Muslim All-Stars

Khaleel Muhammad, the nashid singer, has tried his hand at writing a book for children, which falls short of putting the message across. While the underlying premise is noble, the poor narration, shoddy choice of words, strange collocations, and the forced dialogues ruin the experience. Although the illustrations which accompany the text are very well drawn, in the popular anime style, they suffer from discrepancies. The illustrations do not match the descriptions given in the story, albeit very slightly. However, all is not lost. The titular “all-stars” are portrayed as kind and charitable children. They perform salat at the appointed times, which impresses the non-Muslim characters of the story. Leila, a character in the story, makes a reference to the Prophet’s (pbuh) life and the hardships he faced even though he only wanted to help. She draws strength from the Prophet, and with him as her role model, decides to continue helping others even though her initial experience was very bitter. Another heartening point is that despite the Polonskys’ notoriety the group still helps them because they are in need. The children themselves are a motley group, with a Pakistani, an autistic Malaysian, a Jamaican convert and two other hijab wearing girls. This diversity of the children is something to be celebrated. To sum up, the story is commendable. However, the narration and vocabulary leave much to be desired.