The Imam of Time, A Novel of Then and Now

IMAGINE YOU ARE in the raging streets of Tehran, not with the people who are demonstrating against a brutally repressive government, but you are there against the people.

Your name is Ahmed, and you are part of the force sent to crush the demonstrators, but you do not want to be there. The violence sickens you. People are being beaten. A woman near you is shot and falls to the pavement, blood streaming from her mouth. As she lays there dying, she looks at you as if pleading to understand why her life has been taken from her.

The demonstrators surround you and shove you because you are one of the oppressors, but you throw your helmet and truncheon to the ground, and you cry out, “This is not Islam!” You keep shouting it, and finally you flee from the violent streets. You return to the town of your birth, wishing you could experience authentic Islam—the Islam of Muhammad, and praying for the appearance of the Imam of Time, the awaited Islamic savior who will bring peace and justice to the world.

Author F.W. Burleigh gives Ahmed his wish by sending him into 7th century Arabia, first as a slave and then as Muhammad’s scribe. He soon gets the experience he longed for, but it is not what he was anticipating, for he has entered into a world of stomach-turning violence caused by the very founder of the religion he was raised in. He ultimately rebels against Muhammad, seeing him a false prophet pushing a dangerous ideology. He is about to be slain when he returns to present day Iran through the Well of the Mahdi in Iran, the very well from which Shi’ites await the return of the long-hidden Imam of Time. He is their Imam of Time, but what he has to say to his contemporaries brings the rage of Iran’s clerical rulers down on him.

We invite you to join Ahmed in his journey into 7th century Arabia and in the startling events that occur in Iran after his emergence from the Well of the Mahdi as the awaited Imam of Time.