Lisa Suhay and Abdalrahman Abou Almajd around Mrs. Lisa's Fables

Lisa Suhay and Abdalrahman Abou Almajd around Mrs. Lisa's Fables.

We have a fresh opportunity to reflect on Lisa's Fables. Lisa Suhay is going to speak about Fables, as well as that will appeal equally to children and adults.

Lisa Suhay

She's chess teacher and children’s book author, She became Bureau Chief of the Marco Island Eagle located in Marco Island, Florida in 1996. And got a contract writer for the New York Times1999.

Following the success of Tell Me a Story (April 2000), Lisa Suhay has penned a second volume of modern, original fables based on characters from the natural world. Originally written as bedtime sotries for her children, Suhay's fables have been used widely by parents, teachers, therapists, and religious leaders as tools for education and healing.

No one has tried to do exactly what Suhay has done: to write allegories that will appeal equally to children and adults. I feel that the stories are warm and engaging and I am going to recommend this book to translate into Arabic and Islamic languages.

Suhay wrote about her recent conversion in the Virginia-Pilot to Islam in Ramadan 2017.

 

Q: I thank you Mrs. Lisa for giving me this interview opportunity, I wonder how you converted Islam?

LS: After the presidential election in November there were many hateful virulent and unreasonable the perceptions of Islam and the travel ban on Muslims. I found myself defending Muslims. But people kept telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about because I’d never set foot inside a mosque. I went to the mosque to learn. In doing so, my anger, hate and frustrations evaporated. I found my peace with God where I was called to find it.

Q: And you’re a brave woman who aren’t interested in obtaining the apology of Jeff Sieting, the president of Kalkaska Village. you just want him to know a few things, could you elaborate on a few things, please?

LS: Thank you, but I do not feel very brave. Sieting posted a story on Facebook calling for death to all Muslims, “Every single one” and calling Islam “flesh eating bacteria” and “destructive to society.” I wanted him to see us as people. I wanted him to connect to me in the hope that I could put a crack in the wall of hate that divides Muslims from others. Many of President Donald Trump’s followers are misinformed about Islam. While many I have encountered don’t want to know the truth or prefer to twist the truth, I believe strongly that we must continue to show Islam is peaceful and good by introducing ourselves to them. Muslims have been dehumanized which makes us easy to hate. I wanted him to see that condemning “all” of any group means hurting the innocent. Next, I want him to take what he has learned and convince those he knows who hate us to change their minds.

Q: Well, What made you take up fables?

LS: My husband and I lived aboard a sailboat for six years wit our first two sons. It was peaceful. But when we returned to civilization people were very cruel to me and my children because we were different. I wrote the fables for my sons to help them cope with the bad things life has to bring an to help them feel closer to Allah.

Q: No doubt you read Aesop's Fables I want to know what you added.

LS: I transformed the people from the lives of my children into animals and other creatures and told the stories of their actions, prejudices and cruelty through that filter. What I added was God. Allah became a tree, a voice the wind through the trees.

Q: You are a children's author and storyteller, How can stories help children and adults?

LS: The most powerful way to create change in the world is through stories and the printed and spoken word. I believe this is why Allah chose to be the author of three books: the Talmud, Bible and Quran. Allah reaches out to us and into us through stories we can relate to, remember and re-tell.

Q: in your opinion how can stories help create some cross-cultural

understanding?

LS: Sharing stories is something every culture shares. From ancient times stories have bound cultures together. I hope that my stories have a special power to do this because, for the most part, I purposefully removed people from the stories. When you make a story about a person the prejudices come right in. In books the publishers feel the need to make the people match the culture and so those characters are no longer universal. But a mouse is always a mouse in every culture: timid or brave, brown or white, it is easier for people to see that mouse as everyone's mouse, than than when it is a person who is brown or white.

Q: Could you elaborate on one of your fables?

LS: The Mouse and the Light was written shortly after the attacks on 9-11. I was working as a reporter for The New York Times and ran across a story about how children were being recruited as suicide bombers in Pakistan and other nations. This was before I converted to Islam. I read about Islam in order to try and find a way to help show these children that this was not the way of Allah or Islam. So I basically took us all to the garden of Eden and the tree that represents Islam in the story. This tree that can give fruit, shade and life suddenly has its beautiful, cooling shade, choose to twist and pull itself into a terrible shadow. The shadow breaks free and begins to strike fear. Then the shade becomes a darkness that gets into people. https:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qCsiKqhPVdQ

Q: I wonder how Islamic Fiction and fables are to gain acceptance.

LS: I think they will gain acceptance the way any fable or story from any culture ever has, which is by helping people to feel something that they need to feel. Often, the reader doesn't even know they needed this feeling until after they have felt it. Stories have become accepted because they gave something to the reader. The reader is grateful and wants to give back. But how can you give back to a story? You must, as Americans say, "pay it forward" by giving to the next person. Readers do this by re-telling the tale. Maybe the story gave a sense of relief, peace or hope. Maybe it was a good cry or laugh. I pray before I write. I have always done this, long before becoming Muslim. Now when I pray my stories come from a place of Allah's choosing. I look forward to seeing where He takes me.

Abdalrahman: Thank you very much, Mrs. Lisa.