c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In artist Shahada Sharelle Abdul Haqq’s new children’s book, Moses’ staff flairs into a scary cobra, confronting the cobras from the Pharaoh’s magicians.

A puzzled camel peers over the edge of a well, looking down to where Joseph had just been thrown by his brothers. And David, his face hidden in the shadow of his headscarf, hurls the fatal rock at a towering Goliath.

But nowhere in the 120-page “Stories of the Prophets in the Holy Qur’an” is there a portrait of Moses, Joseph or any of the 25 prophets recognized as special messengers of God, a prophetic line Muslims believed ended with Muhammad’s death in 632 A.D.

No Charlton Heston Moses. No blue-eyed Jesus.

“We take the prohibition against making graven images literally,” Haqq said last week as she looked through a proof copy of the new book. “We can’t portray the faces of the prophets.”

Haqq, who is African-American, appreciates the tradition. As a child, she found it odd that the pictures of God she saw showed an old, white-skinned man, a cultural habit that reveals more about the assumptions of Western culture than it does about the Creator of the Universe. She knows how inaccurate human portrayals can be.

The prohibition against images means that Islamic artists have excelled at calligraphy, geometric art and mosaics, but not portraits. While some ancient Islamic texts do, in fact, include faces of the prophets, for the last several hundred years, Muslims have, for the most part, avoided realistic art in general and portraits of these holy people in particular.

That’s partly why Muslims the world over took such offense at the satirical cartoons _ one of which portrayed Muhammad with a bomb in his turban _ that were printed in European newspapers in 2005.

Scholars associated with Tughra Books, Haqq’s U.S. publisher, and their Turkish associates had to evaluate Haqq’s work to make sure it was appropriate, she said. A few pictures had to be adjusted _ Joseph’s brothers should not be portrayed as bowing to him, for instance, because one human should not bow to another.

“We must be careful how we portray the prophets,” said Haqq, of Huntsville, Ala. “Quite frankly, I’ll be held responsible for this on the Day of Judgment.”

But as careful as she was, she was still surprised by some of the hesitation of the scholars.

“I’m American,” she said. “I was raised with Walt Disney. There were cultural understandings we had to sift through.”

Haqq, who converted to Islam some 30 years ago, hopes her book helps with other cultural understandings among Muslims, Jews and Christians. After all, most of the 25 prophets in the book are also found in the Hebrew scriptures of the Jews and the Christian Old Testament. Muslims recognize Adam, Abraham, King David, Solomon, Jesus and other biblical characters as prophets.

“Islam is one of the most misunderstood religions,” Haqq said. “You know the status of Islam is not the most popular thing in this country. One reason I did this book is to show is it in a non-threatening way. This is for people to get another understanding of the most misunderstood religion.”

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Haqq’s is the first book for children to collect the stories of all 25 prophets, said Husayin Senturk, the director of publications for New Jersey-based Tughra Books.

The publisher pushed to make sure the book would be ready for the beginning of Ramadan (which began Sept. 1). Ramadan is traditionally a time of increased reading of the Quran, the messages of God Muslims believed were revealed, word-for-word, to Muhammad between 610 and 632.

“This is going to be an essential book for all Muslim families, all schools,” Senturk said.

And non-Muslims may find in its pages a different understanding of Islam than the simplified and, often, contorted versions found in news broadcasts.

“This book points out some commonalities, some important virtues all the prophets tried to represent for humanity,” Senturk said. “There are differences between the stories (compared to Jewish or Christian versions), but the main theme is the same.”

(Kay Campbell writes for The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.)

KRE/JM END CAMPBELL

A photo of Haqq and images from her book are available via https://religionnews.com.