I don't truly believe I was born into a faith, although my parents did go to church - religion is something I feel free to question and explore how ever I wish to. Every so often I come across a part of the religious experience which chimes, where I feel I can empathise fully with the beliefs of the faithful.
Imam Butt found a chime between his western 'hippie' beliefs in the 1960s and Islamic scholarship, going to live out his adult life with the Pashtun tribes of the Hindu Kush, awed, he suggests, by the extraordinary topography of the area and the peaceful, thoughtful form of Islam practiced there.
Around him times changed, the Swat Valley became dangerous, violent and home to a new breed of extremist Islam. The Imam didn't change with it. A man able to explore his core beliefs through a programme of intense and demanding Koranic study did not change them in the process but found them reinforced in scripture. He took up the struggle against violence and extremism, preserving the way of life he had always believed in.
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