Forgive me if I am ignorant, but who claimed that Haskell was an "imperative" language?
Also, in order to take full advantage of Haskell, it would seem necessary to get used to functional programming style (the Haskell school of expression, in particular). It seems that using Haskell as an "imperative" language is a bit like thinking in C when programming in C++; only worse, since the imperative habits are being brought into the functional, rather than the OO, realm.
Nope, I also think that Haskell is the world's finest *imperative* language (and the world's best functional language as well). The beauty of monads is that you can encapsulate imperative actions as first class values, ie they have the same status as functions, lists, ... Not many other imperative languages have statements as first class citizens. Erik