What’s so Wrong With Charitable Painkillers? 

Peacefully he slept, under the shade of just a regular tree.

No guards, no scheming plots, no fancy palaces, just the Islamic Caliph Omar Ibn El Khattab, enjoying a nap amongst his people.

Despite his powerful status and influential reputation, a messenger from faraway lands was shocked to learn that the powerful Omar who ruled the Islamic nation at that time, had a humble house and would really just sleep under a tree. None of the opulence and need for extravagant display we see now, but a way of life steeped in communal good works and charity.

This story had always fascinated me as a kid. How a leader can ensure fairness to everyone to the extent of feeling safe among those he ruled..

You can debate whether this is possible in today’s societies, but that’s not the point. My point is that even in the most historically just systems like Omar Ibn El Khattab’s, people never abandoned charity.

Recently, a relatively large number of people shared a Facebook post stating that it’s problematic to replace long-term sustainable development solutions with charity.

The post criticised charitable work such as homeless shelters, or emergency clinics, or volunteer tutoring as superficial solutions to avoid confronting injustice and reforming an unjust system.

Instead, they advocated for accessible housing, affordable healthcare, education systems and so forth.

All valid claims and demands. It’s true that charitable contributions are short-termed, or as some call them “painkillers” and not the proper full recovery.

It’s also true that this desperate need for charity reflects the system’s inadequacy and hence the need to reform.

However, this by all means, does not make charitable contributions less crucial. In fact, this rhetoric is extremely problematic for so many reasons.

By pointing fingers to the unjust systems and blaming it all on the government, they simply free the people from their sense of responsibility to act with whichever way possible.

And people would jump to take this opportunity to make themselves feel better about not being involved in any charitable contributions, just because you know, “it’s the government’s fault, not ours.”

I’m not at all advocating the states’ stance on this either. It’s pretty obvious that the current poverty gap around the world isn’t normal and is indeed a product of faulty systems.

Yet, even in the most just systems like Omar Ibn El Khattab’s, you cannot just ignore the role of charity.

No matter how much a system tries to bridge the poverty gap, someone will always have more. We will always have different social classes through which the more privileged and the less-privileged will have to depend on one another.

Of course I mean humane gaps, where the less-privileged get their basic human needs and not the ridiculously unbreachable gaps of today.

It’s just how things are meant to be in our interdependent world system and simply how the world makes sense.

The more privileged carry the burden of this privilege and use it to help the less-privileged through meaningful assistance and contributions.

This should be seen as an obligation dictated by being in a position of privilege..

The mere fact of having more is supposed to be ten times harder because it makes you ten times more responsible.

Besides, as is often the case, modern political machinations make it almost impossible to apply proper welfare systems, because their entire paradigm is based on exploiting those at the bottom.

Hence, waiting for these systems to actually take the initiative and reform is like waiting for pigs to fly. Never going to happen.

So, and until that almost impossible chance comes, the substituting charity with reforms rhetoric is just denying the less-privileged the only viable solution they have at the moment.

It’s really not that bad to use painkillers after all.