My First Qur'an with Pictures: Juz' Amma (Shereen Sharief)

My First Qur'an with Pictures is an illustrated English children's translation of the suras of Juz' Amma by Shereen Sharief, whose first part came out in 2018. ¹

Sharief is a pharmacist in the UK, born into a Kurdish family and raised in Iraq, for whom Arabic is a second language; the idea came from teaching children the Qur'an and finding that pictures helped them understand. ¹ Having no formal religious education, she had the translation checked and approved by the Iraqi-born, UK-based scholar Abdullah ibn Yusuf al-Judai, a founding member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. ¹

Part 1 has 47 pages covering twenty-five suras from al-Nas to al-Balad; each sura has a page with the Arabic text and an illustration of one of its messages, a complete simple translation, and an explanation of its context. ¹ She agreed with the British illustrator on principles for depicting people, such as not showing the whole face. ¹

Part 1 has been reprinted more than three times, Part 2 followed in 2019 for children over ten, and the books are distributed in the UK and countries including Canada, the United States, Indonesia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with Spanish and Italian versions. ¹

• Yulia Riswan, "Qur'an translation of the week #181", The Global Qur'an, 2023. ¹