“Scale of Roles” is the title of my piece and it comes from the theme of social and religious responsibility found in Week 7 readings of “The Beggars’ Strike.” This was one of the most distinct works in our collection of readings because it focused on the social and religious factors that take place in an Islamic society. Throughout Fall’s work there is a continuous theme of determining one’s role in society whether it be social or religious or even both. Fall has cleverly crafted the interdependency between the two to indicate how social responsibilities should take into account religious responsibilities.
I have chosen to depict a scale which measures the difference between the emptiness of the hands of the beggars and the weight of the wealth of the members in the government. Although the hands are empty, in religious terms, they have more weight because as beggars they carried out their full religious responsibilities. However, those who are surrounded by wealth, lose sight of their religious obligations and therefore are outweighed by the emptiness of the beggars’ hands. This ironic idea is depicted in my piece as it is indicated that emptiness is heavier than abundance. Additionally, the scale depicts the interdependence between the beggars and the member of the higher social class because if just one side of the scale is removed, then there would not be a way to measure the relative weight of one sector with the other.
The larger question I wanted to raise in my piece was the idea of what would define this scale to be equal on both sides. Will it be possible to maintain one’s social and religious obligations without weighing one over the other? I believe that this is possible because of the leverage the Beggars obtained once they were shunned from the city by the government. People immediately noticed the societal role of the beggars in their city not just their religious role. I think that this belief ultimately highlights the reciprocal social and religious responsibilities among all the members in a society.