In Pakistan, beggars are often treated with ambivalence. Charity is one of the basic pillars of Islam, but begging also annoys many, writes Maija Liuhto from Islamabad.
ISLAMABAD I step out of the store and start walking to the busy parking lot towards my car. “Baji, baji”, big sister, little boy shouts after me. He pulls the sleeve: “dedo”, give it. A shaggy-haired boy running without shoes wants money.
I observe the environment. More beggars swarm in the distance. I won’t give money this time. I know that soon I would be surrounded by other children and I might cause a small chaos in the parking lot.
On the way home, at the traffic lights, shoeless children run around in the middle of the lanes, knocking on the windows. Someone sells sniffed roses, another unwraps. Sometimes the children start washing the windshield by force in the hope of money.
Angry drivers yell at them and push their car forward in line.
On the other side of the road, a young man in his twenties is helping a blind old man, probably his father, from one car to another.
Mersu’s darkened glass is carefully cracked. A hand holding a ten-rupee note (about 0.05 euros) on a Rolex wrist appears from the window. The boy grabs the bill when the line of cars is already moving.
“Say no to begging” reads a large sign of the Islamabad police.
The police are trying to fight against criminal gangs
Even selling krääsa is counted as begging. After all, no one really buys the goods sold at intersections. If money is given, it is done only out of goodwill.
The police in the capital of Pakistan do not like this: behind the beggars there are often criminal mafias, and the authorities think that giving money only encourages the activity. According to the police, the children participate in the drug trade. The women are reportedly looking for houses in the streets that are suitable for robbery.
Arrests are made regularly. Instead of Sell, the beggars are taken to the rehabilitation center of a local charity. In a couple of weeks they will still be back on the streets.
Many rich people are annoyed by beggars. Some people think that people earn more money by begging than by working. Many end up completely ignoring the poor people who are standing idly by. They are not looked at, nothing is said to them. As if they didn’t exist.
Islam mandates charity
However, giving money is also very common.
Prices have risen enormously in Pakistan due to the economic crisis and partly also due to the war in Ukraine. More people fall into poverty than ever before. The middle class also has difficulties coping with the bills.
There is no social security in the country.
In the world’s second most populous Islamic country, there is a lot of trust in charity, which is one of the basic pillars of the religion. Zakat is a form of charity mandated by Islam for the well-to-do, a certain percentage of income that must be donated to charity each year. Sadaqa, on the other hand, is voluntary charity.
You often hear beggars shouting “Allah bahut dega”, meaning Allah will give you a lot. Giving sadaqa is believed to bring blessings.
Who does the money end up with?
But how do you know who is really in need and when the bill ends up in the mafia boss’s pocket?
It is not easy to assess.
Old women and men seem to melt the hearts of elites sitting in expensive cars more easily than children forcefully washing the windshield. The blind, crippled and sick also seem to get empathy.
Some of my local acquaintances always keep a small amount of banknotes close at hand so that they can easily hand them out in traffic.
A small amount doesn’t make anyone rich, and it doesn’t make me poor, a middle-class friend of mine once thought.
The Islamabad police’s fight against begging seems to be a doomed enterprise, at least as long as the mafia bosses themselves are not caught and the country does not have a proper safety net provided by society.