The Whole Muslim with Omar Khawaja: Faith and Story-Telling

Shehla: I'm A Muslim (And That's Okay!) presents The Whole Muslim, because Muslims aren't a monolith and every story is one in a billion.

Hi, everyone. May peace be on you all. And welcome to another episode of I'm A Muslim (And That's Okay!) and I am back with another The Whole Muslim. And I have with me my next guest and I've been wanting to have this guest over for a very, very long time, ever since I read to my kids the very first book I got from him. It was Ilyas & Duck in a Zakat Tale. And please welcome my guest, Omar Khawaja, who is a renowned children's author of some of the very first not Muslim children's book, but the Muslim children's book that I wanted to read to my kids. How are you, Omar? Please tell us a little more about yourself. 

Omar: Alhamdulillah. Thank you so much for having me, inshallah. It's wonderful to be here and that introduction was quite amusing. I'm A Muslim (And That's Okay!) I like that. So, my name is Omar Khawaja. I am the author, like you said, of Ilyas & Duck children book series. I wasn't always an author. I used to be just a regular dad, and one day I turned into an author. It was really a function of my need as a dad to be the best dad I could to my young son at the time, he was five years old, asking really profound questions about his identity and the world around him through the Islamic lens. And so, I wrote the first book to as a creative way to answer some of the questions that he had. And the one big question that he had was, “Who is Allah and where is Allah?” And all those questions, because you can't really see God. It's an abstract concept to be honest, because it's not tangible. Like, you can see me or you can see the planet and the earth and all the creation. So, the best way I thought I could answer that question for him was through a children's book. And that's-- 

Shehla: And your children's books. I think I have three out of your now five books. So, you spoke about where is Allah-- the search for Allah. I have that one as well. But the very first one I got was A Zakat's Tale. And here's the thing, what set your books out from the rest of the books that were out there was that they were kid friendly for Muslim kids. The rest of them were more for the lack of a better word, boring. [laughs] There's no other way I could put it, because they had such a serious tone to it. And when I found, like, I randomly found Ilyas & Duck in a small, like, a book, I would say, it was like, a book fair. And I was like, “Okay, this looks interesting. Let's see how my kids would take to it.” And not only did they enjoy hearing me read A Zakat Tale, I enjoyed reading it to them. Like, I could compare this to, like, for those who are my non-Muslim listeners. It's like Dr. Seuss for Muslim kids. And it's easy to read. It has the same rhyme sequence to it, and that's how it was. It's an easy read. Plus taking difficult concepts, like you said, “The search for Allah, like, who is God?” All kids ask that question, and to be able to explain it to them in a way that they can get it, and it's clear, and it's not convoluted with difficult language, that's a huge task in itself. But before I get to any more detail into that, I wanted to ask, like, “Why Ilyas and duck?” It could be any animal in the genre, but why duck? 

Omar: Right. So, Duck was easy for me, because I grew up watching Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and that duo was just for me. Every Saturday, I would watch those cartoons, and it would just be the best thing for me on those Saturdays. They were really funny. Their interactions were comical. I just enjoyed it and duck was silly. So, I wanted to-- when I decided to write the first book, of course, you're going to need characters to tell a story for kids. And so, it was natural for me to reflect back to my childhood and what I found to be interesting and what I found to be characters that I wanted to pay attention to. And I wanted a silly duck and that's where duck came from. And so, llyas on the other hand, because dynamic duos are a thing, right? 

Shehla: Right.

Omar: Any more than two, it's not as great. It's a little bit difficult to tell a story with more than two. Less than two you can tell a story, and it's a beautiful story. But I wanted a dynamic duo, and so I wanted-- llyas was a young boy, is a young boy kind of reflective of my young kid. And although his name is not llyas, my son at the time, his name is not llyas, thank goodness, because I have two boys, and if I had done that, I would have to change things. 

Shehla: You would have been in trouble. [laughs] 

Omar: So Ilyas came about because obviously the name Ilyas is a prophet's name, but it also means my Lord is my God. So, when I was researching names, I came across Ilyas. I looked at the meaning. It meant my Lord is my God. And because the first book that I wrote was Ilyas & Duck: Search For Allah.

Shehla: Right. 

Omar: llyas, meaning my Lord is my God, was a perfect fit. Not only that, the last reason why I kept llyas & Duck, because it just rolled off my tongue. I didn't have difficulty saying it. So that's how I came about the duck. Well, not the duck, a duck. His name is Duck. 

Shehla: His name is Duck.

Omar: His name is Duck. Just Duck. Simple is better. And if you and I have simple, like you mentioned that before, making things that are complicated, making them simple, is really hard to do. 

Shehla: Oh, yeah.

Omar: Really hard to do. And so, the more you can distill it down to a child's level, and you could think like a child. I think that's very important to do that in order to simplify things. Think from their perspective, not from your perspective trying to educate them, but from their perspective trying to receive the information and the questions that they have, I think changes everything. And that's what I've tried to do with these characters and the stories and the naming of the characters and so forth. 

Shehla: Right, right. But that's the thing, as you said, you mentioned this in your bio, that this was to explain to your then five-year-old, a really complex question, “Who is Allah? Who is God?” So, did the answer come first or the book come first? So how did that come about? 

Omar: So, actually, what you mentioned earlier, but just before, also was-- The first thing I didn't do is to say, “I'm going to write a book. Hey, you have a question. I'm going to write a book.” That's not natural. That's not what happens. Typically, what happens is the children, you know, the kids ask different questions, and there's different ways to answer them. So, I know, I read. I worked in corporate America for a number of years, like many dads do. And every night I would come home and that's my time to spend. I'm out all day. It's my time to spend with the kids was at bedtime, when they're going to sleep. 

Shehla: Right.

Omar: So, I would snuggle with them and read a children's book. And we would do that day after day, most of the year. And so, I read a ton of children's books to them. So, when he asked, when he was of the age to start asking these profound questions, I, as a parent, went online to try to search for books because I knew he loved books. And books were great medium for children to-- if they are done right, they're creative and they get the message across. And the mainstream books were just fantastic. They're fun to read, they have great characters, storylines, etc. But when I went online and I found two things, or didn't find, one was like you said before, the books that were out there, my son, as an American-Muslim, would never pick up. I could read it to him. 

I could read it to him, but he would never look at it again. [crosstalk] Maybe that leaves a bad taste. You know, nothing against people's efforts. This has nothing to do with that. We're just talking about content and what's good for our kids. And so as a parent, I didn't. And I knew as American-Muslim, he's going to compare, in his mind, intuitively. Like, naturally, he's going to compare one versus the other and the other being mainstream content, which is great, fantastic. So, I knew that wasn't going to work. And not only that, I didn't find any books, zero, on answering the question of God. Like, there were books out there that said, “Allah made this, Allah made that.” Ah, very didactic, straightforward, not really answering the question, tiptoeing around the question. And so, I didn't think that was meaningful. And that's why I decided to write a storybook myself. 

And the idea, like, the storyline came to me first before the idea. Well, actually, no, I wanted to now that I couldn't find any resources for him, I knew I had to write a children's book. And so, I started thinking about the answer in a fun, childlike way. And then the storyline came to me and in that story, if you're familiar with it, what came to me first is, it's interesting. Every book that I've written, I come at the book. The point of the story or the main part of the story that I start with is sometimes in the beginning, sometimes in the middle, or sometimes I know what I want to conclude. In this story, which was the first one, there's a rhyme within the story that says, and you have to read the whole book because people take this line out of context. Some people take this line out of context from a religious perspective. But if you understand the entire book, what it's saying, it's a creative way to keep the conversation going and open up dialogue with the kids. But the line says, and each animal. So just for the audience that has not read the book, Ilyas & Duck, llyas questions, “Where is Allah? And then that sparks that they embark on a journey to try to find Allah. Like, kids don't know that you can't see Allah. Like, that's not where they start off from. 

Shehla: Right.

Omar: So that's why the book is called search for Allah, because kids will think that when you say Allah this, Allah that around the house, that it might be something that you can find. So that's where I started from. So that's why it's called Ilyas & Duck: Search For Allah. Because kids will think that when you say Allah. This Allah that around the house. That it might be something that you could find.

Shehla: Right.

Omar: So that why I started from, so that why it’s called Ilyas & Duck: Search For Allah. Now, of course, we know they're not going to find him like I can find you or me. We know that I want--

Shehla: They're not going to find him in a tangible way. 

Omar: Correct, correct. But they don't know that initially, right. 

Shehla: Right. They don’t know that.

Omar: [crosstalk] impression. So that's why the book is called Ilyas & Duck: Search For Allah, because everything is done from their perspective. From an adult perspective, it's like, search for Allah. You can't really search for him in that way right? of course we know this, like I said before, we and the content and maybe you alluded to this earlier, the content, that's out there for a most of the time it's gotten a lot better. But the content has traditionally been out there for young Muslim kids, has been from an adult perspective, teaching and regurgitating things to young kids in an almost an adult way with some colorful characters here and there that really are not tied into the story. They're just there to facilitate the story because kids like color and characters. So, because I understood that that's what was available, I wanted to always really get to the core of it and answer the question. That's why I said search for Allah. So then the question, “Where is Allah?” They embark on this journey and they go to different parts of the world looking for God. They go to the top of the mountain, the highest mountain, they go to the bottom of the deepest ocean, they even end up in outer space. 

Shehla: Space, yeah. 

Omar: Each landscape or each part of the world that they end up in they come across Allah's creation in that part of the world, right. 

Shehla: Right.

Omar: And we know this as Allah's creation, but the story doesn't really make that very, very clear. But obviously, it's a natural thing. You come across animals and Allah's creation. So in each part, the animal says, because Ilyas says, “Hey, we're looking for Allah. Do you know where we can find him?” And the animal replies, “Yes, Allah is all around us. The mountains as tall as you can be, or they can be” or another animal says, “Yes, Allah's all around us. He gave me gills so I can breathe.” Meaning when they're in the ocean,-

Shehla: Underwater.

Omar: -each animal says something from their perspective, how Allah gave them this thing. And then they say, “But you can't see Allah like you can see me.” All right, and that's the key. That's the facilitator that keeps the story going from one part of the world to another part of the world. Now, I don't want to get ahead of you here, but the part I want to make clear that the part that Allah is all around us doesn't really mean Allah’s all around us in an un-Islamic sense. It means Allah’s all around us from the animal’s perspective, because of the creations. That's what they're relating to and that is made clear by the end of the book.

Shehla: Right. And again, the thing is, if somebody finds that objectionable, it's more nitpicking than anything else. But the thing is, like, when I read the book like this, not just the search for Allah, A Zakat Tale, and I had the fantastic festival of Eid-al-Fitr as well. All of these books, what they do is, like, they take Islamic content, but make it so that even if you're not Muslim, and I have, like when I have lots of non-Muslim friends, when they were asking, like, we want to read books about other faiths and have better understanding. This is the first book, I refer to them, the Zakat's Tale by llyas & Duck, that these books, like, even if it's speaking of a very specific term, Zakat, which is like a specific form of charity in Islam, it's in a way that is universally understandable. I think for all the three books I have, the Zakat Tale is most remarkable to me because it takes a concept that for Muslims, like, we have a tendency to complicate, but it expresses it in such a simple way that anybody could understand the importance of giving of charity-

Omar: Yeah.

Shehla: -without overcomplicating it with semantics, oh, it has to be this much, that much so on and so forth. 

Omar: So I really like that book too. I have to say I like all the books. People ask me “Which one's your favorite book?” I can’t have-- It's like saying, “Which one's your favorite child?” You can't say that. But there are like interesting elements in each one of those books that I've written that I enjoy, that I'm glad that I was fortunate enough to have, be able to create. Because you're right. I think from an outside perspective, sometimes you look at that be like, “Wow. I didn't think about it like that.” And the Zakat book, there's a fairy tale in the middle of the book. So there's a story, and then there's a fairy tale in the middle of the book, and the fairy tale is what rhymes. The rest of the story doesn't really rhyme. And that's another-- I want to cover that maybe later on the rhyming schemes that I try employ. So that to me, I think that when I wrote that story, first of all, there were no books on Zakat. There's no story book-- 

Shehla: Yeah. 

Omar: I think now there are no storybooks on Zakat at all. And I can understand why because, again, when people or the businesses or creators create content for kids, I really think that they're doing it from their perspective. And that's why they’ve never written a book about Zakat. But there's a fundamental concept. It's one of the five pillars of Islam. Yes, kids are a little young to understand the concept from an adult perspective, but they're not too young to understand the concept from a human perspective, like the giving part and what that does, and also what I think is interesting, and I say this to the families and the parents that attend the llyas and Duck show, which I do all around the country and sometimes around the world, is that when I present that book and I say, “Parents, I am going to teach your kids macroeconomics.” [Shehla laughs] And then they laugh. And they laugh, but it's true. If you read that little part of the book, it's macroeconomics. I think that was a function of it, there's a creative part of my brain and then there's a financial part of my--

Shehla: Financial. Yeah, that's where your background is. But that's great. 

Omar: Yeah. So, I think that kind of got jumbled up here when the Zakat story came about in my mind. And I was like, “This is just fantastic.” I was really excited to write it. 

Shehla: And that's the thing, like, with all of your books, you even have a Ramadan book. I don't that's the only one I don't have. And with all of these books, it's just like, it is taking what we consider Islamic concepts. But if I gave it to somebody who was not Muslim like, this has some Islamic concepts in it, just for exposure and all of these things. It'd be a simple read and not, like, full with jargon that even for Muslim parents and Muslim kids be like, is this like-- it would be a little bit much for kids-

Omar: It’s too much.

Shehla: -but, yeah, it'll be a little much for kids. So that's the great thing about it. But, yeah, it's just that--

Omar: To that point, can I tell you a little story? 

Shehla: Sure, sure.

Omar: And I don't think this happens as much anymore because. So, when I wrote the Ilyas & Duck: Search For Allah book, I was at a conference at a bazaar, and there are many vendors at the bazaar, and back then, this was like, 10,12 years ago, right. So, there are some large resellers at the bazaar. And you rely on them because I'm just little old me, trying to sell a book and get into the hands of other people so they can enjoy what the content is. And so, I can't do that all on my own. So, you need these resellers that have access to people, parents that I don't have access to. 

Shehla: Right, right. 

Omar: So true story. I went around. This was an ISNA Bazaar. I went around, I said, “Here's my book and would you like to purchase it to resell?” They're like, “I don't know. Leave it here. We'll see how it goes.” Right. 

Shehla: Right.

Omar: So I left it with many, but I'll tell you the story, the same story that occurred with two of them. And I remember, mind you, this is early on, llyas and Duck was kind of like this anomaly I would say if I could. If I can say that and I say that because that's the feedback, the reaction I got from the moms, mainly moms at the time. Dads are coming into the fold now, the last couple years. But back then, it was only moms.

Shehla: Right.

Omar: And so, I left the book and I went back to my booth and day after day, and then on the last day, I went back and I said, “So what do you think? Do you want to carry it?” And then the guy looks at it again, and he goes, “How much is it?” And I was like, “$16.99.” And by the way, the price point was $16.99 because it is hardcover. It has a dust jacket, spot UV. It was done differently than every other book. I think the most expensive children's book at the time was like $14. So, mine was priced even higher just because it just cost me more. So anyway, so that was one thing that stuck in his mind. He's like, “Oh, yeah, $16.99.” And then he flips through it, literally, I kid you not both of them. Two of them said, “There's not enough words in it.” 

Shehla: Oh, my gosh. 

Omar: And so, [chuckles] I was dumbfounded. I was like, “What?” And that's exactly what you had referred to. The content sometimes becomes too much because we try to throw. I say we generally. Some creators for children's content feel that there is more value in the book if you just throw everything at it. But we, as parents know, and what you said before is that there's more value when it gets the message crossed.

Shehla: Right. 

Omar: Not how much is in it. So, I found that pretty interesting. I think that's changed a little bit now, their perspective. But that was the initial reaction to the simplicity of the book. 

Shehla: And that's the thing, again, at that time, when I found this book, this was like same thing. This was the 2017 ISNA, I found it, and the Zakat Tale was the first one I had found and I bought it because this is the kind of book I was looking for. But all you had were the other books with, like, content was so complicated. And now that's what's changed from then until now. You have more child friendly Islamic books than you had back then.

Omar: Yeah.

Shehla: Same thing. Like, is trying to get a simple message across. Nothing too over the top complicated and too full of religious jargon that-- it's there as a part of our faith. But for children, that's a very-- a lot of them are very hard concept to grasp. So again, at that time, I really appreciated it. And I think the only complaint I have at this point is, like, my kids are too old for llyas & Duck and I needed more llyas & Duck back then. But the good news is you have just come out with a new llyas & Duck. So please tell us about that. 

Omar: I have, I have. Thank you. So, it's Ilyas & Duck: Spectacular Salah. And, of course, this is the second pillar of Islam. And there's a theme now. So, when I first wrote Ilyas & Duck: Search For Allah. It was a need. Just randomly wrote a book, then randomly wrote another book, Ilyas & Duck & FANTASTIC FESTIVAL OF EID-AL-FITR. But then the few other books I wrote after that just were topics, I felt that were really important. Of course they are, because it's the five pillars of Islam. They just happen to land on those five pillars because Zakat is not a thing that people think about. But the story came to me, so I wrote it and it happens to fall within the five pillars. And then when I realized I was doing the five pillars, I have to continue this because there is no, really-- Well, I don't know if there's any five pillars children's storybook set. I don't think there is. So then now I'm on that mission. I have to do it. 

So Ilyas & Duck: Spectacular Salah is the fourth pillar in the series, the fifth book currently being, the EID-AL-FITR book. So, it's the fourth pillar and I'm really excited about it because it is for a slightly older audience. I have to tell you this, it's not for a four-year-old or a five-year-old. It is for like a six plus. And my wife said, “This is almost like Harry Potter, how it got more advanced as the Harry Potter series went on.” [Shehla chuckles]

Omar: I was like, “Maybe.” But you know what? I never limit myself to. It must be, well, that's not true. I do give myself constraints in some of the books, my own constraints, because yeah, I need constraints, so I give myself constraints. But in terms of what I'm trying to communicate, the story has to fulfill that need to communicate a certain point about what I'm trying to say as an author through these characters in the story. And so this book, the way it's written, it's for six plus, I would say, just before they're starting the salah journey, so it's a perfect time for it. And it is also the longest book. So, all the other books are 40 pages. The EID-AL-FITR book is 32 pages, which is standard for children’s book, 32. The other books were 40. This one's 48-

Shehla: Ooh.

Omar: -pages. And it does have what I say, it has a lesson in the rhymes on every page because it does rhyme from cover to cover. 

Shehla: Right. 

Omar: This is the second book that I've written that rhymes cover to cover. Ramadan Joy! was another book that I wrote, the previous one-

Shehla: Right. 

Omar: -that rhymes cover to cover. All the other books have rhymes in them that I think when the parents read it or somebody reads it, they naturally fall into the rhymes without realizing. I hope. I hope that's how that those other books flowed out of my head where they didn't necessarily have to rhyme cover to cover, so. 

Shehla: Right. 

Omar: Yeah. I think back to, why I did that. I have no idea why I did that. It just came out of my head like that. Whereas this book and the previous one, Ramadan Joy! Ramadan Joy! I consciously made an effort to say, “This one's going to rhyme cover to cover and it's going to have a new character, which it does.” 

Shehla: Right. I remember, yeah. [laughs] He was, like, the first I guess official bad guy that shows up in the Ilyas & Duck books.

Omar: And I have to say it's almost like a cameo. He almost is a cameo. He doesn't have a huge role, even though he plays an important role in that story. 

Shehla: Right. 

Omar: But I did take my time developing him, like, the way he looks and things like that, because I do want-- he's part of the what I call IIyas and Duck universe. So, the IIyas and Duck universe started out with IIyas and Duck, and now I added Mr. Mean. But if you look at some of the additional, the other content that I've done through IIyas and Duck, I've done this online content one year. 

Shehla: That's the other thing I wanted to ask you about, because it's not just Ilyas & Duck books anymore. You have a lot of other content. Please tell us about that. 

Omar: Yeah. So, in 2018, I left corporate America, and I wanted to do this full time. Build IIyas and Duck, it was just more meaningful for me than going into a cubicle and doing that work. So, I took the leap and in order to help with the transition, me and my family, we moved to Qatar or Qatar, however you want to say it. And so that was a nice transition. COVID was not great, but while I was there, I was fortunate enough to work to collaborate with Qatar foundation mostly. And it's a huge nonprofit at Qatar. And so, when COVID hit, they needed to pivot from in-person events to online events, and they didn't have anything for kids. So, I had built a relationship with some folks there, and so we, in a hurry, literally in a hurry created this online content with llyas & Duck with this animated characters and stories. 

And the second year that we did, the first year was a bit clunky, we tried to do Live and we had Internet issues it was big. It's actually pretty funny. If you ever find one of the first episodes from the first year, it's funny to watch. I love the growth of things. I love how-- and like, you should just do things and let them break and it will still get you somewhere. So, we did the first year. It was really interesting. We learned a lot. We did it. We got commissioned to do it the second year. And that was much better. The animation was much better. The storytelling was much better. And for 30 days, every single day, we had an episode of Ilyas & Duck with different themes. Four different themes. One of them was in llyas & Duck, just kind of llyas & Duck cartoon. Another one was Storytime w/ Grandpapa Duck, which uses another character within the llyas & Duck universe. Then another one was Friday Chat with Ustadh Duck. And that was more akin to every Fridays, we would have something like a khutba for kids. 

Shehla: Right. 

Omar: And on that one, we would have kids sending video questions of things that they had. And it was called Ask Ustadh. That segment was called Ask Ustadh Duck. And so, the kids were sending their questions, and Ustadh Duck would answer those questions in that episode. It was really fantastic. I really enjoyed it. I wish we had continued it, but it takes a lot of effort. But you kind of see where I want to take Ilyas and Duck, where I think llyas, where these characters can go. I really think and I see. I see them now as really companions. llyas and Duck are companions for your Muslim child's character-building journey. 

Shehla: Right, right. And again, I wholeheartedly love the IIyas and Duck universe. It started with just one book, and my only, I guess, again, same gripe is like, “My kids are too old, okay? I need something that maybe little bigger kids will get into llyas & Duck.” 

Omar: Right, for yourself. 

Shehla: Graphic novel or something like that.

Omar: Right, right. And, yeah, well, it's interesting you mentioned that. So, yeah, so now that I have looked at this not as a dad's need to do something or randomly a creative outlet for getting books out, because that's what I do now. And people are asking me, “What's your next book?” It's because so it went from the dad need to randomly getting out creative content to now, let me just think about this a little bit, like, “How do I grow this? So, it's a little bit more meaningful, reaches more people, makes more of an impact.” And so that's where I am now. And what you said, your kids are a little bit old, and I get that older now, right? I get that. But I still watch animated movies like I want. 

Shehla: Oh, yeah, yeah for sure. But my kids are at the tricky age. They're like, they want to be grown up. And I'm like, “Y'all know this is a trap, okay? There's nothing that's exciting about being big and old.” But they're like, “We want to read books that are not kiddish.”

Omar: Yeah, yeah. [crosstalk]

Shehla: They're in the in-between awkward age. But again, I so love and appreciate the very existence of IIyas & Duck, thanks to your efforts. Your son's questions, I mean, if somebody's to credit, it’s for your then five-year-old, for we got the IIyas and Duck universe. So, I mean the thing is, you've said that you have more things that you want to do with IIyas and Duck. So, for my audience, where can they find not just the book, but the entire IIyas and Duck, I guess, content universe? 

Omar: So right now, the content lives on, the books live on-- you can find them on Amazon. You can find them on the llyasandduck.com website. The videos that we had done previously, you can find them on YouTube if you search Ilyas and Duck channel. This is an llyas and Duck channel. I really haven't grown that channel too much. It's been, like, a little bit of, because it was part of a project that I did. I really have not historically created consistent content in that way because I was just focused on-- My main focus right now, initially, is to finish the five pillar series, but grander plans are like, the foundations being built for those. Yeah, so that's all I'll say right now, is the foundation is being built for those other plans. And inshallah, in the near future, you'll see more things happening with llyas and Duck. But right now, [crosstalk] I'm enjoying being out there. The shows that I do all over the country allow me to get the message out about llyas and Duck, get the other-- make an impact, like face to face, meet the parents. And so, I really enjoy that for now. And then, inshallah, that'll transit into fans for life. 

Shehla: Right, right. No, for sure. I think my last question would be, is that llyas and Duck is your empire in a sense. Have you ever been curious about creating like another set of characters that is apart from llyas and Duck?

Omar: Well, the answer is yes. Because I think when you say apart to me, I look at everything as growing out of the llyas and Duck universe. Like, totally separate there has to be a need for it. Like, I'm not randomly-- Like, I feel like I'm serving now at this point, parents, other parents like me that I was in need before, and I looked online and I couldn't find anything. So, I had to do the hard work and create something for myself. I feel like there's many parents out there on a daily basis looking for needs, different needs for their kids in there like I said, “character building journey.” And the journey changes over time. And the journey is relative to a young boy, a young girl living in the US, living in Canada, living overseas. So, the way they like to receive the information is something that I'm very much in tune to. And I understand that, llyas and Duck, first of all, Duck is a universal character, and it's not a boy or a girl, so it's animal, and so it relates to boys and girls. I think that's what appealing about the llyas and Duck franchise. Even though llyas is a boy, Duck itself makes it more universal and appealing to both. 

Shehla: Duck is-- how I always perceive Duck, is that he is the universality of all childlike thought. I mean, like in even your Ramadan story and in the Zakat Tale, when we're fasting, the first thing, the instinct is to get up, go eat something. Or when people talk about money, they're like, “Oh, the money's mine.” I can keep it sort of thing. So, he is the universal childlike spirit.

Omar: Yeah. Yeah, I like to think of them that way also. I have to embody their personality when I'm writing these books. If I don’t-- actually, you'll find me sometimes, I'll say what I'm writing and I'll act out like the character to see if it makes sense. And then oftentimes that helps me rewrite the words in a certain way that fits the character better. But going back to your question, I think there is an opportunity to create other characters that might address the needs for different age groups and different whatever. But for now, I think there's so much to do with llyas and Duck itself and building out llyas and Duck universe with additional characters that can fill that role. That's what I'm focused on now. 

Shehla: Mm-hmm. I think, again, I love the llyas & Duck books. And for everybody who's listening in, I'll put out the links to your website. So that they can access your books and your other content as well. Because I think in general, it's just so great. It's just a simple way for kids to be able to understand certain things, Muslim kids especially, that to understand things that seem like a big thing for them, especially when grown-ups talk about it. It just seems out of reach. But llyas and Duck makes it so accessible I think that's the fantastic part about it. Thank you so much, Omar, for being here with us and introducing us to llyas and Duck and bringing the llyas and Duck universe to us. I'm praying for much success for the new llyas and Duck book and to all future ventures in the llyas and Duck universe. 

Omar: Thank you so much for having me. This was very enjoyable and best of luck to you and everything that you do and in this podcast. 

Shehla: Thank you so much. 

Omar: Appreciate it. 

Shehla: Thank you so much. And thank you to everybody who's listened in and watched us on YouTube. Y'all take care of yourself and may peace be on you all. 

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