Award-winning Muslim Humanitarian helps thousands of Pakistanis everyday
Salam/Peace:
In the cool interior of a mental ward in Karachi, a short, powerfully built man with a flowing snow-white beard and penetrating dark-brown eyes is standing at the bedside of a distraught young woman. She has covered her head with a sheet and is pleading for news of the two children her husband took from her.
“I know you are suffering terribly, but this is no way to bring back your children,” says the man with stern compassion. “You have a college degree. You can do many things to help the other patients.”
Outside the room’s windows of latticed stone, several hundred other women stroll and lounge under pipal trees scattered around a courtyard as big as several football fields. All are here because their families cannot—or will not—cope with their mental illnesses.
“Self-help,” says the man as he walks away from the young mother’s bedside. “That’s the best way to get back on your feet.”
For more than half a century, Abdul Sattar Edhi, now 76 years old, has been living proof that a determined individual can mobilize others to alleviate misery and, in so doing, knit together the social fabric of a nation. Firmly refusing financial support from both government and formal religious organizations, this self-effacing man with a primary-school education has almost single-handedly created one of the largest and most successful health and welfare networks in Asia. Whether he is counseling a battered wife, rescuing an accident victim, feeding a poor child, sheltering a homeless family or washing an unidentified and unclaimed corpse before burial, Edhi and Bilquis, his wife of 38 years, help thousands of Pakistanis each day.
Read the whole article at:
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200406/humanitarian.to.a.nation.htm
In the cool interior of a mental ward in Karachi, a short, powerfully built man with a flowing snow-white beard and penetrating dark-brown eyes is standing at the bedside of a distraught young woman. She has covered her head with a sheet and is pleading for news of the two children her husband took from her.
“I know you are suffering terribly, but this is no way to bring back your children,” says the man with stern compassion. “You have a college degree. You can do many things to help the other patients.”
Outside the room’s windows of latticed stone, several hundred other women stroll and lounge under pipal trees scattered around a courtyard as big as several football fields. All are here because their families cannot—or will not—cope with their mental illnesses.
“Self-help,” says the man as he walks away from the young mother’s bedside. “That’s the best way to get back on your feet.”
For more than half a century, Abdul Sattar Edhi, now 76 years old, has been living proof that a determined individual can mobilize others to alleviate misery and, in so doing, knit together the social fabric of a nation. Firmly refusing financial support from both government and formal religious organizations, this self-effacing man with a primary-school education has almost single-handedly created one of the largest and most successful health and welfare networks in Asia. Whether he is counseling a battered wife, rescuing an accident victim, feeding a poor child, sheltering a homeless family or washing an unidentified and unclaimed corpse before burial, Edhi and Bilquis, his wife of 38 years, help thousands of Pakistanis each day.
Read the whole article at:
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200406/humanitarian.to.a.nation.htm
posted by Samana Siddiqui @ 6:58 AM
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