There is an older woman, possibly in her sixties, who sleeps on the street near Union Station in Washington, DC. I see her on my way to work every day, and my conscience tells me that I need to do something, but I can’t act alone.
I am an Emirati woman who grew up seeing my parents help anyone who needed it, so I think about giving her enough money so she can rent an apartment somewhere. But who would rent to a homeless person, I wonder. Renting an apartment requires background checks and if she is homeless, she probably struggles with mental illness or addiction, which might make a background check problematic.
What she needs is more than $500 (Dh 1,836) a month to keep a roof over her head. She needs a system that can help her heal, get treatment, find support from people who respect her as a human being and recognise her dignity. That would be a system that recognises her choices as valid and meaningful; one that she can trust because it is trustworthy. This system would include social workers who can coordinate this woman’s needs with the right doctors, pharmacies and other services that this woman needs.
In order for us to function in society – to be accepted and to have a role that sustains us – we are expected to dress in a certain way. Homeless people often need clothes that would make them appear less threatening to people who are afraid of the sight of poverty and suffering.
I cannot find an apartment for this woman where the landlord would understand her situation and support her in her struggle. I cannot pay for the apartment and coordinate her doctors’ visits. All of this is beyond my means, but I am constantly confronted with the certainty that I still must do what it takes to get this lady into a house where she can live with dignity.
When I have visited dilapidated neighbourhoods in the US, I’ve often wondered what these places could become if all the homeless people in America were given the means to live decent lives, if they were given the means to build, to beautify, to clean.
The means would not only be financial. In many cases, they would be medical, psychological, emotional, societal. I don’t think that any of these are beyond reach if a group of people decides that this is a worthy cause.
When I think about this cause, I often think that it is one that Muslims should take up for two reasons. The first is that it is part of our religious and moral duty to help those in need, and to make the world we live in more just and equal.
The second is that our image and reputation have been hijacked by people we do not respect, and we are now sometimes seen as evil or dangerous. But if we got together to create a beautiful city out of the ruins of a dilapidated one, contributed to solving one of the worst problems of western cities and helped those who do not belong to our religion or our race, we would make a loud and meaningful statement about our values. We would also be saying that we can – and do – make this world a better place.
But, I cannot work on this alone. I need your help.
Shatha Almutawa has a PhD in Muslim and Jewish intellectual history. She is senior editor of the American Historical Association magazine Perspectives on History
