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Undilah PAS : MENENTANG KEZALIMAN & MENEGAKKAN KEADILAN
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Boy, 5, Converts 1000 to Islam
Scotland on Sunday
8 August 1999
By: Andrew England in Nairobi
UK visit beckons uneducated Kenyan prodigy preaches in five languages
There are orphans and street children everywhere. So much so that the sight
of another small child standing on astreet corner hardly merits a second
glance.
But only when the boy opens his mouth to speak do onookers realise that
Shariff Idd is special. The five-year-old speaks in five languages -
English, Frence, Italian, Swahili and Arabic - even though he is completely
uneducated.
Shariff is a preacher who draws crowds of thousands in Kenya to his
increasingly regular sermons. The Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi,
is a great supporter following an audience with him earlier this year.
Last week was a milestone for the child introduced to gawping throngs as
the 'miracle boy' of East Africa. He smiled truimphantly when he told he
had notched up his one thousandth conversion to Islam in a country where
Muslims are a minority.
Tours of France and Britain now beckon, according to Haji Maroulin, one of
the boy's four guardians. he will travel as a missionary on a trip to be
financed by a Muslim businessman from the Ivory Coast. "When he is not
preaching he is just like any other kid - he likes Tom and Jerry cartoons
particularly", Maroulin said. "But when he preaches he changes."
"At one year old he was able to recite the Koran and went on to be able to
preach in Arabic, Swahili and Frence without any learning. The number of
his converts is growing daily."
For a child he has strangely adult mannerisms. he speaks confidently,
mainly in Swahili unless he is delivering a sermon. Then, he fixes his
piercing brown eyes on the person he is addressing without inhibition. His
squeaky child-like voice mesmerises audiences.
According to Maroulin, Shariff was born into a Swahili-speaking Catholic
family in Arusha, north Tanzania, in December 1993: "At the age of two
months he started reciting verses from the Holy Koran."
The boy's first words - "You people repent and you will be accepted by God"
- were in Arabic. His concerned parents believed him to be disturbed by
'demons' and called pastors to pray for the baby.
Eventually Muslim neighbours interpreted their son's alien speech and his
parents later converted to Islam themselves. Although his father died in
1997, his mother remains in Tanzania while her worldly son continues his
travels.
There is no doubting his pulling-power, and in a commercial world his
entourage has been quick to produce videos of the high-pitched sermons. He
has also been deemed genuine by Kenya's Muslim World League.
Kaplich Barsito, 35, from Nairobi, saw Shariff in action addressing a crowd
of more than 1000 in an open area of the Pumwani district of Kenya's
capital, and is in no doubt of the boy's abilities.
"He was like a politician, very confident," he said. "He seemed as though
he would have been dissapointed if there had been less people. The power
went off andhis minders wanted him to stop, but he grabbed a loudspeaker
and carried on in Swahili, English and Arabic. It was very impressive and
he mesmerised the audience with a focussed sermon."
Shariff himself seems mystified about his powers. He said last week that he
picked up languages as soon as he heard. "I went to Congo and heard people
speaking Lingala (the local language). I just was ablw to start speaking it."
� Copyright The Barclay Brothers Ltd.
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