Being poor or wealthy is not a sin, depending how you ended up in that situation. That is why Islam teaches the rejection of sin and not rejection of the sinner, and warns against severity towards folk.
For example, there are many beggars at traffic nodes, when you park your car, outside church, mosque, at the beach and on every street corner, beggars seem to appear from nowhere.
Often the sight of many beggars everywhere can become stressful.
I recall two events that confirm innate humanity. Years ago during the elections while hanging posters in Crawford, two beggars declared they would vote for the Cape Muslim Congress. I asked them why they would vote for me.
Their explanation was that as seasoned beggars across Cape Town, when they asked, Muslims always gave tasty food with a smile. As non-Muslims, they wanted to vote for a Muslim since they valued the food and decent treatment.
The second story relates to the prophet, King David, son of King Solomon. The Angel of Death told King David that a young student of his would die in 10 days. The time passed and the student did not die.
When the Angel of Death visited King David on another matter, David asked why he did not take the student’s soul. The angel told David the Creator had delayed the student’s death by 60 years.
Apparently a beggar using the name of God, asked the student for help and the boy who had six coins in his pocket gave all the coins to the beggar. The beggar then prayed to the Creator to give the student a long life. The Creator heard the beggar and gave the boy 10 extra years for each coin.
Moving on, recently I heard an energy expert saying that Eskom was overpaying workers and had 30000 more workers than required.
If the 30000 needless Eskom workers were fired, he said, and Eskom delivered the obligatory electricity, more than 3 million jobs would be created.
When I see begging, I think of the two cautionary tales above and the overpaid Eskom workers doing the minimum for maximum taxpayers’ money. The corrupt must know that there is no mercy from the Creator without genuine repentance which requires restorative justice to those who were harmed.
When people ask the Creator to alleviate their burden of limited money, they are in truth cursing the corrupt who steal from hard-working folk.
Think, if the Creator answered the prayer of a beggar, can we imagine what happens to the prayers of those who pay for expensive electricity and get load shedding?
* Cape Muslim Congress Yagyah Adams.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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