Life on earth, plant life or animal life has its own means of communication. When one beehive gets too crowded, a queen bee will split off from the hive with a group of 300 and 500 scout bees. These scout bees fly out individually in search of a befitting place for their home. They evaluate different sites and return to the bee cluster to report on what they have found. Each scout expresses the grade of her choice site by performing waggle dance. If she repeats the swirling dance many times, say up to 300 times in a ten minute period, she would be saying, ‘I‘ve found a great place.’ If the waggle dance is limited only to some 100 times, then her site should only be just okay. This bee life story came to my mind as I slipped through an old Islamic example of charity at home.
It was when Seyyed Bahrul Uloom, a great Islamic teacher, was about to sit for the dinner that he happened to hear about a poor family, living without wheat or rice, since a week. He stood up and sent word to one of his students, living nearby this poor family, to report immediately. As Sayyid Jawad Ameli, his student, who also was about to sit for the dinner, reported in a hurry, Bahrul Uloom virtually burst upon him, “Sayyid Jawad! You have no fear of Allah! Don’t you feel ashamed of Allah?” Sayyid Jawad was taken by surprise for he had no knowledge of this neighbour. “That is why I am displeased all the more. How can you be unaware of your own neighbour? Seven days of difficulties have passed and you tell me that you do not know about it.” Uloom was burning out like anything. Bahrul Uloom instructed Jawed to take all the dishes of food before him to the neighbour. “Sit with them to eat, so that they do not feel ashamed. And take this sum for their future ration. Place it under their carpet so that they are not humiliated and inform me when this work is completed. Till then, I shall not eat.”
Mother Teresa once shared a live story from her life. “One night a man came to our house and told me, ‘There is a family with eight children; they have not eaten for days,’ I took some food and went to that Hindu family. I saw the faces of those little children disfigured by hunger. I gave the rice to the mother. She divided it into two and went out, carrying one half of the rice with her. When she came back, I asked her, ‘Where did you go?’ She gave me this simple answer, ‘To my neighbours, they also are hungry.”