At age 45, Chris Downey had pretty much constructed the life he'd always wanted. An architect with a good job at a small housing firm outside San Francisco, he was happily married, with a 10-year-old son. He was an assistant little league coach and avid cyclist. And then, doctors discovered a tumor in his brain. He had surgery, and the tumor was safely gone, but Downey was left completely blind.
This week we're glad to welcome Abdirahman Farah from Somalia to our office. Brother Abdi is working at the Somalia president's office in Disability Affairs. We gave him a Braille Quran as well as a book of Hadith . We also took him on a visit to the Malaysian Association for the Blind and the national council for the Blind. He had a tour of the library, the Braille printing unit with the thermoform machine , the low vision center and the vocational training center.
Insha Allah the new National Agency for persons with disabilities in Somalia will benefit from his experience here.
Our Braille Qurans have arrived in Gaza ! There are 18,000 visually impaired people in Gaza ( injuries from Israeli attacks , genetics and lack of medicine for eye diseases) and due to the seige they are unable to get Braille paper or embossing machines to make Braille books. Thousands of people need the Quran in Braille . One year ago AlFitrah Foundation Braille Quran Initiative was asked if we could provide 100 Braille Qurans for the blind in Gaza. Its taken a long time but alhamdulillah yesterday I heard good news and I was sent this photo and it made my heart sing. Most of the Braille Qurans were sponsored by Muslims in Singapore through Sani Hamid. May Allah bless the donors and all who helped .
Yusuf Aslam, a 7-year-old boy from Luton, England has finished memorising the Qur’an aged 7. He follows in the footsteps of his older sister Maariya who also memorised the Qur’an two years ago at the same age. It took him just over two years to memorise all 114 chapters of the book of Allah.
Brother Sabri in the UK is a sighted Quran teacher but he is keen to learn the Quran in Braille so that he can also teach the blind. We have put him in touch with a blind hafidz who is willing to teach him by phone using the Quraanic Braille primer we posted to him last week. May Allah bless his efforts and make it easy for him.
