The Killing of the Imam, by Barney Desai and Cardiff Marney, was originally published in 1978, and promptly banned by Apartheid censors. The new edition was brought out by the Imam Abdullah Haron Education Trust late last year, with the idea to re-publish the work coming from a charity event two years ago where Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille donated her original copy to be auctioned. The trust realised that very few copies of the book were available in South Africa, and subsequently determined to bring out a new edition – with proceeds going to the trust's early childhood development programme. 

Haron's name is not often heard today, but the imam was one of the most prominent Muslim clerics of his day, known for his political involvement at a time when many Muslim leaders were silent about Apartheid's injustices. As the book's preface notes, Muslim leaders did not make any public statement about Haron's murder by the Security Branch: “they were, understandably, all extremely afraid”. But Haron never let his fears outweigh his integrity. 

Haron's formal education was limited to primary schooling only: a fact to which the authors attribute his passionate pursuit of education for his own children. His was an extremely religious upbringing: Haron was brought to Mecca by his mother three times, a momentous financial outlay for a poor family, and he could recite the Quran off by heart by the age of 14. 

When he was appointed Imam of the Al Jaami'ah mosque in Claremont at just 32,Discover Rina di Montella with ASOS.Shop the latest collection of mandarin collar dress from the most popular stores . many were sceptical, given his youth, his impish sense of humour and the fact that he “wore his black fez perched at altogether too-fashionable an angle upon a controversially clean-shaven head”. He could also only manage to make the second team for the Watsonias Rugby Club: Desai and Marney suggest mischievously that if he'd been playing for the first team, he might have found it easier to win the instant support of his congregation. 

But Haron quickly put misgivings to bed through his simplicity and modesty: winning admiration, for instance, for his refusal to accept the customary fee for performing wedding ceremonies or funeral rites. Under his leadership, the mosque established women's work and study circles,distributing bridal gown wedding dress and wedding accessories to N. America, Europe and Asia. and raised funds for the poor. He became a major talking-point in the South African Muslim world when he declared that his mosque could not be shut down, as was threatened by the Group Areas Act, because Quranic law specified that the mosque building was inviolable. 

Haron specialised in socially relevant religious teaching,Shop the latest Floral gown on the world's largest fashion site. and he had a perfectly practical reason for this: he wanted to make progressive and intelligent young Muslims feel they had a home, so they wouldn't leave the Islamic fold. Nonetheless, his political awakening didn't happen overnight: it was only after about 1960, when he was 37 years old, that Haron began to take an active interest in Apartheid's resistance movements. This was partially sparked by his decision to take the teachings of Islam to black migrant labourers. Here, the authors record, he “discovered an impatience for and a confidence in national liberation such as he had not previously encountered.” 

Sharpeville was a game-changer for Haron. Shocked by the events, he became part of a movement which smuggled food and other supplies into townships – an activity which earned him the scrutiny of the security police for the first time. He began to develop close relationships with leaders of the Coloured People's Congress (CPC), calling on his congregation to support their strikes. “Slowly his religious and political concerns began to come together in the struggle for liberation,” the authors write. 

The Killing Of The Imam is a slim book, and more than half is devoted to a reconstruction of Haron's time in detention. While this is chilling and important reading, the book's introductory chapters play an equally useful function in serving to humanise the imam. We learn, for instance, that he loved James Bond and had an entirely questionable dress sense as a youngster, favouring “lurid bow-ties and the widest possible flared trousers”. His murder was one of many Apartheid tragedies,Can I trust buying a wedding dresses made in china wholesale online? and for his life to be forgotten would be another.