imam

1. (Islam) One who leads the salat prayers in a mosque.Examples: "Now it chanced that in one of the mosques was an Imam. (footnote: The person specially appointed to lead the prayers of the congregation and paid out of the endowed revenues of the mosque to which he is attached)"; "But then there's a Christian cleric and an imam on each of the country's three regional censorship boards, in Kaduna, Lagos and Onitsha, although more than one producer told me that the brown envelope worked the same magic here as in any other Nigerian Government department."; "In the 1980s, roughly six hundred young Algerian men, many of them protégés of Muslim Brothers from Egypt and Wahhabi imams from Saudi Arabia, went to Afghanistan to join the anti-Soviet jihad."

2. (usually capitalized) A Shi'ite Muslim leader descended from the prophet Muhammad and functioning as his spiritual successor.capitalizedusually

3. (usually capitalized) A Shi'ite Muslim leader descended from the prophet Muhammad and functioning as his spiritual successor.capitalizedusually