"The night of perfect measure is better than a thousand months. The angels and the Holy Spirit descend in that night with the permission of their Lord on every errand: with peace until the rise of dawn." (Qur'an 97:3-5)
The story revolves around the imagery of a holy and peaceful night, which is also central to the spiritual imagery of Christmas. Better Than A Thousand Months emphasizes the similarities between Islam and Christianity while downplaying the differences. The story is narrated by the African-American father of a large Muslim family who tries to answer his children's questions about religion honestly and creatively, while also seeking peace of mind and honest answers to his broader and more subtle questions about life.
The imagery of a holy and peaceful night is illustrated throughout the book with full pages of Islamic calligraphy and colorful landscape photography. The photography, taken in the hills and mountains surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area, follows the progression of a night from sunset to sunrise.
The father is confronted at the outset with a seemingly simple question from his 8-year-old daughter: "Why don't Muslims celebrate Christmas?" It is clear, however, that his little girl is not looking for a theological response but instead wants the Muslim counterpart of Christmas lights, Christmas carols and Christmas shopping. The father responds, therefore, with a creative, colorful and sometimes humorous answer that grows, through the course of the book, to include the entire family.
The family interaction described in the story covers a period of about two months (the month of Ramadan and the preceeding month). But the story places all of it within a dream that the father has during a night of frequently disturbed sleep, after an early evening earthquake disturbs his normal routine. The photographic illustrations of changing light in the book parallel the progress of the night as the father periodically wakes up from his dream. The father finally awakes at sunrise from his fitful night with insights both from his dream and from his ruminations during his wakeful moments. At the end of his own special night, he heads off into the day with a new resolve.
The book's subtitle, An American Muslim Family Celebration, refers to the increasing number of American families, particularly in the African-American community, in which one or more members have embraced Islam but still also have family or community connections to Christianity. During the course of the book, the father reminisces about his own Christian upbringing and explains to his daughter that even though the two religions have different rituals, the meanings behind the rituals are essentially the same.
The book is written at a reading level that makes it accessible to young readers in the fourth and fifth grades of elementary school. But the size of the book, the quality of the illustrations and the humor targeted at parents as well as children are intended to provide family reading, particularly around the time of the holidays - Christmas as well as Ramadan. The twin goals of the book are to provide a non-pedantic description of Islamic worship to a largely Christian and Western audience, while also helping Muslim families living in nonMuslim environments to better appreciate and explain to others about their religious rituals and the spirituality behind them.
From a purely literary perspective, the book might be criticized for its ambitious structure. The author writes a story within a story, in which the main tale is told as though it were the narrator's dream. Fully developing such an ambitious structure would probably have required a much more complex story, so the waking segments sometimes seem more dreamlike than the dream segments. This technical flaw doesn't hurt the storytelling, however. If anything, it adds to the story's charm and keeps the reader (particularly the young reader) interested and amused throughout the book's 168 pages.
