What is Umrah?
I know it’s the first thing a pilgrim does when he arrives at Mecca. Yes. Basically, the Umrah consists of walking seven times around the Kaaba, the building inside the grand mosque. We believe Hagar did that when she was looking for water for her son. What is it like returning to home after making the hajj? I think many people come back feeling spiritually very strengthened by the experience. It’s an indescribable feeling, and you want to keep that spirit alive. Everyone tries to do that to the best of their ability, to be as right and as dutiful as possible in all aspects of their life. And it definitely changes some people. How did you become an imam? What did you study, and with whom? I come from a family of imams. In the Muslim faith, a lot of Islamic knowledge is passed on from generation to generation. My grandfather is a scholar of Islam. And my father was an imam. They came from India — my father migrated to London in the ’70s, and I was born there. Then my father was offered
