Reject the sin not the sinner
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.
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 confirms innate humanity.
Years ago during the elections whilst hanging posters in Crawford, two beggars declared they will vote 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 from the Prophet, King David, father of King Solomon. The angel of death told David that a young student of King Davis would die in a 10 days. The time passed and student did not die. When the angel of death visited King David on another matter, David asked why death did not take the student’s soul. The angel told David, the Creator 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 30 000 more workers than required. He also said that if the 30 000 needless ESKOM workers were fired 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 taxpayer’s money. The corrupt must know, 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 hardworking folk. Think, if the Creator answered the pray of a beggar can we imagine what happens to the pray of those who pay for expensive electricity and get load-shedding.
Cllr Yagyah Adams
Cape Muslim Congress