With appreciation  to my dear friend Imam Bilal Saleem and his wife, of Jacksonville, who invited us to join them for the weekend, my wife and I enjoyed our most beautiful U.S. Independence Day in memory. Imam Saleem, whose deceased father was from New Providence island, home of the Bahama islands’ capital and commercial center, Nassau, provided a reminder of how much more one can enjoy a new and different place with someone who knows it intimately, as he showed us all around.

From the Friday congregational prayer, or Salatul Jummah, at the Jamaa’ Ahlus Sunnah Bahamas Mosque; to the Atlantis resort, an engineering marvel; to the fresh seafood and other local specialties; to the distinctive architechture, particularly the church architecture; to the warm, multi-talented and resourceful Bahamian people, including his relatives, I’m grateful for the visit. It was a feast for body, mind and spirit. Here are more scenes:

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“We need to connect more with the history and the spirit of our brothers and sisters that preceded us in faith. Yes, I’m talking about the Christians.” — Imam Faheem Shuaibe

My good friend, Imam Faheem Shuaibe of Masjidul Waritheen in Oakland, CA, has long been one of my favorite teachers. He is knowledgeable and scholarly yet a down-to-earth Muslim, as seen in these seven paragraphs I transcribed from his Jummah khutba (or Friday prayers sermon as today’s media would call it), of July 3, 2009:

“We need to connect more with the history and the spirit of our brothers and sisters that preceded us in faith. Yes, I’m talking about the Christians.

“Why do you think Imam Mohammed wanted us to have a relationship —wants us to have a relationship with the Focolare? I know he wants us and wanted us to be influenced by the spirit of love and obedience that they showed to their scripture and to their prophet and to their leader.

“These are people who by and large — I’m sure they have fakes in their group too — but in the main it represents people who are, ‘I’m going to live the life that Jesus lived. I’m going to love. I’m going to give. I’m going to be the first to love. I’m going to be the first to give.’ These are games that they play when they get up every day.

“A Muslim can learn a lot from a Christian. Prophet Muhammad (s) he said, ‘In the end, myself and Jesus will be seen like this’ (holding up two fingers as one). Now some people take that literally and say ‘OK, he’s gonna come down in Damascus, and there Jesus is gonna be, he gonna have this long sword, gonna break crosses, gonna kill the swine.’ OK, you keep working with that.

“But there’s another potential interpretation of that. Breaking the cross is not an abusive thing; it means the mystery that’s been in it is going to no longer be in effect. Breaking the cross means breaking the riddle, solving the puzzle. Slaying the swine, it means vulgarity in religion. There’s some vulgar things that people say about G-d. Or say in the name of G-d.

“Well when Isa, as we really understand him, returns, he puts an end to vulgarity in religion, and he puts an end to the mystery. And it’s not the man that there’s so many pictures of in this world; that’s not the one. It’s the original human nature aligned with the cause of G-d inspired by the revelation of G-d. That’s when you’ve got Jesus. He’s already returned.

“So it means that we have to have a greater enthusiasm and faith in scripture, like the sincere Christians.”