Whether you are reading this article on the Internet or from the newspaper page itself, chances are that you probably had breakfast this morning. Chances are that if you are reading it in the evening, you had lunch and dinner, too. Or if you didn't have breakfast, lunch, or dinner today, it might have been your choice. You could have had orange juice for breakfast if you had wanted, followed by either tea or coffee. Before breakfast, you probably got out of a cozy bed where you slept well all night, having watched TV or spent time at home with your family or gone out with friends the evening before. Imagine things were a bit different (well, actually, a lot different), and at the end of the day yesterday, you didn't go to bed, because you had no bed and no home to go to. Where would you have gone? Can you possibly imagine, just for a moment, if you had nowhere to sleep tonight? What would you do? Where would you go? Worse than that, imagine you had no mobile phone or money in your pocket. Nothing! What would you do? Many, many people find themselves in this dilemma every single day, not only in Egypt but throughout the world. They have nowhere to stay, no money to spend, and nothing to do for the whole day ahead of them. In every big city in the world, just around the corner from those high streets where millions of pounds are spent every day in fancy shops and restaurants, men and women sit begging on the street. It is one of the most shameful things of our modern age that while many of us live in comfort, lacking nothing, many more live lives of total despair, not knowing where the next meal will come from or how they can manage to find a place to lay down their heads in safety for the night. It would take a very hard heart not to be touched by the plight of those young boys and girls who live alongside the tramline in Alexandria, for example, who are an easy prey to anyone who would take advantage of them. What makes the problem of homelessness even worse is that when people find themselves in such a situation, that is when the trouble really starts. Circumstances lead them to meet characters who are perhaps not the best people to have as friends. Maybe crime or even prostitution are the only ways of getting access to any money. People you thought you could rely on, let you down and steal what little you have. The situation keeps going from bad to worse. Now, we need to be honest and admit that there are causes for this situation. Some people say that homeless people in this situation don't try hard enough to get jobs or look for adequate shelters offered by the many charities that exist to look after them. Some blame drugs or alcohol. Others say that young people themselves didn't try hard enough to make it work at home, and they left too hastily. We can come back to all of that. Just for now, though, let's admit that the situation exists. Blaming someone is not going to solve the problem. Many people have nowhere to live. That is the fact of it. No fingers to point. No one to blame. Just a fact. So what are we to do about this? Do we condemn the homeless to their lives of misery because they have not managed to keep up with the demands of modern life? Maybe a row at home was the cause of the persons' leaving the family home and setting off to the big city. Maybe there was some kind of abuse at home, either physical or sexual, which led them to leave. Maybe they were just too headstrong to stay in a family where parents were making quite ordinary demands of them. The situation is, of course, very complex. What, though, can we do? First of all we ought to give thanks whenever we see someone less fortunate than ourselves, that we have not been given that particular trial in our lives. We need to give thanks each day for the comforts we enjoy and take for granted. Isn't it true that we really lack for nothing in life? Sure, we moan and complain when we don't get quite the right brand that we asked for or when things don't go perfectly according to plan, but we really lack for nothing. In fact, we should be ever grateful for the good things we enjoy in life, saying Alhamdulillah for them We need to be proactive, too. In other words, instead of just shaking our heads and saying how terrible it is that there are homeless people on the streets of Egypt, we should do something about it. We can look up many of the charities who work in this field. Do they need help? Do we have talents that could be offered? It need not be something big, but could be something as simple as writing or a short article, highlighting the plight of the homeless and suggesting things such as affordable housing as ways out of the problem. Remember how in Ramadan, in particular, we turned our thoughts to those who were less fortunate than ourselves. Maybe next Ramadan we could team up with others to offer help to the homeless. We could look for outreach programmes, which try to give help and support where needed. We could even suggest to mosque and church leaders that the mosque or the church might get involved in running a soup kitchen or collecting clothes and blankets. Apart from the help this would give where it is needed, it would also show the local community that people of faith care not just about themselves, but also for any who are in need, whether they are religious or not. It might even make those going to the mosque or the church spare a thought for others too. And, next time, when someone asks us on the street to "spare the price of a cup of tea" or to "give any spare change," instead of making moral judgments, perhaps you should simply help. If some of those homeless are not telling the truth and are not really in need, they will have Allah to answer for. If we give some help for Allah's sake, out of a genuine care for someone less well-off than us, then we, too, will be rewarded by Allah for our good intention. Inshallah, working together people can make a difference to the lives of those around them. Egypt's revolution taught us that. Even if we can help just one person, we will have indeed made a big difference. The author of eight books about Islam, British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, divides his time between Egypt and the UK as a speaker, writer and broadcaster. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.com
