There's an old Indian folk tale about a conversation between an imam and a parishioner businessman who happens to be a financial benefactor of the imam's religious school (madrassah).
'Imam Sahib, please explain to me why our imams preach such impractical nonsense?'
The imam's students, sporting smaller turbans and shorter beards, grumbled at the parishioner's rudeness. After calming them down, the imam responded to the query.
'It is true. We do talk impractical nonsense. But tell me this. You have two sons, one smart and the other a bit slow. Which would you send to Oxford to study medicine, and which to my madrassah to study religion?'
In many 'ethnic' and 'migrant' Australian Muslim communities, religion isn't a high priority and religious people were regarded as the fish mainstream society rejected. My peers and I in the Urdu-speaking community were taught to read the Qur'an in Arabic, after which we plunged into calculus and Shakespeare. Out of respect, the scripture was placed on the top shelf. Out of indifference, it was rarely taken down.
If we weren't heading off overseas during the summer holidays, we packed our bags for the national Muslim youth camp. For many of us, it was the only time we got to meet Muslim kids outside our parents' ethnic circle.
My first camp was at the end of year 10 in the Christmas/New Year of 1985/86. It was the first time I discovered the existence of white-skinned Muslims from Turkey, Albania and (what was then) Yugoslavia. Even many of the Lebanese and Syrians had white skin, light brown or red hair and green eyes.
Among the European-looking Muslims was an older gentleman who led the prayers and spoke to us afterwards in crisp English. We knew of him as Sheikh Fehmi or Imam Fehmi. Strangely, his surname was el-Imam, and I wondered whether I should address him as Imam Imam (or even Imam squared!).
"He had seen it all before. He explained to me that the first person to be judged on the Day of Judgment was a martyr who would be sent to hell because his intention was to die for glory and bravado."
Unlike the Indian imams of folktale and Sydney's Indo-Pakistani reality, Fehmi spoke to us about very practical issues. He spoke in fluent English. He didn't need an interpreter. He spoke at our level. And unlike the imported imams at our mosques, who often were here on short-term visas and completely beholden