Amina Rahman and her daughter, Hafsa, reflect on their experiences with the NPR Illinois J-Corps pilot. Follow along each Friday through May with this J-Corps Audio Journal.
Hafsa Rahman: It is Hafsa Rahman with our J-Corps Audio Journal for this week. As we've been editing, we found a lot of funny stories that we really enjoyed, and while we can't include every single one of them in our final episodes, we found a few interesting ones we'd like to share this week. Mahnaz Habib has a funny story about interfaith events at the mosques.
Mahnaz Habib: Most of us don't appreciate what a great impact teachers, all educators have. It was wonderful to welcome all of them in the mosque. The beautiful thing was to see the children's reactions at their teacher is in their mosque, their principal is here, and to see them play host
Amina Rahman: Because they had, the kids had invited them.
Mahnaz Habib: They would go around asking, can we bring you something more to eat? Did you take enough? Can I get you something to drink? And the pride with which they did that, it was very heartwarming.
I remember one, a principal standing up and saying, this is the first time I've been inside a mosque. If we hadn't had that event that day, perhaps that person may still not have visited a mosque. Over the years, whenever we have our gathering at the mosque, we know who has visiting before because those are the people who will be wearing the snazziest socks because they know that they have to remove their shoes.
Shoes are not allowed in the carpeted areas of the mosques. If you look down and you see the guests who have the brightest, the most interesting socks, you know right away they've been here before.
Amina Rahman: Nobody else would've told me that.
Hafsa Rahman: The next story we wanna share is from Ayanna Qadeem. If you're Muslim, you've likely had biryani at some point or know of it. At least.
Amina Rahman: The way you described that was just so beautiful. I wanna include that because I think that's part of that nostalgia and that imagery. Your description of the biryani?
Ayanna Qadeem: Listen, if this interview were about biryani, I could talk about biryani all day.
Amina Rahman: Go for it. I mean, biryani is a Muslim thing.
Ayanna Qadeem: I'm an evangelist for biryani. I make it. I used to sell it. I love biryani. I'm, I'm a biryani snob and a biryani connoisseur. When I was a teenager, I had one of the sisters in the community make biryani for my birthday,
Amina Rahman: Tell the people what's biryani because some people might not know. How did it come into your life?
Ayanna Qadeem: Growing up in the Muslim community here, it was so diverse, during the potlucks, , we had like South Asian food, we had food from all over the world. So, I've always grown up on that food and that's part of my Muslim culture and identity growing up here. Biryani is a rice dish that has layers and depth of spices, and sometimes it's mixed with chicken or beef or lamb, or sometimes it's vegetarian and it's cooked slow and low. biryani is magic, basically.
Hafsa Rahman: This last story we wanted to share this week is from Maryam Mostoufi.
Maryam Mostoufi: We have participated in three Habitat for Humanity builds, interfaith builds. We had the president of Habitat for Humanity come here and speak at the Governor's prayer breakfast, and he was so impressed by the fact that our interfaith builds actually included people from all different faiths working on teams together. Other models that he had seen, they would call them an interfaith build, but the Christians would work on certain days, the Muslims work on certain days, and the Jewish people, or Hindu, or whatever other community would work on other days. How is that interfaith? He said, "Exactly." We wrote an interfaith prayer manual so that every day we would begin the day with a prayer from a tradition, one of the building groups. I can still see the first build, and see Rabbi Marks and Dr. Tamuzudin the front of the house hanging siding. I think the only hammer Dr. Tumuzudin had ever picked up was one that you tapped your knee with for reflexes. I teased him afterwards about that. I don't know that Rabbi Marks had ever picked up any kind of hammer before, and yet they learned how to hang siding. That's where they were, the two of them having a ball hanging the siding and that's what it was about.
Hafs Rahman: That's all we wanted to share this week. Thank you for listening and stay tuned for the rest of our J-Corps Audio Journals and our final reporting series.
Edited for length and clarity.
Press Forward Springfield is awarding its first project grants. NPR Illinois along with the Illinois Times and Capitol News Illinois are each receiving funding to report on different untold stories in our community. The three reporting projects will be posted in May.
Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln in collaboration with the Field Foundation and the Illinois Department of Human Services are leading this project as part of their Healing Illinois program.
NPR Illinois is using the grant to test its vision for community reporting and journalism training — the Journalism Corps or "J-Corps."
