Can a Muslim be saintly? That's the only word that properly describes the husband and father who lost his wife and three children in an arson attack in London. This devoted and caring man refuses to blame. Instead he has pledged the rest of his life to helping others.
He's made a good start. As a neurosurgeon, specialising in children's illnesses, Muhammad Taufiq Al Sattar, is doing more than most. He worked in Dublin, getting back to his wife Shehnila and kids Zainab, 19, Bilal,17 and Jamil 15, three weekends out of four.
He would have been there the night thugs turned his family home in Leicester into an inferno. Work kept him away. Bereft but unbowed, he refuses to be angry: "We are not supposed to be," he says, believing that his escape is due to God's will.
Dr Al Sattar looks like a religious man, an image that makes many of us nervy. We identify those bearded men as possible terrorists. We despise women who hide behind the veil and the men who make them.
But this doctor is showing us another side of Islam, one that gets overlooked in these deeply troubled times. All religions could learn from him, because a man more like Jesus never walked this earth.
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