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Walking in someone else's
shoes Na'eem Jeenah It’s mainly men that are involved. But women are not complete non-participants. They too get an opportunity to express their support or disgust. Most men who regularly go to mosque – even if it’s just on Fridays – have either seen it or participated in it. Again, the response is either support or disgust. No neutral feelings here. I’m talking about the practice in the Muslim community of beating up the person caught, every now and then, of stealing shoes from the masjid. I’ve witnessed it on many occasions, tried to intervene once or twice and heard about it many times – usually from one of those that is disgusted (which is an indication of the friends I keep). The story is typical: musallies pour out of a masjid after jumu’ah and find someone – usually a young african man – trying to escape with a pair of shoes he pinched from the masjid’s shoe rack. Of course, it was an expensive pair of shoes and, of course, the owner wouldn’t be too happy about the disappearance of his favourite Nikes. But, even before the owner can express his relief at recovering his shoes, the musallies pile into the youth, beating him to a pulp. Usually, he is shouted at, then pushed and then knocked to the ground. That’s when the real action begins, as the throng of men surrounding him start laying their own shoes into the poor sod, kicking him all over his body – and if there’s an opening to get at his head, all the better. On a rare occasion the guy might find his way out between the dozen of legs surrounding him and might run off, sans the expensive Nikes. On another rare occasion, some foolish, rebellious musallie tries to intervene, with naïve pleas about calling the police, letting the law take its course, etc. Which pleas, of course, earn him the secondary wrath of the musallie mob. More often than not, however, the rabble ceases its jihād against the shoe-pilferer when they draw a decent amount of blood, perhaps accompanied by the sound of a breaking bone. That usually indicates a job well done. After all, they don’t want to kill the man. The incident then becomes the subject of lunch and supper table bragging for the next few days, much like a hunter would brag after a kill. (This is sometimes accompanied by complaints about how the new (read Black) government is not doing anything about crime.) I recently heard about an incident in Mayfair, Johannesburg, that followed this storyline almost to the tee, except that the time wasn’t post-jumuah, but post-maghrib. And, since it was Ramadan, it was also post-iftar. So picture this: a bunch of Muslim men trot off to the masjid at the end of the day to spend the last minutes of their fast in the remembrance of their Creator, and to break their fast and pray their first post-fast prayer. This experience should leave them with a sense of utmost humility and awe for Allah. And, it is supposed to end a day when they tried to experience the pain of those who are poor and starving. They walk out of the mosque, having broken the fast and prayed their maghrib, and then launch an attack on a poor, barefoot creature who attempts to appropriate a pair of shoes, beating him senseless and, worse, taking great pleasure in their feat. I can’t be the only one that sees something wrong with this picture. The purpose of the salah is to help draw us closer to our Creator, to be able to appreciate His Presence in our lives, to remind ourselves – five times a day – to nurture the development of His attributes in our hearts and our lives. Salah – when we repeat numerously Allah’s being Rahman and Rahim (The Compassionate and The Merciful) – should make us yearn to inculcate His Mercy and Compassion and Love and Justice into our very beings. So too with fasting. It is supposed to force us to experience – albeit for a few hours a day – the pain of the poor. Yet Muslims who have just fasted and prayed walk out of the mosque and beat up a poor person. Is one of His attributes ‘the abuser of poor people’? Does the fast not help us in any way to see people and life in different ways, to appreciate humanity and our sufferings? I sometimes wonder whether the hapless shoeless creature would be so severely attacked if he was white, indian or malay – as opposed to being african. Is, I ask myself, this ease with which Muslims would beat up a man after their salah linked to their regarding him as less than a man, less than human? Would we, as easily, assault someone who we regard as an actual real person? Is this ease related to our deeper assumptions of racism? Is it easier to kick a kid who is on the ground if that kid is a ‘kariah’ as opposed to being ‘one of us’? Discussions about racism always remind me of the story of the Prophet’s (s) companions Abu Dharr and Bilal, a story which I like recounting. In the heat of an argument, Abu Dharr referred to Bilal as ‘you son of a Black woman’. The Prophet (s) heard about the incident and accused Abu Dharr of ‘still retain[ing] the standards and judgements of the pre-Islamic days of ignorance’. Ashamed, Abu Dharr went to Bilal’s house, placed his head on the ground and refused to raise it until Bilal had placed his foot upon it. Certainly, the shoe thief is not Bilal. But that does not mean we cannot behave like Abu Dharr, the sensitive companion who cared so much about racism and who spent most of his life trying to love and be close to the poor. Perhaps the next time a poor kid tries to steal my shoes I should, before attacking and nearly killing him, ask myself what it would be like to walk in his shoes (or to walk with his shoeless feet).
November
2005
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