09-27-2004, 03:50 PM
STORIES FOR OUR SMALL CHILDREN
THE STOLEN SHIRT
Yunus had just started his night prayer when he heard someone come inside the house. It was a thief that had broken in and was looking for something valuable. Yunus did not want to interrupt his prayer, and thought that maybe the thief was poor and in a great need of food or something else, and that is was better to let him take something. But also Yunus was poor, and the thief did not find anything else than a shirt that he took with him when he left the house. Yunus thought that surely the thief needed the shirt and he did not tell anyone what had happened.
A few days later Yunus visited the market, and saw two men that was quarreling with one another. He asked what they were arguing about, since he wanted to mediate. The first one said that he wanted to by the shirt, but wanted to be sure that it was not stolen and he wanted to have someone to witness to that the shirt really belonged to the man that he was arguing with. But he in his return refused to do so. Yunus did recognize his own shirt. What a coincidence! But he decided to keep silent about it, and offered to witness that the shirt belonged to the man, and he then offered to by the shirt himself. When the other man heard this he bought the shirt without asking anything more.
It didn't take the thief a long time to realize how it all hung together, and he also remembered that Yunus did not have anything valuable in his house. This man that did not own much had by now also witnessed that the shirt was his. His conscience began to haunt him and he did regret what he had done. He ran the whole way to the house of Yunus and admitted what he had done och so he became a Muslim. The patience that Yunus did show towards this man had made him return to the Sirat al Mustaqim.