As Ilan sorts out the next version of Drupal, I am putting together two new sections for the site: 1. Muslim Comedy and Humor, and 2. Your Typical Muslim. "Your Typical Muslim" will highlight Muslims that everyone should know. Ludicrously cool Muslims. In other words, your typical Muslim.

Meet Mahdi Tourage! Scholar of Islamic Studies at Colgate University. He Rides with the Mala'ika al-Janna, is a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, and is the devoted father of Layla, Thalis, and Janos, husband of Sonja, and granddaddy to little Layla's cat Pishee.

Mahdi wrote this about himself:

You know, one once in the past 20 or so years living in Canada/US I have been told: "get out of here, ... go back where you come from, ..." and that was by Muslims in the parking lot of a mosque in Toronto! I was riding on the highway, you know easyrider, gliding along doing my own dhikr, when I saw this mosque, being Friday and seeing Muslims going in for Jum'a I got off the highway and went to park somewhere in front of the lot, colser to the mosque, knowing that I could fit my bike between any two widely parked cars if I could find them, so as I am truning around and around looking for a spot, I hear people yelling: "Get out of here …" My first reaction was, why would anyone yell at his friend that on a jum'a, then I notice a group of guys, kind of older teenagers were standing by the entrance of the mosque and yelling, I looked around and to my disbeleif they were yelling at me! So I kind of ignored them, parked my bike, got off and looked up, they started running in the mosque :) I noticed that even though I am the same person inside, ourside I look like a biker or something, with leathers and the works (I have a homemade self-mutilation type of tatoo too — the date I last saw my [eldest] daughter 21—11—96).

So I learned about people judging you based on what they see, and that we are responsible for what we project as well, I can't just dress like a biker and expect everyone to treat me like I am not.

Before I came to Canada , I was in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Iran. From the age of 16 to 22, 6 years (82-86), the last 4 years of it as official service, and pretty much all of it in Iran-Iraq war. The first 3-4 years as I remember it was kind of your American Hardcore [Punk scene], an angry trip of self-hate/hurt with a subdued veneer of Shii Islam for an excuse. The last 2 years was sobering up and trying to find a way to escape, mentally and physically.

I came to Canada in 1986 as a refugee, barely speaking English.

Anywho, Salamo bike is funny. Mala'ika al-Janna, the word mala'ika is feminine so we kind of play and bend a lot of gender stereotypes, we will ride from the East to the West, like the rising sun, stopping at each mosque where the truth is trampled beneath prayer mats, we will ride to right all wrongs, with our banners bravely unfurled, hurling our guntlets at heathens and sepents of sin, for their dastardly doings are past, a holy endeavour is now to begin, and virture shall triumph at last, our destiny calls and we go, and the wild winds of fortune shall carry us onward, wheresoever they blow.

Read more at Mahdi and see more pictures at his academic and personal website.