Kalma-E-Taiyiba written Inside the Tomamto

According to a reporter from the Express newspaper, UK, they were calling it the Miracle Tomato of Huddersfield. For when a schoolgirl sliced it in half she found written inside what thousands believe to be a message from God. Moslem Shasta Aslam 14, was astounded to see the words, spelled out in Arabic, "There is only one God" and "Mohammed is the messenger" in the veins of the each segment.

Then more than 50 worshippers a day were making a pilgrimage from all over Britain to see the wonderful tomato. And the shop which sold it has been doing roaring trade in the fruit since the find on that Sunday afternoon. Shasta made the discovery as she helped her grand parents prepare a salad at their terraced home in Lockwood, Huddersfield. 

She paid about 60 pence for a bag of tomatoes on a trip to a store across the road with her cousin, 14-year-old Jasmine Saleem. When Shasta returned she cut up the first two tomatoes into small pieces. But she took a third from the brown paper bag, something made her stop. She turned to her grandfather Noor Mohammed, 68 and asked: "Which way shall I cut the tomato, granddad?" 

He told her to slice it top to bottom. If she had chopped it up like the others the message would have been lost. Shasta, a pupil at Salendine Nook High School, said yesterday: "God made me buy that tomato. These words are a message from God. It's a miracle." 

Shasta's mother Shamim Javed, said: "She keeps up her prayers and goes down to the mosque as often as she can God has sent us all a sign." She added "You hear about these things in foreign countries but never here in Britain - let alone Huddersfield! It was an incredible twist of fate that the tomato ended up with Shasta. "Someone else could easily have sliced the tomato the other way round, or even eaten without noticing the message inside." 

Shasta's grandfather has been greeting hundreds of worshippers from across the country at his home. He kept the tomato on a plate in his fridge hoping to preserve it as long as possible. "Nearly 200 people had come from as far away as Manchester, Birmingham and London to see it," he said. "We are expecting a lot more people from further afield. 

"Shasta comes to see us almost every day after saying prayers at the mosque. She is always helping us out." Shopkeeper Shahida Parveera, who works at Younas Foodstore across the road, has been selling out of tomatoes every day since the discovery. "We are thinking of opening a tomato trade," he said. 

Last year hundreds of Asians flocked to the home of a man in Bolton who believed he had received a message from Allah in an Aubergine. Factory worker Salim Patel sliced one open and saw that the seeds spelled out the name of the Moslem deity. 

(Courtesy of Express Newspaper, UK, June 1997)