In my book of poems entitled, The Bottle and The Bushman: Poems of The Prodigal Son, that was published in 1986, there is a poem (Exile 1, on page 30) in which I, in gratitude, pay homage to Canada “as a land kinder than home”.

And that is exactly what Canada has come to mean to countless Somalis who had to flee from Somalia, from their homeland, to Canada, like latter-day slaves risking life and limb for freedom from fear and famine.

So a few Christmases ago, like almost all Somalis and Canadians, I was shocked and outraged to read in the papers that a certain Somali mad Mullah of an Imam of a mosque in Toronto ordered Moslem Somali immigrants and Somali Canadians not to wish their Canadian Christian neighbours, friends, colleagues, Merry Christmas!

To do that the mad Mullah Imam maintained would be committing a mortal sin.

I could not believe the infinite stupidity of it all. I am still rankled by the rank ingratitude of that crazy Caliban, of that terrible Taliban of an Imam in Toronto.

For like the Bard, “I hate ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of vice whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood.”

If I could have, I would have had deported that mad Mullah Toronto Imam Hajji back to the hellhole he had hailed from.

No wonder our Prophet Muhammad, warned us Moslems that, “There are three agents that destroy religion: an ill-tempered scholar, a tyrannical leader, and an ignorant theologian.”

Sadly all three agents, particularly ignorant and fanatical fools, abound today in Islam; that is why Moslems keep on fleeing from the House of Islam and flocking to Canada like Canada geese; to a land kinder than the Abode of Islam; that is why it is so incumbent upon us Canadian Moslems who know better to speak out loud and bold and bear witness to our universal faith of utter surrender unto God, to our universal faith of concord and comity, to our universal faith of universal appeal that had Goethe exclaim in theopathy of rapture and ecstasy, “If this be Islam, do we not all live in Islam?”

Islam is a universal faith that is so latitudinarian in its tolerance that our Prophet Muhammad teaches us Moslems that, “There are as many ways to God as there are created souls.”

That is why the most popular Sufi poet today, Mohammed Ben Mohammed bin Hussein al-Balkhi, better known as Maulana Jalal-uddin Rumi, could testify with utter spiritual authority thus:  “I go into the Muslim mosque and the Jewish synagogue and the Christian church and I see one altar.”

This is the right Rumi and roomy Islam; this is my kind of Islamic creed; this is the kind of Islam I want to see preached and propagated and practiced in our Canada.

For this kind of Islam is not in conflict with what I like to call our Canada’s unofficial creed of liberal humanism penned by one of her most outstanding poets, Frank Scott---

The world is my country

The human race is my race

The spirit of man is my God

The future of man is my heaven.

In the spirit of this kind of Canadian Islam, and on behalf of the silent majority of Moslems the world over who subscribe to this kind of Rumi-roomy Canadian Islam, MERRY CHRISTMAS, CANADA!