Humanities Homework Help

Assignment

Read

Before Islam, Middle-Eastern folktales

• “Aladdin” adapted the Blue Fairy Book (http://www.storynory.com/2006/11/19/aladdins-lamp/)
  Text and audio available at this site
• “The Princess Farmer” –a Hindu story ()
• “The Iraqi Cinderella” (http://www.365cinderellas.com/search/label/Iraq)

  The basic, authentic stories of Islam:

• The Muhammad story The Muhammad story – Alternative Formats , located in Course Materials, left column.
• The Quran:
  someone said that reading sacred text is like learning a new language, so please be open-minded.
  There is an audio version and a text version on this site (http://clearquran.com/)

  The Qu’ran is not arranged in chronological order. The opening chapter captures the tone of the book. Remember, this is an introduction, not a thorough education, to the Islamic faith.
  Read:
  Chapter 1, Introduction
  Chapter 4, Women
  Chapter 12, Joseph
  Chapter 14, Abraham
  Chapter 19, Mary
  Chapter 71, Noah

  When a young person wants to be expert in the knowledge of this holy book, he (usually a boy) memorizes it and recites in a way that sounds like singing:
  ()

  Two informational books; authors and/or books recognized by the Middle East Book Awards

• Rukhsana Khan, The Big Red Lollipop ()
• David Macaulay, Mosque. Kindle version available.
• Finally, a less serious Islamic story, “Dad’s Brownies” (https://wisdomshare.com/stories/dads-special-brownies/)

Questions

1. What have you learned about Muhammad, peace be unto him, and his life? What surprises you about his personal story?Are there parallels to other stories we’ve read?

2. What did you learn from the Quran readings about the beliefs and practices of Islam?

3. Khan’s book is written for an audience of outsiders, conveying both literature and information. She is also talking about the immigration experience, from her own experience and from other points of view as well, especially her mother’s. What should college-age readers learn from this book?

4. Mosque has a lot of information in it, both about Islam and about architecture. What is Macaulay’s point about architecture? What is he trying to convey about Islam?

5. What are the cultural markers that make the Iraqi Cinderella story a middle-eastern one? If Cinderella became a Muslim, what changes would you expect the author to make in order to accommodate the faith practices?

6. How do we show the cultural values of Islam to our readers? What should we emphasize? What should be the Muslim values we emphasize for children. Remember, this is a world-wide religion with many different approaches to its practice.

7. Another Nobel Prize winner, this time a Muslim teen, this time the Peace Prize.

• Malala’s UN speech ()

There are several books about her, written for children, written/ghost-written by herself. There is even a movie. Choose one and review it for the class. To get you started:

I Am Malala. With Christine Lamb. Boston: Little, Brown and Hachette, 2013

Karen Leggett Abouraya, Malala Yousafzai: Warrior with Words. Illus. L.C. Wheatley Great Neck, NY: StarWalk Kids Media, 2014

Dinah Brown, Who Is Malala Yousafzai? (Who Was…? series). Illus. Andrew Thomson. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 2014

Rebecca Langston-George. For the Right to Learn (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Picture Books). Illus Janna Bock. Mankato, MN: Capstone Young Readers, 2015

Davis Guggenheim. He Named Me Malala [movie]. Twentieth Century Fox, 2015—available on youtube.