have in common?

Originally posted on Dr. Hamid Slimi's Facebook Page on January 15, 2019.

What do Imams and soccer have in common?

Mahdi Tirkawi is the imam at Mosquée Al Rawdah in Montreal. 

Muslim Link interviewed him about being a young imam in Montreal, Quebec.

Muslim Link interviewed him about the theme of this year’s conference and the lessons he has learned from working closely with the Muslim community of Quebec City after the tragic mosque shooting that left six men dead, and several injured.

The Council of Imams of Ottawa-Gatineau and the United Muslim Organizations of Ottawa-Gatineau are raising funds to present to CHEO on behalf of the Muslim community, live during their annual Telethon on CTV Ottawa this weekend, June 4-5.

Sheikh Daood Butt will be speaking at the I.LEAD Conference on April 16th. Sheikh Butt received his B.A. in Da'wah and Usool ad-Deen from the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia. In 2015, he received the Imam of the Year Award at MuslimFest from DawaNet. Born and raised in Montreal to a Pakistani father and Portuguese mother, the married father of two currently lives and teaches in Mississauga, but often travels internationally to speak on Islam.

In early December, local imams, along with other faith leaders, attended a workshop at the South Nepean Muslim Community (SNMC) mosque exploring the intersection of mental illness and the law. The workshop was presented by Connecting Ottawa as part of The Spirit of the Law, a provincial project run by Interfaith Initiatives for Civic Engagement (IICE) and funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario. The project aims to work with faith communities to ensure that people living with mental illness who come in to conflict with the law can receive support by ensuring that faith communities and legal professionals are taking a holistic approach to their care.

Imam Mohammed Badat was born and raised in Toronto, Canada to parents who emigrated from Gujarat, India in the early 1970s. His family grew up near their local masjid in York region. “The masjid was our playground growing up,” he shared. Imam Badat began his Islamic Studies there, memorizing Quran and being tutored by the resident imam.

So much has been written about the recent Senate Report , particularly the suggestion of “certifying imams”. The “Certifying Imams” controversy comes from Recommendation 9 of the Senate Report which states that “The federal government work with the provinces and the Muslim communities to investigate the options that are available for the training and certification of imams in Canada.”