First of all: What is an Imam and who should be an Imam?

• An Imām is someone who leads the 5 daily prayers (Salaah) at the mosque.
• Ideally he should be a fully-qualified Islamic scholar and a role model for his congregation.
• He should have a fixed contract with clear aims and objective which can be reviewed regularly.
• He should be on a good salary in order to be dedicated to his job as community leader.
• The Imam is accountable to the public.

This issue we take a break from our usual Q & A with Shaykh Salim Ghisa and instead we bring to you 'The Revival Agony Aunt' section with sister Ruqayyah Waris Maqsood.

Asalamu Alaykum sister. I just got married, and me and my husband are not in good times but the problem is his mother is a controlling person and I am just falling away from him. As things were this bad... someone from my past comes in and I end up loving them.

In my year there are 6 Asians, and nearly every single day, we get a racist comment. We get ganged up on by other years, when there are only 5 of us girls together.

We tell the teachers, write statements and do everything we can, but after a week or two, everything is the same again, and it sometimes feels like the teachers don’t believe us and ignore us.

Before the half term, some yr.9’s videoed us and one ran past and pulled one of our scarves. They only do it coz we’re Muslims and we wear scarves, and sometimes during lessons, the whole class goes against us.

In a dark dark world there was a dark dark country. In the dark dark country there was a dark dark newspaper. In the dark dark offices of the dark dark newspaper, the dark dark Editor had a dark dark idea.

He decided to set up a dark dark competition to make some dark dark caricatures of the Prophet of Islam. His dark dark intentions being to test whether Muslims would be able to accept this dark dark vision.

Enough of the fairy tale! The Muslim reaction was anger. Understandably so. Yes some Muslims went too far with their protest by rioting, threatening, kidnapping and hijacking! However, the thing most non-Muslims did not understand was why the reaction was two months down the line.