Excerpt:
The mosque in Roxbury was crowded past capacity, with about 1,200 college students, urban hipsters and East Africans lining the hallways and front stairs.
They wanted to hear Imam Suhaib Webb, resident scholar of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center and widely considered one of the country's most influential Muslims, respond to Sam Harris and Bill Maher, who recently called Islam the "mother lode of bad ideas" and compared Muslims to the Mafia.
The lanky, blue-eyed imam, a convert originally from Oklahoma, is known for tackling taboo topics and spicing his sermons with pop culture references.