A London mosque imam has forgiven his attacker who stabbed him in the neck inside the mosque, saying that forgiveness is part of his faith.

“I forgive him. I feel very sorry for him,” Raafat Maglad, the muezzin [the one who makes the call to prayer] of London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park, told reporters, The Independent reported.

He added: “What is done is done, he is not going to return.

“He is a human being and this is my faith. What happened to me is my faith.”

Maglad, who is originally from Sudan, was praying when a 29-year-old man stabbed him in the neck.

“We were praying and I just felt somebody hit me from behind. He didn’t say anything,” he said.

“I just felt blood flowing from my neck and that’s it, they rushed me to the hospital. Everything happened all of a sudden.”

Forgiveness In Islam

One of the moral traits recommended in the Qur’an is forgiveness: Hold to forgiveness, command what is right, and turn away from the ignorant. (7: 199).

Stories of Muslims forgiving their attackers are quite common and many have made headlines.

In September 2018, a young Canadian Muslim woman, assaulted on a train last year, forgave her attacker, saying she had begun “changing the world.”

“Because of you, I grew, I forgave and I began changing the world one person at a time,” 18-year-old Noor Fadel told her attacker in court.

In December 2017, the Muslim community in Fort Smith, Arkansas, also forgave a vandal who attacked their mosque, granting him his freedom ticket.