The destitute millionaires

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The Chinese proverb says: ‘Do not give a man fish for dinner, but teach him how to catch it’. I swear we are the last nation to believe in this theory and here are the reasons.

Fatima Othman, the ‘physically’ handicapped woman died in Beirut a short while ago. Her body was found inside an old car with black plastic bags filled with millions of lira, a bank savings book with 1.7 billion lira in her account which is more than 1.1 billion dollars.

A few days ago, I was with my Lebanese friend Samir Rahal who, when he stopped at the traffic light, reached for his pocket and handed a beggar boy some money. I advised him against the practice and told him the story of a beggar who was a millionaire. He replied saying he did not give money for the poor but to earn the heavenly reward.

I reminded him that if he stopped giving money for such young beggars they will be off the streets and instead find a place in some educational institute or find a small decent job, to which his answer was ‘this is my last concern’.

A majority of our charity people do what my friend did. However, truth behind this was discovered by some very early and exploited it throughout history and went on to collect huge sums of money. Some associations affiliated to religious parties also took part in this exploitation, especially during the tragedies that struck Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Syria and Iraq, and what is now happening in Africa, Yemen and elsewhere.

My heart pained when I saw the image of an African boy, reduced to a skeleton by hunger holding a brand new copy of the Holy Quran.

I also recollected a story which I had read some time back about the late American pop star Michael Jackson donating about $100 million to build four universities in Africa. I wondered why such projects find no importance in our Gulf societies and why they are limited to digging wells and mobilizing preachers, building houses of worship and publishing religious books. They have not carried out one single project which we can call worthy, except for the building of religious schools.

We say this not to ridicule or criticize anyone, but to urge the ‘group’ to do good for the benefit of the weak and the poor and not limit their activities to earn heavenly rewards. We say that because we know according to the concept of these people, they do not consider the construction of universities is good work that deserves attention.

If we take a quick look at the capital of some US charity societies (money donated by generous benefactors and some money coming from the tax payers) we will see the great difference not only in the size of these funds, compared to what we collected, looted and lost but also in the great objectives and the role played by this money in improving the lives of individuals and communities all over the world, and the great benefits in the current inventions and discoveries, many of which are funded by endowment funds.

I had earlier listed these achievements in articles and many more and I mean money paid for good causes and not to earn heavenly reward. Here, we whisper in the ears of our neighbor that these endowments generate at least ten billion dollars a year, mostly spent on humanities, scientific and medical discoveries, arts of all kinds and financing research and university studies, which benefited thousands of Arab and Muslim students.

The money is also spent on the scientific laboratories and does not allocate any part of this money to spend on the treatment of persons possessed by evil spirits who are beaten to force the jinn to leave their bodies as was done by one who finally killed one of his patients and the prison term against him has been suspended and instead given the nationality of the state, which was revoked on the charge of endangering the security of the homeland, and reinstated thereafter.

e-mail: [email protected]

By Ahmad Al-Sarraf

This news has been read 13291 times!

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