Okay, salamu alaykum everyone. Are you all excited to be here? I'm excited to have you guys here. You know why we're here? We're here to, for story, we're here to celebrate reading. You know, what was the first command from Allah subhanu ta'ala? To read, iqra. So we're not here just to celebrate reading. We're here to follow Allah's first command. But I don't want to tell you why reading matters. I want to show you. So if I can ask all the children to actually come closer to over here so you can see the book. Okay, so for all the adults in this room, please find your inner child. And for the children, continue being awesome children and turn on your listening ears because I'm going to ask questions after and we'll see who was listening carefully. So the book I'm going to be reading is called The Empty Pot by Demi. If you know the story and you know the ending, let's keep it a surprise for those who don't. Okay? And it's always nice to hear a story twice or maybe more than twice. Okay. A long time ago in China there was a boy named King. He came flowers, bushes, and he was as if by magic. Everyone in the kingdom loved flowers too. They planted them everywhere and the air smelled like perfume. The emperor loved birds and animals, but flowers most of all. And he tended his own garden every day. But the emperor was very old. He needed to choose a successor to the throne. Who would his successor be? And how would the emperor choose? Because the emperor loved flowers so much, he decided to let the flowers choose. The next day a proclamation was issued. All the children in the land were to come to the palace. There they would be given special flower seeds by the emperor. Whoever can show me their best in a year's time, he said, will succeed me to the throne. This news created excitement throughout the land. Children from all over the country swarmed to the palace to get their flower seeds. All the parents wanted their children to be chosen emperor and all the children hoped they would be chosen too. When Ping received his seed from the emperor, he was the happiest child of all. He was sure he could grow the most beautiful flower. Ping filled a flower pot with rich soil. He planted the seed in it very carefully. He watered it every day. He couldn't wait to see it sprout, grow, and blossom into a beautiful flower. Day after day passed but nothing grew in his pot. Ping was very worried. He put new soil into a bigger pot. Then he transferred the seed into the black soil. Another two months he waited. Still nothing happened. By and by the whole year passed. Spring came and all the children put on their best clothes to greet the emperor. They rushed to the palace with their beautiful flowers eagerly hoping to be chosen. Ping was ashamed of his empty pot. He thought the other children would laugh at him because for once he couldn't get a flower to grow. His clever friend ran by holding a great big plant. Ping, he said. You're not really going to the emperor with an empty pot, are you? Couldn't you grow a great big flower like mine? I've grown lots of flowers better than yours, Ping said. It's just this seed that won't grow. Ping's father overheard this and said, you did your best and your best is good enough to present to the emperor. Holding the empty pot in his hand, Ping went straight away to the palace. The emperor was looking at the flowers slowly, one by one. How beautiful all the flowers were but the emperor was frowning and did not say a word. Finally he came to Ping. Ping hung his head in shame expecting to be punished. The emperor asked him, why did you bring me an empty pot? Ping started to cry and replied, I planted the seed you gave me and I watered it every day but it didn't sprout. I put it in a better pot with better soil but still it didn't sprout. I tended it all year long but nothing grew. So today I had to bring an empty pot without a flower. It was the best that I could do. When the emperor heard these words, a smile slowly spread over his face and he put his arm around Ping. Then he exclaimed to one and all, I have found him. I have found the one person worthy of being emperor where you got your seeds from. I do not know for the seeds I gave you had all been cooked so it was impossible for any of them to grow. I admire Ping's great courage to appear before me with the empty truth and now I will reward him with my entire kingdom and make him emperor of all land. The end. Do you guys like the story? Yeah. So I have a few questions for you. Three questions to be exact. The first one is why do you think the emperor was frowning?  I'm going to raise our hand. So the emperor was frowning because the seeds that he gave away were cooked and he knew that everyone, all the kids that flowers were lying. Nice. So he saw the lie inside the flowers huh? Yeah. Okay my next question is sometimes others can make you feel small when you're doing the right thing. How does Ping feel when he sees his enemy? Ping helps him through it. Yes. Ping feels kind of like disappointed because he couldn't grow like a flower like his friend did and he was disappointed so yeah. Who helped him through it? His dad. His dad because that's what parents do. They help us through our problems. Thank you. Okay. Last question. Can the truth ever be empty? Remember in the last part what does the emperor say? Today I admire Ping's great courage to appear before me with the empty truth. Why does the author use the empty truth? Can the truth ever be empty? Yes.  That is that's actually one of the most beautiful responses I've heard to that answer. Did everyone hear that? She said that the empty the truth is empty because it's empty from filth basically that's what she was saying. All right so it's pure because truth is always it's full of truth and empty of false. Thank you. I learned something today when the teacher becomes the student. Okay if you enjoyed that we have a lot more for you guys but I'd like to invite my readers up. Who are my readers? So we have three readers with us today and we have Auntie Rima who is going to take the four to six year olds to a reading circle and we have Auntie Lena who's going to take the seven to nine year olds to a reading circle and then we have Auntie Aruba for everyone ten and older to a reading circle plus games and challenges. Okay so welcome to part two of our presentation. So I hope you enjoyed the read aloud. We wanted to show the children why reading matters and the parents inshallah just a sneak preview of how read alouds happen but we're going to talk a lot more about that today but we wanted to share a little bit of why we chose the books at empty pot for this night. In the story the flower pots as the young girl mentioned were full of lies and subhanallah we live in a time in an environment where lies are made to be beautiful but just like the emperor was able to see past the outward beauty of the lie and see the inherent falsehood that existed within our jobs as parents is to do that for everything we put in our children's hands. So today inshallah we're going to discuss why how to do that how to choose the best books for your children. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us that he relays the best of stories in the Qur'an. So we know that Allah created us in a way to understand the world and to grow through stories. So not just adults but children grow through stories or I should say not just children but adults grow through stories stories matter stories matter and they build who we are and they shape who we are. So knowing this about seven years ago I ventured into storybook writing for children and I began to build to want to build worlds for kids through words because what you hear the words that are shared with you as a child they build your worldview. So as I did this I joined an organization for children's in the children's book industry. I joined this organization and you know it's it collects all authors and illustrators and publishers and agents and it connects them all and networks them all and it's this large industry organization and five years ago I submitted a manuscript to them and I was invited to one of their industry conferences in LA and I was so excited I was going to meet publishers from you know The Big Five, Random House, Simon Chooster and all all that. I was going to meet the editors of Harry Potter. I was going to meet Caldecloth winners for illustrators and Newberry winning authors so it was really exciting and I got there and I noticed two things. First I was one of only two visible Muslims among thousands of participants and every time a Muslim was recognized every time a Muslim was recognized you know as the children's book world pushing forward into more representation but every time the representation of a Muslim was recognized it was always linked with another very let's say colorful group and it almost felt that if this link didn't happen the recognition wasn't there that's that's how much the link was there between the Muslim representation and this other group this other minority. Second thing I noticed was the whole mission I mean they were touting in this conference they kept saying how everything we decide here everything we do here will determine publishing for children not only in America but the rest of the world because we set the standards in this room the people in this room set the standards for the world and the number one thing that they would repeat about what how to write a successful story for children how to write a successful book for children is that it should make children feel good and this sounds lofty and it sounds noble to make a child feel good because we all want children to feel good but that's not what life is about life is not about feeling good so they also would teach us through books and they would recommend books to us and this is one of the books that they recommended I have it right here it's called writing picture books I was so excited to read it I dove in I started taking notes until I got to this part here delete any moral or message okay so this is now what and this isn't actually not a recent book this this book was published a while back so this has been happening for decades now but really morals and messages are being deleted from children's book but here's the thing you actually can't delete a message from anything you write because once you write something you're communicating so message is being shared but the morals are gone so you can't delete a message but you can delete morals and you can't erase morals I began to think I said oh my god this is what's happening and you know if you walk into a library now five years later it's no wonder we see a lot of the things we see so but this is a long time in the making um what happened was I realized that of course it's good for children to see we want our children to see an outward expression of themselves in the books so that they can identify with the book and build a connection to that book but what is more important is their moral self is their inner identity which is their moral identity so I started on a hunt for books that would speak to my child's moral mind and I didn't have to look far because I found other mothers around me and educators doing the same exact thing so we decided to come together and build something to help parents find find their child's find books for their children that built their inner selves because a child doesn't need to be a lion or a mouse to understand courage when reading asops fables and I don't need to be a man to be able to understand and follow the prophetic path so my outward identity matters more so we built Mindful Muslim Reader which is a website and a tool we'll talk a lot more about that today to help parents build the moral identity of their children through books and inshallah with that we will continue thank you Amira I'd like to invite Hina Khan Mukhtar to the stage I'm sure you all know who she is she's a long time community member here in the tri-valley area she's a married mother of three grown young men now masha'Allah and she's one of the founders of the ilm tree homeschooling cooperative in Lafayette she teaches language arts to elementary middle and high school students and if that doesn't keep her busy enough she's always representing our community beautifully and interfaith work she also writes for various online muslim blogs like the muslim observer and seeker's guidance so Hina is going to talk to us tonight about how to raise a reader how to raise a child who loves reading so please join me in welcoming Hina thank you so much Asalaamu Alaykum everybody so I'm going to take you all back with me about 15 years and we're going to go back down my memory lane to ilm tree the homeschooling cooperative that mariam just mentioned and I was one of the language art teachers at ilm tree and I taught all the way from I started with third grade and I went all the way to eighth grade I taught all the grades there but one of the jobs I also had at ilm tree was to go into the preschool room every day and read picture books for half an hour to the three and four year olds and there's this one little girl who has always stood out in my mind for the past 15 years she's in college now mashallah and she would be sitting in the preschool circle and when I would read picture books to the group I had her full attention she would be completely focused she wouldn't fidget she wouldn't make any noise she would be able to ask answer very intelligent and deep questions that were asked of the group she would answer intelligently and she would be able to predict what was going to happen next she was able to discern what the message of the story was and that really blew me away because I knew that this little girl her mother didn't speak much English she had only been in the country a few years and she was still learning English now alhamdulillah she speaks English just fine but at that time in English was a bit of a challenge for her so I was really fascinated to know why this little girl was so attached to books and had a good grasp of books whereas the other children in the group whose parents were born and raised here they had a harder time focusing so I asked her father and her father told me something very interesting he said that every single day he read three picture books to his daughter he would go to the library he would pick out books that he chose or he would pick out books from his own childhood that he remembered enjoying and he would read her three picture books and we were seeing the results of that in the classroom in that preschool circle and that is something that pretty much every language arts teacher can assess attest to I've been teaching language arts now alhamdulillah for over three decades and in the past 30 plus years me and all the other language arts teachers we have noticed the same things again and again we have seen that students who have high levels of vocabulary students who are able to write complex sentences students who have a really good grasp of grammar students who are able to figure out the deeper motivations behind what characters are doing in books all of these students what they had in common was that they were avid readers they were prolific readers and they were being read to at home and they were reading constantly themselves so in the late 1990s we saw an uptick here in the United States of America and even around the world but it started like Amira mentioned from the US and in the late 1990s the book publishing industry saw a huge steep what would we call it slope go up in book sales and the book publishers were doing really well and books were flying off the shelves and stores like borders and barns and noble were very very popular in the late 1990s and social scientists have studied this phenomenon to find out what was happening in the late 1990s to make so many people be attached to books and they paired it down to three different factors that were happening at that time the first factor that they give credit to is Oprah Winfrey they said that Oprah Winfrey when she started her book club on her show a lot of kids today even you know young adults wouldn't know who Oprah Winfrey is but at that time she had the most popular daytime talk show and she was very passionate about books they say on average she would read three books over a weekend is what I read about her and so she would just really passionately discuss books that she really enjoyed and those books overnight would become bestsellers Andrew I don't know how to pronounce his last name it's either Dubus or Dubu but and Andre Dubu who wrote The House of Sand and Fog he said that Oprah Winfrey single-handedly saved him from poverty he was there he was struggling he was a struggling writer nobody knew about his book she read it she recommended on her show and overnight he became a multimillionaire bestselling author the second factor they say is in the late 1990s about what made books really popular is that the world was introduced to a young man named Harry Potter Harry Potter blew all the theories out of the water JK Rowling created this character introduced him in 1997 people at that time were saying no child is going to read a 500 plus page long book and Harry Potter proved him approved all those theorists wrong children were willing to stand in line for hours to buy 500 plus long page books and the third factor that they saw in the late 1990s is that the internet became very popular and books and articles and magazines were suddenly accessible at the touch of a fingertip and all of a sudden people had access to books even in the remotest villages and towns so what we see from that is that if people show enthusiasm for books the way Oprah Winfrey did and they're excited about books it's contagious and if people know that they're not going to be tested and they're not going to be quizzed they're just going to have discussions about books they're going to be more willing to pick up a book and read it I still have peers who will tell me like when I mentioned that I love the book of mice and men by John Steinbeck I have a friend who said oh my god I hate that book and I asked her why and she said oh our teacher made us analyze that book to death and I had to write like three papers about that book I just remember hating it and that's often what happens a book can be analyzed to death most people just want to have discussions and enjoy books the other thing we saw is that if you have good characters and good stories people are going to be willing to pick up a book and read it even if it's more than 500 pages long and the third thing we saw from the internet is that if books are accessible people are going to read them if they're easy to get to now there's a very inexpensive reading kit that I can tell you about that everyone here can have in their own homes so that they can create an environment in which their children are going to want to read so the reading kit you just think of the three B's the three B's the first B is books every child should own their own books yes you should go to the library and yes it's fine to go to used bookstores but every child should also have pristine copy of their own book they can write their name in and that they keep for themselves and they should have access to books the second B is book shelves or book baskets so in their bedrooms every child should have a book basket next to their bed or a bookshelf in the room in which they can display their books and show them off and the third B is bed lamp or book lamp and that was one of the little prizes that the kids got for answering questions getting a book light so at night all the kids should be told after they've done their prayers and said their aura then read their Quran and they've brushed their teeth and they've gotten into bed they should have a little book light or a bed light next to their bed which can allow them to read their books for like maybe another 10 15 minutes before they have to go to sleep and what happens with that is that these children then get to associate coziness and comfort and the safety of their home with the environment of reading books now how do you know if you are successfully raising a lifelong reader every single student if that student can answer these three questions you with a with with a response then you know that you are raising a reader the first question you ask is what is the last book that you read the second question you ask is what are you reading right now and the third question is what do you want to read next if the children can answer these questions you know that you have got a lifelong reader inshallah now how do we create an environment where children actually want to read studies have shown that the primary factor for success for children wanting to read is if they are coming from an environment where reading is being role modeled so the adults in the home are reading as well not just the children and that and we're not talking about reading on your laptop or on your phone every adult should have a book there should be a stack of books on your coffee table in your family room that you're making your way through and your kids kids should see that you power down your phones you turn off the tv and you know you sit around and you read books and it's a contagious contagious feeling to to want to it's infectious to want to read when you see people around you reading and the second thing that kids need to see is they need to see respect and reverence for books so we should be teaching our children how to handle books that you don't get them dirty you don't throw them around you don't put them on the floor right and you don't scribble on them you don't doggie or the pages now what are some of the benefits that we see in children who read avidly so some of the benefits we see with the primary benefit that i see in all my students who are prolific readers is an incredible grasp of a high level of vocabulary i have a niece who when she was six or seven years old her little brother who's three years old was doing something naughty and she looked at him and she said he is such a rap scallion and all of us were like rap scallion where did she get the word rap scallion from and we found out that her mom at that time was reading huckleberry fin to her and that's where she learned that word i have another friend whose son she gave him permission to go into a room to get something and he just turned to her and said oh i can just go in there at will he's five years old i can go in there at will and she found out that he was reading a book that was a british book and that's how they spoke so he picked that up i have a student i was teaching just the other day and we came across the word disparage and i asked him do you know what disparate and he's an avid reader and i said do you know what disparage means and he's like um doesn't that mean to disdain things so he responded with another equally high level word um i had another student who we came across the word dismal in a book and i asked her do you know what dismal means and she said doesn't that mean dreary but my one of my favorite stories however is this young girl that i taught last year who was in the fifth grade and this girl in hails books in hails them and one of my biggest challenges of teaching her was finding a book that she hadn't read and it actually got very embarrassing she was in the fifth grade she had already read frankenstein she had already read bright and prejudice it got to the point that she was willing to read a book again just so i could have a chance to read it for the first time her teacher so we were reading johnny germain and in johnny germain it described that the soldiers they were walking down the road and they had a gimlet eyed stare and i was like gimlet eyed stare i'm not sure what that means let me hold on let me look that up and she's like oh i know i was reading a book the other day and in that book they they talked about a gimlet and a gimlet is a drill that bores holes in metal so it must mean that they have a piercing stare that's literally what gimlet eyed meant okay so high levels of vocabulary that's what comes from reading the primary thing that we see it also lowers levels of aggression studies have shown that especially in boys it calms them down it trains children in high levels of focus we're in an age of distractibility and with a book you are sitting there and you are focused and you are reading it teaches kids about the world around them if a child is sitting there and he hears his dad and his friend talking and they're talking about some savvy investor in stocks and they say oh that guy he has a mitis touch a kid who has read the book king mitis and the golden touch will understand what it means if somebody who's investing in stocks has the mitis touch it means everything they touch turns to gold right they do well so it teaches children about the culture and the world around them so how do we introduce books to children this is what i like to do and i'm going to have mariam help me out here so i am still teaching alhamdulillah even now and i also work with preschoolers and i really enjoy introducing books to preschoolers because it's a whole new world that's being introduced to them and i start out with for example if i had a book like this this is not a preschool level book but if i had a book like this i would start out by going is this a hard cover or is it a soft cover and i would also tell them another word for soft cover is paperback and all the kids would say hard cover and then i would ask them do you know what this is on the on the book this thing that i just took off most of them will say book cover but then i'll tell them another word for book cover is dust jacket and why do you think it's called a dust jacket because dust jackets protect the books from dust and also from getting smudges on them now just like you have a name books have names too every book has its own name and that book is called that name is called a title but guess where else the title is it's not just on the front cover oh by the way i also tell them talk to them about front cover and back cover i tell them about pages show them the pages and what they're called then i talk to them about how every book has a name and the name is called a title and then i ask them do you guys know what you have going down your back and then we talk about what a spine is and i tell them you know a spine helps us stand up straight if your spine is straight you sit down stand up straight but if your spine is curved you're going to curve over and they all kind of practice showing them how they can sit up straight and how they can curve over like well guess what every book has a spine also that helps it stand up straight do we ever want to put books like this on the ground no why not because the spine can break we don't want to break the spines of our books then i also talked to them and i introduce these concepts gradually over the course of weeks in preschool talk to them about who an author is and who an illustrator is an author is the person who writes the stories you see the writing on the pages that's the story the illustrator is the person who draws the pictures you know another fancy word for pictures illustrations can the same person be the author and the illustrator yes so that's basically oh and then also i i chose this book in particular because i wanted to show that many picture books will have this sticker on it if you've got quality books in your classroom they will have this sticker on it and this is the caldecott medal and the caldecott medal is a medal given for the best illustrations in a book that year if it's gold they were the number one place winner if it's silver it means an honorable mention they were close to winning they didn't win first place but their illustrations are considered beautiful and so children are really fascinated with that and after that they will be noticing which books have caldecott medals on them and if they're silver or gold thank you and then the last thing i tell every child from preschool all the way up to high school is that no matter what kind of book you are reading whether it's a picture book whether it's a detective novel whether it's science fiction whether it's a coming of age story whether it's a memoir every single book at the end of the day is a mystery and you are the detective and the mystery that you are trying to solve is to figure out what is the message in this book that you are being given and i tell them every single author who writes a book every single singer who writes a song every single movie director producer who creates a movie every work of art that's out there even if it's a painting the creator of that art has a message that they are wanting to put out in the world and it is your job to figure out what was the message in this book that i read and is it a message i agree with is it a message i accept is it a message that Allah swt and the prophets are also giving me is it a message that my parents are teaching me at home and want me to take take in and embody and if not what do we do and letting the kids know that not all books are worth reading not all messages are the messages you want to absorb so you have to be a discerning reader right okay and conclude just this part of the talk there is an author a man named jim trelease who he came out with a compilation of books and he titled it the read aloud handbook and every four or five years he would publish a new version of the read aloud handbook and from what i have managed to gather from his essays that i have read i think he's a conservative christian though he doesn't say it but everything he says kind of aligns with the values that we muslims have mashallah and so he talks about the value of reading aloud and he does mention that there is a difference between a good read aloud and just a good book not every good book out there makes for a really good read aloud and so read alouds have very specific criteria and what he did was every few years he would release this list of picture books that he thought were worth reading aloud to children and i loved loved the read aloud handbook every four or five years i bought it i bought old copies i have every single copy that's ever been published from the 1970s all the way to the 1990s and he no longer releases those books i think he's too elderly now he has a website but anyway a few years ago we were talking about it and i was telling amira about this man named jim trelease who's kind of done the work for us and has picked out some really good picture books that we can safely you know read to our children and amira at that time said you know we need something like that for muslims we need somebody who's reading books from the islamic perspective through the muslim lens and knows whether you know this book is worth reading to our children or not and she's like somebody needs to create it and i was like yeah somebody needs to create it and that is exactly what these young women have done mashallah these four young women they've they've been working on it for the past few years and i'm incredibly proud of them and i'm so excited to be able to be part of their journey in in helping them promote uh you know mindful reading for muslims and so um before i conclude i wanted to just go through some really quick tips about do's and don'ts of read aloud are we okay on time okay so um you want to introduce the title the author and illustrator every single time you read a book to your child you want to remember that your attitude towards the book matters if you are bored with the book don't read it okay read books that you enjoy reading because your enthusiasm is going to show especially in the preschool age look for rhythm and rhyme as a parent you are going to get bored of reading books that are repetitive with rhythm and rhyme my husband used to hate reading the little engine that could but i think i can i think i can but every night we would read i think i can i think i can because our kids loved it and the message in that book was what that you can persevere right you have to have grit and you you can do it if you think you can do it inshallah you want to look for simple images um again this is we're talking about preschool uh level books simple images not a lot going on um simple sentences and words as they get older it's going to get more sophisticated you want to create a routine around reading so for every family it's going to be different for some people it'll be like maybe the father reads to the children while the mom is getting dinner on the table or maybe the mom reads to the kids when they're in bed right before they fall asleep but there should be some routine to reading okay so that the kids can look forward to it and you want to be patient uh when you see that your kids are fidgeting and know that they're going to come around inshallah they're going to get it in in the beginning it is hard for kids to concentrate but they get it over time you want to read above children's intellectual levels because what studies have shown is that they can't read above their intellectual levels but they can listen above their intellectual levels so they can listen to sophisticated vocabulary and uh more complicated grammar however you don't want to read above their emotional levels i personally in islamic picture books i love the books that talk about the five senses that how Allah gave me ears with which i can hear and then talking about all the different things you can hear and Allah gave me eyes with which i can see in the early years you just want to teach kids about the wonder of the world and how Allah is behind it all right but many of us jump into like teaching them about the qafar and the battles and the you know and the jihad and it's just you know it can be a lot for children so you want to avoid long descriptive passages if you're reading a novel you want to end on a suspenseful part and end at a cliffhanger so that the kids are eager to continue reading the next day you want to make it cozy you can have hot chocolate and blankets you can read in front of the fireplace again kids you want them to associate positive feelings with being read to let them take their time to look at the pages if they don't want you to turn the page because they really want to inspect the illustrations let them be expressive your tone matters if it's a suspenseful part start whispering if it's an exciting part start speaking louder do different voices for the different characters and then have a discussion at the end about what was the message of the book okay take your time don't rush through the book um let them okay if you've got fidgety readers who have a hard time sitting there let their hands be busy give them paper give them crayons let them draw they will still be listening and they will occasionally look up to see you know the pictures on your book and that's fine you'll be surprised how much they're taking in reading aloud is a wonderful time to bond for fathers and their children it's an excellent excellent way for dads to bond with their kids my husband he read uh the the iliad he read a version of the iliad with my boys and taught them greek mythology and it took a long it took like a year to get through all those stories esop's fables which teach beautiful messages and morals so it's a great time and then the kids remember it when they're older you want to definitely limit their screen time after you're done reading a really great book like sarah plain and tall for example in third grade you can watch the movie of it as a family because it's a clean movie and it's done pretty much true to the book um but but otherwise avoid you know cartoons and and and movies and all that stick to books for entertainment and invest in that time oh and don't use reading aloud as a bribe or a punishment don't tell your kids if you don't finish dinner i'm not going to read to you tonight but reading books should not be linked to anything else except that it's your routine and you do it with your children right and that that's it okay so i hope that was helpful and inshallah i think you're going to really enjoy the rest of uh their presentation inshallah salam aleikum thank you so much hina inshallah we can implement these lessons with our children at home so hina talked about how to raise a reader how to raise a child who loves reading but now we're going to take a look at what they should be reading we know that reading is crucial to our children it's crucial to their education and their upbringing but what their reading matters we want the best books in the hands of every muslim child we want books worth reading in the hands of our children because words matter words build our children's worldview it matters what they're reading so let's take a quick look at what's out there right now um so the first book is called the hina wars it's a muslim protagonist muslim girl on the cover it's about hina uh it's about a school competition hina competition mehendi the author is a muslim okay visible muslim this is the author you'd see her if you open the inside of inside cover but what you might not know if this book was in your child's hand is that the protagonist is this i don't know if there's younger kids in the room but she comes out to her muslim family and then pursues a romance with a non muslim girl okay this is a this is a top-selling book uh marketed to young adults they call it y a young adults that doesn't mean adults who are young it means children like young teens okay the next book salamah the syrian chef a beautiful picture book uh marketed to young children about a syrian refugee she misses her grandmother and wants to make her full recipe fava bean recipe and she cooks with the different members of her family but then we get to this page and she's cooking with her two uncles but when you read uh underneath the picture it's very clear that these two men are in a romantic relationship this is a picture book for young children then you have on the other hand you have you have um authors like this so new york times best selling author terry brooks he's written classics good clean books um like this the sort of shanard this so this was actually on ilm tree's um reading list i think several years ago it's a clean book it's a good book the more it has a message it has a moral it's about finding truth but fast forward a few decades and he comes out with a book like this a sci-fi dystopian novel and the main character falls in love with a humanoid a robot um who was created her purpose um creation she was a pleasure scent that's what she's called a synthetic being a pleasure synthetic being um for the purpose of providing pleasure to rich man this again this is a y a book young adult marketed to young children these are not books worth reading these are not the books we want in our children's hands so a mindful muslim reader we asked ourselves questions and we spent a lot of time thinking about what makes a book worth reading is this how i want my child to speak that's that's one of the questions we ask because we write our books on our website for language and this is the question we're asking when we give the rating is this how i want my child to speak amazon bestselling book okay with words like this do we want this in our child's hands or do we want a book like this written by the poet laureate of the united states amanda gorman a young black woman the youngest ever poet laureate who was appointed by the president with words like this the next question is this how i want my child to act so there's books like this again another i pulled these all from the amazon bestseller lists books like this or do we want in the hands of our children books like this the one amir read earlier this evening that teaches children about honesty even when it's difficult and the last question and probably the most important is this how i want my child to think because in the end of the day our beliefs what's cut what's in our hearts are going to inform our actions and inform the way we live and inform our akhira so is this how i want my child to think so there's books like this very popular i'm sure you guys have all seen it this is going to be on the shelves in your children's classrooms in most schools or you can have books like this 10 beautiful things it's about a young child traveling across the country with her grandmother and the grandmother challenges her to find beauty in the world even though she's faced a tragedy so is this how i want my child to think those are the questions we spent a lot of time thinking about when we recommend books so a few days ago someone forwarded me this instagram post from an organization called we are teachers that represents about three million teachers all reading counts graphic novels that's comic books magazines read aloud movie captions a back of the cereal box all reading counts we disagree with this okay we disagree with this all reading if if all if all this reading is equal and it all counts that means there's there's no value in elevating a child through what they're reading there's no value in elevating their language or their morality or the messages that they're getting so we disagree with this and i and we're going to do a little exercise we're going to rewrite this instagram post so if this was a amira mashallah spends a lot of time making beautiful instagram posts so follow us on instagram if you don't already um this is what we would post this reading counts reading that builds language that elevates the language of our children reading that fortifies their moral character and most importantly reading books that increases their understanding of the truth those are books worth reading this is what we want in the hands of our children so our one of our our mission at mindful muslim reader is to elevate young muslim readers one book at a time we read every book cover to cover so parents don't have to we rate them and then we we put them on our site so i'd like to invite arusa up to show us mindful muslim reader it's not like my name's arusa and i'm also part of the mindful muslim reader team why am i here well when my children were really young i spent countless hours asking around for book recommendations pouring over amazon reviews and searching endlessly through websites for high caliber books books that mirrored islamic values and it turns out as you can see from the panel up here that i wasn't alone with that after years of reading sifting searching discussions and planning i'm excited to share with you a site that we've developed for all of you our community in mind we pray that this tool enables parents and educators to quickly find recommendations for books which build character teach virtue and instill in children a morality that inshallah will develop or help develop their islamic worldview before i get started can i see a show of hands if before tonight you had actually heard of mindful muslim reader okay of those that are raising their hand and raise them high because i just want to get a sense of the room um have you uh did you know that we had a website okay and of those that are still raising their hands did you go to our website okay okay that's good um with that let's get started so at mindful muslim reader you'll find over 200 book recommendations at the moment with many many more on the way spanning all ages and genres each of these books on our site have been read cover to cover using our rigorous review process and rating process that we took years to develop let me begin by showing you how we've classified our recommendations at the top of our home page you'll see books by values struggles age and genre start with books by values so as parents and educators say you're looking for a specific book to teach a child the value of service whether it's service in the home it's service in the neighborhood it's service to the community you can actually look with sorry without expectation and this is the big one without expectation for anything in return and you could select service and find books that actually help build that value in your in your child or in the child that you're reading to or you find yourself wanting to build in a child in appreciation and respect for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's creations and and the knowledge that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has blessed us with you could select reverence perhaps you're looking for books beautifully highlighting a prophetic example in a male role model such as providing for the family working hard protecting women and children controlling anger and being the most gentle and kind to members of his family you would select manhood or you find yourself in need of books that beautifully show strong female role models nurturing and working hard to raise to to nurture the people in their family or to I guess yes help help with the family showing mercy and being graceful you would select womenhood in addition to those values we have values such as courage patience humility generosity and gratitude now we've also grouped books by struggles and to understand what we mean by struggles I'd like to give an example as we know children learn through stories perhaps you've seen your child a child in your care struggling with social interactions at school they need help understanding the consequences of intimidation or discrimination you would select bullying or you see that a child is making choices that normally wouldn't only to fit in then you would select peer pressure maybe you just want an opportunity to teach your child or a child what to look for in friendship and why choosing the right friends is important you would then select friendship of course we have other struggles here take for instance boredom something we all know children struggle with we need to be able to teach children that it's okay to be bored they don't always have to be entertained despite the nature of our society today in fact we need to teach them it's okay to be quiet to be still to reflect and you would use books uh under boredom perhaps um actually I'll go to the next one so we also categorize books by age now we have uh books for zero to four four to seven all the way to 15 plus this is really helpful if you have an avid reader and you want to ensure that there's appropriate content in their hands free from modern ideologies you could look for books this way we keep things themes and language in mind when grouping books by age we have um also group books by genre pretty standard but I wanted a call one to mind one to your attention specifically biographical today children are bombarded with images and messaging from pop culture icons and social media influencers that can build a damaging worldview here you can find biographies of real life heroes that direct our children's hearts and minds towards admirable character traits and ideas worth learning in addition to these four categories we also have book lists uh sorry audiobooks so at the beginning at the top of our book lists we have audiobooks and there's fantastic way of building listening comprehension and reading skills but reading skills start by listening by learning vocabulary by listening vocabulary so they can be fantastic for car rides but they can also be great to listen to while doing chores doing legos or working on art projects something that I have my kids do we also have book lists for books that'll appeal to girls and books that'll appeal to boys calling to attention our gold star list this is a great list to find the absolute best of our recommendations books that elevate the standards and understanding of virtue in an engaging and beautiful way we also have a list of read-alouds uh empty pot of which was uh is on that uh list which provide for excellent discussions while and after reading of a book and we also have just added a new list called teaching tools so many of our books on our site right now have discussion points related to the book that you can find and I'll show you in just a minute I'll show you in just a minute going back to our home page at the top right now you hit find a book and it takes you to our book lists and in our book list you can actually filter so go ahead next slide you can filter by the same categories the categories that I just talked to you about age genre values and struggles once you find a book you can actually take a deeper look so let's take a look at empty pot right now in the book that she just read and you'll see that at the top there's tags related to the very values and struggles that we just talked about but all the values and struggles found in this book in addition to that you'll see the synopsis of the book you'll find the synopsis of the book and ratings as we read cover to cover we rate for virtue story language and beauty a little bit lower next slide you'll see this button here it's called yellow flags this is where we flag any questionable content that may be found in the book the empty pot there was actually it's really hard to see from where you were but there was an image of a child not fully dressed so we called it out here but of course for books with more with things that we have to be more careful of or mindful of we list them out here and it would be a fairly lengthy list the thing is books even if they have yellow flags they're still books worth reading and that's why we have them on our site further down we have something called a mindful review so this is just a review that helps you understand why we chose this book so in addition to the synopsis why we chose this book and how you can use this book or why we find this book to be of value to your child and then further down are the teaching tools that I had just talked about even further down you have our affiliate links so if it's a book that you want to gift or you want to purchase clicking on one of those buttons whether it's amazon or bookshop and we try to use muslim bookstores when we can help support this platform now our site is not just for younger children our site is actually can be used for older children as well so when I talk to you about the age groups there's a 15 plus section as well so if we go to the malcom x book that's there it's very famous well-known autobiography of malcom x I wanted to show you why this book could be an excellent read aloud opportunity for your child and I meant that what I said a read aloud for a 15 plus child they're not children anymore they're young adults but having said that they serve as excellent ways to be able to have deep and meaningful conversations or discussions so here's one teaching tool I wanted to point out that you can find on our site the word Islam means submission submission to God malcom says the hardest test I ever faced in my life was praying bending my knees to pray that act well that took me a week you know what my life had been taking a lock to rob someone's house was the only way my knees had ever been bent before I had to force myself to bend my knees and waves of shame and embarrassment would force me back up for evil to bend its knees admitting its guilt to implore the forgiveness of God is the hardest thing in the world discuss how malcom's climb out of the state of depravity began once he submitted this is an example of one of the teaching tools that you can find on our book and this is also an example of why reading aloud to even 15 plus year old young adults is so crucial as they're out there in the world learning ideologies from the world around them where do you want them to learn these ideologies in the home with you or out there things that you have to think about beyond our book list we have a space where you read where we have blog posts on how to nurture a reader in our home and we have extended book reviews we pray that this platform serves as a useful tool in providing easy access to books which nurture our children's worldview one book at a time i hope and shall that you have a sense now of the type of books you'll find on our site still i want to give you a peace of mind of the types of book you will not find on our site books that show atheism disrespect towards parents elders tradition and authority books that showcase or highlight scientism the non-binary view of gender moral relativism and individualism with that i'd like to invite aruba to come speak salam aleikum so my name is aruba i'm part of the mindful muslim reader team and you know first and foremost as we wrap up the evening i'd like to thank all us one for bringing us here and may he accept every action we do and shower this entire venture with his blessings we are really honored that mcc invited us here today and we are especially thankful to henna for coming and sharing her wisdom with us mashallah i'm sure you guys all benefited every time i hear her i definitely benefit but above all thank you to all of you for making time on this busy friday evening to come here and to listen to us if you liked what you heard there's still a chance subscribe to our newsletter before you leave and as you're leaving i would like to ask that please keep these words in mind read read and then read some more just read for yourself of course read to your child but you know just read sitting next to your child you're reading they're reading it's and read beautiful books as mariam said the books build our child's worldview so read books that build the values that we all cherish right patience or respect for elders faith and with that i'd like to open the floor for q and a if anyone has any questions yeah for our first question here okay so i like them um just out of care for putting this together um how can we support it outside of you know the website and everything you know can donations like how does that work just you know and i think this is just not for just muslim children but all children providing them access to this um and like it said up here that a brian tradition it's a lot of folks that need this but just just wanting to support um above and beyond you know so you know going to the website and getting those books how can we support thank you for that so um on the website we have um shall I yes to build this up we need community support honestly um and uh we have a support us on the website if you go to the bottom of the website uh you can support um financially and um if you purchase books through our affiliate links we also get you know it's pretty small but it's something but um and do has really that's the big support and getting the word out um those are some ways to support us yeah um yeah and we'd actually love too so this is our second um community event we did another one last month uh the sanermone masjid service and we're doing another one next month at sbia in the south bay but if you have a community if you're not from the mcc community um and you have a community that you um think we can do our presentation and that would be beneficial uh please reach out to us you can use the contact us forum on the website and um uh hum though we've been getting requests so we'll we'll try to honor them because we really do want um more than just people using our site people to start thinking about what's in the hands of their children like oh thank you guys this is wonderful and it's great resource a couple questions neverwise my wife sir know about know about this right she does she's one of the she's like at the soul of this are you kidding me is she really okay because she didn't tell me about this but okay so but my second question is how did you pick that the young book for young men because like i'm sitting here there's no way i could recommend a book for two girls or two women that's one no thing about it right but so for men how did you pick young you know 15 and over which is my crew how did you select those books that's an excellent question um i would say that we used to our best knowledge um the prophetic example of what manhood is and try to emulate try to see books with characters that emulate the prophetic version of manhood um it would be nice to eventually have children older boys kind of vet our books but a lot of our books are actually read by children and we do um talk to them say hey what do you think of that book especially when reading story because as an adult we can find a story very engaging but you need to know from a child's perspective as well but uh that's i would say what we use to of course we also can we look to the men around us i guess our children are a witness test yeah our children our children and elm tree are a witness test i would say yeah that's true i have a question what if what if like a kid reads a book like captain underpants like i've read that book and i'm not really like what what that book is really about what would happen what what would be what would be your opinion on what what the person should read yeah next do you have an answer i want you to answer that's actually a really good question um the best analogy is is that people like to eat junk food right and candy and it's not going to affect you just overnight but is it good to have a steady diet of junk food what what the ladies up here are promoting is like the best of the best quality food it's it's the food that's going to make you healthy that's going to make you grow tall grow better that's that's what these books provide you they're going to give you good vocabulary they're going to you're going to think about it for a long time and the messages in them captain underpants it just goes in and out it's not going to stay with you forever as far as like wanting to inspire you but there's books out there that when you read them they're going to change the way you look at the world and inshallah the books on this website many of them and there's more out there that they're still going through and getting sifting through that inshallah are going to sharpen your ability to see the world around you but you're right one book here and there it's not you know we should also what if like the book got like uh like metal but like is like not exactly what you would really want to happen in a mustard door anywhere really that's a good question so this question is what if a book wins an award but it it's not a book we would want our children to read is that yeah that happens a lot actually and especially i would say in the past 10 years there's a lot of books that are award winners bestsellers that are absolutely not anything i would put like judy bloom yeah that's a really really good point so yeah we have um the true award is the one that gets you closer to Allah spanata so eventually the best seal to find on a book is a mindful muslim reader seal that's that's the biggest award shalom one day and on that point i do want to say that one of the goals of mindful muslim reader is you know when i was at this conference um i was attending they had a mixer at one point and uh i did not find my place there it was you know it was alcohol and all those things so i kind of left it and i went and i found this really lovely group of elderly women sitting together and they had their tags on i was like so what are you guys you know i was like are you writers illustrators like they're like no we're reviewers i was like oh what's that i mean i know there are book reviewers but i was like i didn't realize it was something that the publishing world listens to and they actually invite them to these conferences because they're gonna inform what goes into school libraries they're gonna inform what gets um promoted for educational purposes and i said wow you know alhamdulillah they were they were a really beautiful group of people but the publishing industry listens to reviewers and we don't have as muslims a single official organization that reviews not muslim books but just the entire canon of english literature for muslim kids so this inshallah is one step towards building that voice for the muslim community in the publishing world you know what am i the was is that inshallah and a lot can make anything happen but one of my the was is that we reach a point where if a book doesn't get put on the mindful muslim reader website or doesn't get their stamp of approval that publishers and authors will ask okay what do we need to do to get you to include it on your list what do we need to take out just just tell us the one thing that's going to you know give us your thumbs up and inshallah that can happen it it does happen and their their communities where restaurants will serve halal meat because they know that that's the way you get people to come to the restaurant so the same can happen with books as well and one point i'm sorry that i i forgot to say in my talk um that i wanted to say right now in case there's people out there who are not doing this please normalize giving books as gifts to children when babies are born i don't i personally don't give clothes i don't give toys clothes get outgrown toys break books are gifts that keep on giving they they don't break usually um children even if they quote-unquote outgrow them if they love the book they're gonna want to hold on to it for their own children they get passed down to younger children to siblings so books literally they keep on giving they're very valued and you know books are worth a lot i i still remember one birthday party i went to where people were giving these huge like you know the the child was opening his gifts and the toys were really like huge and lit up and they looked fancy but i personally knew that that toy didn't cost more than like 15-20 dollars and then there was this one lady who came to the birthday party and she's like i'm so embarrassed like people are giving all these big grand gifts and i just have this one book that i'm giving the child and uh the child opened it up and it was this beautiful pop-up version of ellison wonderland i was fascinated and i noted down the name and the publisher because i wanted to get it for myself it was a 40 dollar book right but it's it's like books have value we shouldn't be ashamed of of showing up with one book to a birthday party people will appreciate them so thank you can you hear me okay there you go i'll show this is really amazing um one idea and maybe i don't know you're working on it is maybe to create a watch out list because a lot of our kids go to the public library or there are many families that have kids that still go to public school and they can just kind of search this book like is this okay you know and sometimes we do flip through the books but we may or may not catch it i'm i'm not sure if that's something that you're looking into creating but that would be pretty amazing but i love this initiative and may love bless it and put tanzabaraka in it mashallah mashallah thank you that's actually an excellent question and i think that's the question we get most um where's your reject list we want that so yes our reject list for every book we've put in we've probably rejected 10 so it's much bigger for now what our focus is to recommend books because we don't want we want to say what we're about but not what we're not about essentially for now um eventually with time once we've you know in a few years inshallah and once we grow our team and we get more readers and because four is not enough there's a lot of books out there um whatever isn't on our website is the reject list but not yet definitely not yet we're nowhere near that but we will get there but one hack i do have for you from mother to mother um i taught my kids how to read the publishing date when i'm at the library because i have a few kids and when i go to the library they come i have a rule where like you can't read a book and you can't oh you can't read a book until i've okayed it especially for the older kids um but even picture books now right so i the pile next to me was just getting really high and i can't get through it fast enough so when we were doing this project we realized that you'd actually notice themes every decade the envelope gets pushed a little more and you'd notice themes in every decade of what was happening in the world of children and if you want to stay away from certain ideologies like more than more of the modern stuff especially after the huge push for diversity and things like that which had its benefits but also has its drawbacks uh teach them to read the publishing date very easy it's like a hunt anything for me published before 2010 you have to bring it to me and i have to approve it anything before i know it's going to be free of certain things if you want a book free of disrespect for elders i would say go 1980s the cutoff right 90s you start getting that a lot um and usually fifties and sixties and seventies they're pretty they're they would be considered classics so so they're usually fine so you kind of like answered part of uh at least one of my question i'm the mom of an avid reader and i find myself struggling uh in the library and i'm glad to know now about the mindful muslim reader because to be honest i um what i've been using so far as the christian websites it kind of like helped me with through you know the books and um so my first question is so now you have about 200 uh books reviews so like do you have a goal as to how many reviews you're going to be having at like after a year or something because i like my daughter she literally like like eats books so it's really hard you know and then um what i lately what i've been doing is kind of like gearing myself or her towards um old book kind of like classics so is that kind of like i i heard kind of like just before you says that's kind of like a safe safer bet in general right yeah yeah i think um generally we found that the classics um and we've kind of defined that as books published before 1970 because we're already into 2023 um tend to be pretty safe of the ideologies that are on this slide uh they're pretty safe from these specific ideologies there's other things but um how old is your child oh she 12 yeah some of the things that may be problematic like theology-wise that would be over her head anyways um one of the things we recommend for avid readers is to look for series book series that are clean um that's a feature we are about to launch actually so if you subscribe to our newsletter you'll find out when we launch the feature you can search by series um and that's that's a feature we added specifically for parents of avid readers because then instead of handing them one book you can hand them five and say like hopefully this takes care of you for for a small amount of time um so inshallah look out for that feature the the search by series um yeah we we have a goal where we're training readers uh right now so that we can add more books inshallah to our website um specific number not not quite yet but inshallah make to offer us but that's not gonna be us aim high uh i i have a question that like i'm wondering about if my book is good right now for my age so i'm like reading in school right now harry potter and the sorcerer stone and i'm wondering if that's a good book and like i love that i love the harry potter series i write it as an adult so when it came out i was young but i didn't get into it until i think my freshman year of college my my cousin um was reading it who's also an adult who's also in college so harry potter we consider that it's not on our site but we consider that dessert it's not junk food might not be broccoli but it's like a good bowl of ice cream it's pretty clean um how old are you uh nine so what i did for my i let my my um my kids read harry potter but i i let them read the first three books when they were young um the older books have some things that i wanted to wait them to wait to read so i let them read that when they were like 11 12 um yeah so read the first three and then hold on for the last so saying as i continue to age i could start reading and then you have to ask your parents but that's what i did for my child if you're your parent in the room yeah yeah um a nice way to frame it is you know when you're at the airport who carries the bags your baba or your mama and would a five-year-old carry the bags that a 20-year-old man can carry no so there's just like there are heavy things in this world physically heavy things that an adult can carry but a child doesn't there are heavy things that your heart and mind they're still developing and they're going to develop inshallah into a wise intelligent adult but they'll be able to carry things that right now if you carry it it'll hurt you and so i always tell my kids if the world unpacks something like that on you go to your mama or baba they'll help you carry it okay uh last question yeah i think we have five minutes to show so we'll make this the last question inshallah is quit a good book yeah any duke so we just got a submission for a review we will review it on our site yeah yeah if you want to recommend the book i think you can pick it up if you want to recommend the book you can go to our website and there's a section there so if there's something that you've read or you're curious about there's a section there where you can um submit a book recommendation or request we're going to wrap it up and announce the book raffle winner inshallah okay so i'm going to read the email out nima at gmail.com oh nej mea give give it to the half blind person nej mea congratulations you've won a book basket inshallah inshallah one of the three bs thank you all for coming we'd like to end with a dua can we invite brother Mahdi up to the stage to end with dua bismillah alhamdulillah as-salatu was-salamu ala Rasulillah Allahumma, allimna mayin fa'na wa minfa'na bima alamtana wa zidna alma O Allah teach us what will help us and help us with what you teach us and increase us in knowledge Allahumma, arina al-haqqa haqqan wa razuqanat tiba'a wa arina al-ba'adu l-ba'adu l-na wa razuqanaj dinabah O Allah show us that what's true as true and help us follow it and show us what's false and as false and protect us from it O Allah we ask you to give us clarity in this time of increasing confusion to give us wisdom to pour wisdom in us ya Allah we ask you to give victory to the Ummah of Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam we ask you to give victory to help us pray at night and stand at night ya Allah we ask you to help us fast for you and give for you and live for you and breathe for you and love for you and only get angry for you and not angry for ourselves ya Allah we ask you to surround us with truth and beauty and and elegance and we ask you to give us victory over our egos and victory over our own selves we ask you ya Allah for all of those teachers and scholars and and workers and strivers that are striving to make la ilaha illa Allah elevated and beautiful and help humanity give them victory ya Allah by your power kuhn fayakuhn it's easy for you Allahumma la sahla illa ma ja'gdahu sahla wa anta tajarah hazna idha shiita sahlan sahla O Allah nothing is easy except what you make easy and you can make the difficult easy ya Allah ya Allah we turn to you we don't rely on ourselves fathabatu wa dhkuroo ya Allah we're taking the efforts but victory comes from you Allah you give victory to those who give victory to you ya Allah these mothers have worked 10 thousands of hours ya Allah day and night ya Allah give them victory give them vast victory that crosses continents and oceans and homes and hearts ya Allah ya Allah inna allaha ya Allah we ask you from the beginning and we don't rely on ourselves we rely on you we entrust our affairs to you we depend on lean on you and we and there's no escape from you except to you ya Allah protect our children protect our offspring protect our progeny ya Allah protect our schools and our institutions ya Allah Allahumma inna nasallukum inna khayri kulli hi ajili hi wa ajili hi ma alimna minhum ma alam na alam wun aoudhi bikka minna sharri kulli hi ajili hi wa ajili hi ma alimna minhum ma alam na alam O Allah make us all minna al-awliya as-sua'da make us from your your awliya that are happy amin subhana rabbika rabbil azzati amma yasifoon wa salamun aal al mursalina wa alhamdulillahi walhamdulillahi rabbil aalamin inna Allah wa malaykata wa yusalloon aal an-nabi ya ayyuha alladhi na aamanu salu alayhi wa salimu taslima Allahumma sali ala seydina muhammadin al-fatiha lima oglik wal khatim lima sabak nasir al-haqq bil haqq wal hadih la siratika al-mustaqim wa ala alihi haqqadri salatan tunji na biha min jamia al-awali wal la fat wa daqqilana biha jamia al-hajat wa tutahiruna biha min jamia al-sayyiat wa tarfa'una biha indaka a'la al-darajat wa tubalikuna biha aqq salgayat min jamia al-hayrati fil hayyati wa ba'ad al-mamat al-fatiha one last round of applause for my total Muslim reader