imam

noun3

1. •
   One who leads the salat prayers in a mosque.

   • 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. — 2004
2. •
   A Shi'ite Muslim leader descended from the prophet Muhammad and functioning as his spiritual successor.
3. •
   One of the Twelve imams, descendants of Muhammad from the seventh to ninth centuries CE who lived exemplary lives.