The Imam & the Homosexual probes the "strange bedfellows" political alliance between Imam Mustafa Khan (played by Khurram Mozaffar), spiritual leader of a besieged Naperville, Illinois mosque, and Carl Baker (played by Nicholas Cimino), the gay son of the imam's chief nemesis. As Imam Mustafa struggles to reconcile his support for civil rights with his religious and cultural objections to homosexuality, Carl imagines the Muslim and LGBTQ communities joining forces against their common enemies.
The Imam and the Homosexual was created as part of an interactive online new play development and civic engagement process for Jamil Khoury’s full-length stage play Mosque Alert.
Between September 15, 2011 - March 28, 2013, the Mosque Alert creative team, led by playwright/director Jamil Khoury and videomaker Deann Baker, developed and disseminated thirty-six videos, including two video essays, twenty-four single character video blogs, nine two-character conflict scenes, and one compilation video. These videos comprised the first four steps of a nine-step or ten-step process online civic engagement and new play development process that Khoury designed to assist him with writing the play. With the release of each video, Khoury would pose questions to which online participants would then respond. This viewer feedback proved to be invaluable throughout his writing process. To date, over 25,000 people around the world have engaged with these videos.
May 15, 2013 | The University of Chicago Divinity School, Chicago, Illinois
November 6, 2014 | Triton College, River Grove, Illinois
January 31, 2015 | Silk Road Rising, Chicago, Illinois
July 19, 2015 | Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Wheaton, Illinois
October 8, 2015 | Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Deerfield, Illinois
January 3, 2016 | Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Hinsdale, Illinois
August 12, 2016 | Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference at The Palmer House Hotel, Chicago, Illinois
April 5, 2017 | Center for the Arts, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico
April 6, 2017 | New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico
November 19, 2018 | American Jewish Committee, Chicago, Illinois
October 30, 2019 | LGBTQ History Month Keynote, Siena College, Loudonville, New York