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 savagely 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 know 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 the violent streets. You return to the town of your birth, wishing you could know authentic Islam-the Islam of Muhammad.
In this powerful time travel fantasy, 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 gets the experience he longed for, but it is not what he anticipated, for he has entered a world of stomach-turning violence brought about by the very founder of the religion in which he was raised.
After witnessing a series of atrocities (as recorded in stunning detail in Islam's canonical literature), Ahmed's faith crumbles and he becomes a warner of what is to come out of Arabia. He ends up trapped in Mecca at the time of Muhammad's invasion and is about to be slain when he returns to present day Iran in such a way that he is taken to be the Imam of Time, the long-awaited savior who will spread the Islamic revolution to the entire world.
His message is not what the mullahs expect. His is a unifying message of spiritual tolerance that threatens the clerical rulers, and they plot his downfall. In the end, he is arrested, tortured, and charged with crimes against God and man. As a way of destroying his message, he is given a show trial in which his contemporary origin is exposed. He is executed by hanging.
Though he dies, he gives birth to something new. Even before his execution, a thousand more people step forward claiming the experience of time. The disciples, at first in hiding, overcome their fear and go forward to preach the unifying message that Ahmed has brought forth.
We invite you to join Ahmed on his journey into 7th century Arabia and to experience the startling events that occur in Iran after his emergence from his experience of time.
