Click on “For Kids” (though we know it’s not justfor kids!) for a full listing of what’s available now: the three CD’s–the brand-new not-yet-even-pressed-yet Mercy to the Worlds, Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant, and The Bowing of the Stars, along with three shorts—From Torture to Triumph, Two Prophets in the Endless Sea of Allah’s Knowledge, and Walnut Remedy.
Visit today! Hear the samples! Order the downloads!
To order the books: A Trust of Treasures and Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant book and CD from the Islamic Foundation Store:
Available now from the Islamic Foundation Markfield website, and soon from bookstores in the US and the UK, and before long, inshaAllah from my new site, Stories of Light.com
OTHER NEWS
The Grand Mufti of Jordan Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman has heard parts of A Mercy to the Worlds-the Coming of Muhammad, May Allah bless him and give him peace, that were translated into Arabic for him. He said, “This is beautiful. It will surely inspire love for Allah and His Messenger. The Arabs need it too…please make an Arabic version.” A preliminary translation was then made of the whole piece, and another mufti in his office both listened to the English recording and read the Arabic script and declared that it was sound, alhamdulillah.
We requested that the Grand Mufti make an official endorsement which can go on the CD cover. This will mean a lot, since one of the most remarkable qualities of Islam is authenticity. Every aspect of Islam has been painstakingly preserved and recorded, so instead of making up the traditions, as is necessary for the other religions since so much has been lost, there is meticulous scholarship and remarkable preservation of information. We received his page-long statement yesterday, and are very grateful for his generous assistance and support. This means that the production and release of the CD are now imminent alhamdulillah! InshaAllah it will also be made available for purchase as an mp3 on the SunniPath site and later on my website Stories of Light.com. When you hear, you’ll see, inshaAllah.
The Nur al Qasas website, Stories of Light, is finally in the hands of a brilliant website-smith and inshaAllah will be operating within a couple of months. I know I have been known to say this before, but this time, God-willing, it will be accurate. From this website folks will inshaAllah be able to purchase mp3 downloads of the CD’s, along with several other shorter stories, some of which are accompanied by early-reader booklets so that kids and indeed any students of English can read and listen at the same time. These stories include From Torture to Triumph, the Story of Bilal ibn Rabah; Two Prophets in the Endless Sea of Allah’s Knowledge, the Story of Musa and Khadr, peace upon them; Ali Cogia and His Jar of Olives, from the cycle of Arabian Nights, along with several more too many to mention here. From this website inshaAllah it will also be possible to order the books Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant and A Trust of Treasures, and the CD’s Miraculous Happenings, The Bowing of the Stars, and A Mercy to the Worlds.
A publisher in the UK has shown interest in The Bowing of the Stars as an illustrated book, and a brilliant young Jordanian artist has begun work on the illustrations. Please make dua for this endeavor. And consider this anecdote as you do so: my 5-year-old granddaughter Halima spent several weeks listening daily to The Bowing of the Stars. Then she put it aside. Two days ago she was revisiting it for the first time in a couple of months. When she came to the scene with Yusuf, peace upon him, in the bottom of the well, she ran into my kitchen. “Grandma! I just remembered something! I fell down in the garden, like this.” She threw herself on the floor. “And when I was laying there on the stones I remembered Prophet Yusuf in the bottom of the well, how he was making dua, and I made dua!”
May the Ummah be protected and kept in the arms of Infinite Mercy.
I ask for your duas for these miniscule endeavors, may they benefit the Believers, and may the ranks of the Believers swell and cover the earth.
Other news: Sunni Path will be offering The Bowing of the Stars, Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant, A Mercy to the Worlds, and a few of the shorter stories as mp3 downloads for purchase on their site in the next few weeks. Keep an eye out. When you hear, you’ll see!
May Ramadan visit you with blessings of felicity and certainty and increased determination to purify the heart and use every valuable minute in remembrance of Him Who Brought Us Into Being.
The ninth month of pregnancy can seem longer than all the other months of the pregnancy, and the last week can seem like longer than the whole pregnancy. These weeks have been feeling that way to me in my writing life. Three projects that have been gestating for years, two of them for over seven years, are finally on the verge of fruition. But alhamdilillah now that Ramadan is here, the palpable baraka of its mysterious days and nights suddenly makes the waiting a mere flutter of a gnat’s wing in the face of Allah’s Majesty and Magnificence. These Ramadan days and nights are surely made of different fabric from all the rest.
A Jordanian doctor managed to get into Gaza to work at a hospital there. This is what he said in an interview: He never heard a complaint. The bloodied Gazans were saying, “This is for Allah. We are doing this for Allah.” A woman looked at her son’s dead, washed body, and said “When he was born I prayed he would die a martyr, and now he has. Alhamdulilah.” He said a grace came over them, a patience, that allowed them to pull together and embrace what was happening to them.
This is the legacy of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace. This is the success he promised to those who are willing to acknowledge
they didn’t create themselves,
cannot maintain themselves,
cannot avoid their death, and
have been created to praise something larger than themselves.
Coming soon: A Mercy to the Worlds: The Coming of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace
Listen!
On Thursday night Nasreddin Hodja’s wife boiled wheat berries and rice with a pinch of salt in the soup kettle, a few handfuls of white beans in the little copper pot, and a few handfuls of chickpeas in the black pot. She had done this all her life on a Thursday of Muharram, first as a little child barely able to see into the kettle and later as a young woman trying it out for the first time alone, and finally now, as an almost-old woman grateful to still have the health and strength to run a kitchen.
Two hours later when the beans were soft and the wheat looked thick and creamy, she drained the beans and chickpeas and mixed them into the wheat. She stirred in swirls of golden honey. She flung in handfuls of big yellow raisins, tiny black bird-raisins, chopped apricots, chopped figs, chopped dried peaches and cherries she’d hidden away from summer, and a couple of chopped fresh apples. She lobbed in a few cups of sugar and two vanilla pods, slashed and scraped. She stirred and boiled until she knew the sugar was dissolved, put the lid on the kettle, dragged it off the fire, and went to bed.
In the morning she chopped bowls of walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds, toasted a handful of pine nuts and a handful of sesame seeds, and stirred them into the pudding in the kettle, which was still warm. She grated three lemons and threw the rind in with a cloud of ground cinnamon. She opened two pomegranates ripe to bursting and drizzled the jewel-red seeds over the top. Last, she poured in rosewater, gave a final stir and tasted it. “Ah, magnificent! Alhamdulillah.”
She filled bowls and bowls, for her upstairs neighbor, the imam’s family in the mosque, the storekeeper down the hill, the old lady living alone down the road, the beggar who always sat at the door of the mosque, the family of twelve children beside the shop. By the time she was finished taking it all around, it was dinnertime, so she set the table with a big bowl of the last of the ashura in the middle.
Hodja came home right on time for dinner. He wolfed down his pilaf and eggplant without interest, eager to tuck into that bowl of ashura, as he had done all his life, first as a babe in his mother’s arms, later as a naughty schoolboy snitching spoonfuls on the sly, and finally now, an almost-old man grateful for the health and strength to be able to work.
As much as he’d have wanted to, he just couldn’t empty that giant bowl. Full and grateful, he left the table, kissed his wife on the head, and went off to the mosque for the night prayer. She cleared the table and scraped the last of the ashura into a smaller bowl, covered it, and put it in the cupboard.
In the middle of the night, Hodja woke up tossing and turning. He got out of bed, stole down the stairs, opened the cupboard, took that little covered bowl and two spoons, and went back up to bed. He lit a candle at the bedside.
“Wife! Wake up!”
“What are you doing, Hodja?”
“Wake up! Help me eat this! I’ll sleep much better with it in my stomach than in my mind!”
I’ve always felt that it is fruitful to speak to very young children, even infants, about what I am doing for them, or what is happening around them, or what is coming next, throwing out the idea “they can’t understand.” And I have observed that children who are engaged in this way behave differently as a result of it.
And I have been told on several occasions that even very small children choose to listen to my stories again and again, even though I can’t imagine how they could possibly “understand” the story.
So I wasn’t entirely surprised to read this note from a friend, although it made me really happy and grateful, and I was glad she gave me permission to put it here.
I just wanted to share with you something I think is amazing I’ve been playing the Miraculous Happenings CD for a few days straight and noticed that my daughter has actually memorized parts of the story, and she is only 18 months old!! I was doubtful at first so I’ve kept playing it every day so I could pay attention. When the part comes where you say “and he drank long and greedily…” Nafeesah says “Ahhhhh!” before Abrahah does. Then when you mention he stuffs a handful of grapes in his mouth she makes smacking sound with her mouth. The part when the soldiers start whispering to each other, she starts doing the “whispering” sounds before they start on the recording. and I’ve noticed that before some dialogue is about to come up Nafeesah seems to be imitating the sound of the voice of the person who is about to speak, only in babble of course.I can tell she has memorized parts of the story because her actions usually precede the sound effects/dialogue that she seems to be imitating rather than afterwards.
Fortunate little girl!
We know that a fundamental developmental factor in language acquisition is
listening.
A child is listening already in the womb. In fact, if a child is born deaf, he will very likely not go on to speak, even if there is no physiological problem with his voice, without sophisticated equipment and help.
The very first word of the Masnavi, the phenomenal work of Mevlana Jelalludin Rumi is
listen.
One of my favorite songs growing up was:
Listen, listen, listen
to my heart’s song.
Listen, listen, listen
to my heart’s song.
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you.
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you.
The poet Caroline Forche wrote,
We are listening, help us to understand.
Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace, said,
For anyone willing to increase their knowledge about the situation in Gaza, here’s a good place to go: http://masudblog.com/ particularly if you are an American citizen and puzzled by the recent US Congressional Resolution on Israel. And Allah knows best. The best way to keep the people of Gaza in your prayers is before dawn and in groups. And we must keep digging into our pockets.
But when the cathedral’s spires finally slice the brilliant Yemeni skies
and the magnificent doors are opened,
the throngs Abrahah has been boasting about do not arrive.
In a rage, he vows to destroy the Kaaba,
but Allah, the Causer of all causes, has other plans.
True happenings, stranger by far than fiction, demonstrate that if He says, “Be!” it is,
it surely is.
This telling of the events behind the Chapter of the Elephant of the Glorious Qur’an was chosen for Second Prize in the Islamic Foundation’s 2005 Writing for Children competition. The audio Cd was produced in Amman in 2006 and the illustrated book was published by the Foundation in 2007.
THE CD Audio sample:
Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant CD
A review from one of our readers:
“MashaAllah! My children still listen to your retelling of the Year of the Elephant and love it!” Roxanne Umm Sahla, (KUWAIT)
Reviews from Amazon.com:
“My husband and I purchased the audio recording of this story when our daughter was about 15 months old and I played it almost every day for a few weeks. It was the first recorded story that I ever played just for her and I wasn’t sure how she would react. She LOVED it! Even though she was too young to understand the content of the story, she would obviously be paying close attention to the sound effects and the voice of the storyteller. She would bounce up and and down to the beat of the drums, and repeat “Allah!” whenever she heard it being said in the story. Playing the story would almost immediately quiet her if she was feeling cranky and put a big smile on her face especially as she “danced” to the drumbeats. Now, as a 20-something-year-old adult, I have to say that I was a bit surprised by how much *I* really enjoyed the story! I am not ashamed to admit that I actually cried during my first listening of the story because of Mehded’s vivid descriptions and storytelling style. A few of the more dramatic points in the story got me quite emotional! I read the book after listening to the story many times and was mildly disappointed by the illustrations because I had already developed very detailed images in my mind of the whole story.” Umm Hamza (UAE)
“Even very young children love the language and walk around repeating parts of it as they listen…the best language instruction you could ever give a toddler.” Abu Yusuf, (AMMAN)
THE ILLUSTRATED BOOK:
Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant, published by The Islamic Foundation, 2007
Reviews from Amazon.com:
“great for allowing young readers to review and retell the story in their own voice… a fine example of a beautiful Islamic story in very descriptive and well-written English–definitely a must-have book for one’s growing children’s library. Additional positive aspects of the book and recording include the fact that they teach the reader/listener about the history tied to a chapter of the Qur’an and about reliance on God when facing any difficulty. PLUS the story is very well researched and has been checked by reliable scholars. Overall, Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant–both the book and recording–are great tools for developing your and your child(ren)’s love for reading stories and storytelling, while learning about Islam and developing love for God and the Prophet Muhammad at the same time.” Umm Hamza, (UAE)
“a beautiful hard-cover book, one your children will want to read again and again with or without the CD, improving their grasp of well-written English along the way.” Abu Yusuf, (AMMAN)
Long ago,the universe was humming praises for its Creator,
But there was no one to stand still and listen, and say “Ahhh.”
The stars were whirling and glittering in the night sky,
But there was no one to be dazzled by them and discern their patterns.
The moon was waxing and waning in its orbit,
But there was no one to measure its phases or count their days by it.
Soon to be released by Kube Publishing, part of the Islamic Foundation, Markfield, England. This book, beautifully illustrated by Angela Desira, tells the story of Creation in a new and surprising way and clarifies the role of men and women as caretakers of the finite earth and everything on it, while bowing down to the eternal Creator in love and awe and gratitude.
My apologies for those who’ve had difficulty getting over to box.net to hear the sample of The Bowing of the Stars. Now the sample is available from this site, no need to migrate over to box.net. Have a listen!
I’ve been playing the Miraculous Happenings CD for a few days straight and noticed that my daughter has actually memorized parts of the story, and she is only 18 months old!! 
