Ever wondered why we are promised that our wealth will never decrease as a result of charity?

“And on the earth are signs for the certain [in faith]. And in yourselves. Then will you not see?” (Qur’an, 51:20-21)

We may sometimes wonder what the impact of one action can be, even though the Prophet ﷺ (peace be upon him) told us not to belittle any good deed, even smiling. We hear the hadith (narration) about charity never diminishing your wealth, but our pockets definitely feel lighter. If we are serious about an answer, all it takes is some reflection.

I recently went to donate blood. The blood that you give can help to save up to three people, at no cost to your self. Your body regenerates ‘new’ blood, and you can donate again in 3 or 4 months.

Think about this: A small amount of blood from one person can save up to THREE people. That is one small action that goes a long way; and for the parents of the child being saved, your action is worth everything in the world. And your body, all by itself, restocks its blood supply without you having to do anything.

Similarly, when the Prophet ﷺ tells us that our wealth will never decrease as a result of charity, rest assured that Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted is He) will ‘restock’ your wealth. Indeed, al-Shakur—the Appreciative—will give you back so much more.

Moral of the story?

Reflect on yourself and remember that you have signs within you.

Never belittle a small action, because Allah will take it far.

Nothing good that you do will ever go to waste, and it will come back to you multiplied.

And lastly, please, give blood 🙂

IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation/Turkey

While watching the news with my mom the other day, a segment came on about the famine in East Africa. As we listened to the anchor share the stories of families coming to the refugee camps for aid, he highlighted one specific story of a father who walked for 30 days and 30 nights to save his three young sons. At one point in his journey, the children were too weak to walk so their father would carry them one by one – dropping one off at one point then going back for the other across the barren desert.

Then they shared another story of a mother. She was sitting quietly by the bedside of her child who just passed away. Her two other children passed away a few days before this baby. She sat there for hours, quietly, because she could not afford to bury her own child.

In the past 3 months, it is reported that nearly 30,000 children have died.

30,000.

For us in the West, we cannot even imagine a situation like this. We cannot even comprehend the magnitude of what our brothers and sisters are facing due to this drought and famine.

AlhamdulilLah (Praise be to God), Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala (Exalted is He) has blessed us with food and water, and a way of showing our gratitude for this great blessing is to share it with others. Help your brothers and sisters who are literally starving.

On the Day of Judgment, Allah (swt) will say, “O son of Adam, I asked you for food and you fed Me not.’ He will say: ‘O Lord, and how should I feed You when You are the Lord of the worlds?’ He will say: ‘Did you not know that My servant So-and-so asked you for food and you fed him not? Did you not know that had you fed him you would surely have found that (the reward for doing so) with Me?” (Muslim)

Action Items

• Donate Whatever You Can. I asked a crowd of youth during a halaqah what easy good deeds they can do in Ramadan. A young girl about 8 yrs old said, “We should save our change and donate it to Somalia.” You can donate through Islamic Relief: http://www.irusa.org/emergencies/east-africa-crisis/

• Pray. Make du`a’ (supplication) for them, for real. We’ve become a bit desensitized to this phrase, “make du`a’ for them/for me” because we hear it so much and then we respond with “insha’Allah (God willing)!” but never do it.

• Stay Updated and Raise Awareness. Keep up to date with the situation through the news, and share what is going on with your family and friends. Read about the effects of starvation on the body and what diseases the children are dying from.

• Don’t Waste Any Food. Keep a mental image of those starving children on the lap of their mothers in your mind.

• Seek Allah’s Forgiveness. Sometimes the calamities that happen on the earth are a result of our sins. This drought is a reminder that our sins effect the earth so we should seek Allah’s forgiveness.

• Help Your Local Community. Remember to help our neighbors here who are hungry and needy as well. Ask your local mosque if there are any families you can donate food to and get involved with a local soup kitchen. Feeding others softens our hearts and reminds us to be humble, charitable, and thankful.

O Allah we ask You, by Your beautiful Names and perfect Attributes, to shower our brothers and sisters in East Africa with Your Mercy. O Allah, help them for You Alone are the One who responds to the desperate. O Allah bless them with beneficial rain, O Allah bless them with beneficial rain, O Allah bless them with beneficial rain. O Allah grant them food and drink, O Allah feed and provide for them for You Alone are The One who Provides. O Allah bless them with health and protect them from sickness. O Allah grant the parents patience during their trials, and make the loss of their cihldren a means for their entrance into Paradise. O Allah if this is due to our sins, forgive us and have mercy on us. ya Rabb (O Lord) we implore You and beg You for You are the Beloved of the believers, You are the One who hears our supplications, and You are the One who we rely on and You are the Best of those who respond.

I just got off the phone with Umm Abdullah. “Wallahi, ehna mutaaban khaalis – We’re so, so tired,” she told me. Umm Abdullah is the wife of a bawab (apartment keeper) of the old apartment building in Egypt I used to live in. They have four kids, three of whom are under the age of eight.  When I went to see them, Abdullah, the two year old, was really sick and woke up crying from coughing so hard. My heart poured out to them.

Umm Abdullah was holding sick Abdullah and she herself was trying to recover from a tooth operation she just had due to a bacterial infection. She is now missing her front tooth, and is in a lot of pain. She and her husband did not have enough money to pay for the operation, and the doctor gave them a special discount which they still could not afford. Alhamdullilah

(all praise be to Allah), Allah opened the way for them and a couple of friends covered the cost. When I went to see her she told me, “The doctor said alhamdullilah I came now…the bacteria would have soon reached my brain.”

The bacteria would have soon reached her brain. With four kids, a husband who is on 24/7 shift at keeping the apartment building in shape, fetching to the needs of all those who live in the building, and trying to barely make ends meet, it is only by Allah’s mercy that those individuals she knew stepped forward to help when they did. When I spoke to her now, she told me her husband is very sick with great pain in his teeth as well. I ask everyone to make du`a’ (pray) that Allah makes it easy on them and on all our brothers and sisters who are in this situation…subhan’Allah (glory be to Allah), how many of them are facing so much worse, and have no one who they can turn to for some financial help in desperate times?

The bawab system is insane. In the city of Cairo in which I had lived probably millions of people live in complete poverty. Bawabs and their families live in small rooms, with leaky walls and roofs, often insect-infested, with little of anything else. I realized how –subhan’Allah – different our worlds truly are when I took some kids from a bawab family out to pizza. The kids had no idea how to use a fork or a knife. I took one of the little boys to the bathroom and he had no idea how to use a toilet. It had never occurred to me that this amazing toddler has probably never seen a toilet in his life (they use the baladi style holes on the floor). In the split second I turned away, the poor kid ended up urinating all over the floor because he had no idea what else to do.

What hits me the hardest is thinking about how the kids in this situation look toward their future. To see their father and mother work and receive no respect, and think they will most likely never be able to go after their dreams of being a journalist, a teacher, a film maker, an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, a manager…that their ability to contribute back to society will eventually just turn into working under the command of others as a bawab, or maybe becoming someone who walks the streets day and night with a cart of corn, hoping to make a couple Egyptian Pounds (LEs) every few hours, and that this lifestyle will continue until old age; watching their children and grandchildren take the on the role of bawab, or that of a bawab’s wife is – as one bawab’s daughter said – “Who else [than the daughter of a bawab] would marry the son of a bawab?”

One time I was walking back from a class with a few sisters and we saw an older man, probably in his seventies, trip and fall on the hard street. The man was dressed in a thobe (a man’s garment), the specific type which bawabs sometimes wear. As we hurried toward him to ask if he needed help, we realized that his glasses had fallen in front of him, the lenses had broken, and he could not see. He searched for the extra pieces of the broken glass with his hands, politely declined our help, crawled to a nearby car, and began to cry. “He’s not crying from the fall,” one of the sisters told us, “he’s crying because glasses are so expensive and he broke his glasses.” Our hearts broke as we walked away, and I can only cry in incredulity at how our opulent computers and cell-phone bills probably cost more than the amount of money he has made over his entire life. Allah Musta’an (Allah is the One we rely on).

How can those of us who are – alhamdullilah – not in this situation feel any trace of arrogance or disgust when we see our brothers and sisters in this situation? We seek refuge with Allah! How can we not stop, give our salams, smile in their faces and shake their hands? Allah blessed us. We can read; we can eat comfortably; we have public schooling (the worst schooling option here costs at least 500 genay, discounting any books, uniforms, etc); we don’t sleep with – literally – twenty flies all around us. My roommates and I complained about cockroach issues. Cockroach issues? “Are you scared?” Our bawab’s wife laughed when we told her we were trying to get rid of them; pointing at her own floor, I saw insects crawling in dozens.

Gloomy picture, right? It’s sad, but you can help. Very seriously, you can make a huge difference insha’Allah (if Allah wills). Here’s how:

1. Show Allah our gratitude to Him by working on our relationship with Him. Alhamdullilah, we have enough to eat everyday. Alhamdullilah, we are reading this in English, and it might be our second or even third language. Alhamdullilah, Alhamdullilah, Alhamdullilah… so show Allah!
   • Allah says in a hadith Qudsi: “… My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him…” So let us keep up with our obligations to the One Who continually provides for us! And then try to do some extra if we can insha’Allah so that perhaps Allah may include us amongst His beloved slaves.
2. Keep up our relationship with the Qur’an. Everything will open up for us when our best friend is the words of the One Who owns the Heavens and Earth and the treasures of everything in between. Let’s just start with committing ourselves to never leaving at least reading one page of Qur’an a day and insha’Allah build up from there.

Those are for both of us. And by helping ourselves and connecting with Allah, we WILL help these people insha’Allah. If every single Muslim – and I’ve heard there are over a billion on the planet masha’Allah – just prayed their five daily prayers on time, do you think we would be in the desperate situation we are in as an Ummah? Do you think we would see the massacres and extreme poverty of our brethren in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Sudan, Gujrat, Kashmir…the list continues? Naw man, with Allah’s Help, no way!

But subhan’Allah, it’s scary; we don’t see how our sins DIRECTLY IMPACT THE SITUATION OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS. So, simply put: Let’s check ourselves before we wreck ourselves…let’s wake up!

And how can we do a few small things to directly help the situation of those suffering globally?

1. Donate! $10=~50 Egyptian Pounds (LEs). $100=~500 Egyptian Pounds (LEs). Insha’Allah your donation can put children like AbdulRahman, Amatullah and Abdullah through school, help provide a ton of food for them to eat and enough clothes to get through rough times like the winter. I cannot tell you how many random people in the streets of Egypt stopped me in the winter and asked me if I have an extra blanket to spare. Do not underestimate the weight of a dollar! If you can only give $5, we’re talking about 25 Egyptian Pounds (LEs)! And that’s only in Egypt…imagine other countries where the dollar weights even more. There are plenty of places you can donate online. Here are just two websites to get you started: www.givelight.org and www.irw.org.
2. Please make du`a’ for them – in your sujood, in the last third of the night, when it rains…keep our brothers and sisters in your du`a’. They are suffering, and the least and WEIGHTEST effort we can put forth is asking Allah to open the ways for them.
3. Last, but not least, set the trend! Treat the poor, whether in America or Egypt, Brazil or China, and everywhere in between, as your blood brother or sister. Check your heart when you feel an aversion to greet them. And especially for westerners in foreign lands, like Egypt for example. Take time out to hang out with your bawab, and set an example for some of the natives who think it’s not posh. Set a trend! The “hanging out with people in poverty is cool” trend! Once in Ramadan we had taken AbdulRahman and his grandma to taraweeh with us and one of the Egyptian women spoke really rudely to them and basically pushed them aside. All that before they knew they were with “an American.” Whoa, talk about change of picture. Once they knew an American was with them, suddenly they wanted to hook it up. May Allah purify our hearts from hypocrisy.

[Also, disclaimer: I’m focusing the camera lens up close and personal on a negative aspect of a particular region in Cairo. Alhamdullilah Egypt is amazing, masha’Allah. This topic is simply focusing on “the dark side.”]

Subhan’Allah, maybe you and I are being tested more with wealth than they are tested with poverty, because they have to keep turning to Allah and being grateful for the small amounts they receive, and constantly feel complete trust and reliance upon Him because they truly have no one else, while we often just waste, complain, and are so busy making more dough that we easily forget to do really, really important things…such as, say, the most important thing we can do to show gratitude: praying five times a day, on time, every day!

May Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala (exalted is He) bless these people, increase their rizq, open every good way for them and make everything easy for them, and make them and us of those who are grateful to Him, and help us show our gratitude by fulfilling what He has asked us to do, and be of those who race in doing the extra, ameen.