DETROIT - Born into a devout Muslim family in west Africa, Imam Momodou Ceesay studied Arabic and the Quran at an early age. He learned quickly under the tutelage of a Gambian sheikh and graduated from Al Azhar in Egypt, considered the top university in the world for Islamic studies.

But it concerned him that millions of African Muslims were unable to understand the Quran because it was written in Arabic, a language foreign to many of them. So Ceesay, now a Southfield, Mich., resident, undertook what is believed to be the first complete translation of Islam's holy book into Mandinka, a west African language.