Filed under: Religion
My first post is a short animated clip exploring the concept of Zakat. The inspiration for the animation came from Aminata Sow Fall’s novel The Beggars’ Strike, or, The Dregs of Society. The story is set in a Muslim community somewhere in Africa, where beggars are being driven away by the wealthier and more powerful members of the community. However, the same people that are driving away the beggars are required by their religion to give alms to beggars and the poor. When Ndiaye, the main antagonist towards the beggars, realizes he needs to give alms to the beggars so that he can receive God’s blessing, the beggars refuse to return to the city. And without beggars, the rest of the Muslim community is without people to give alms to. Hence they are unable to receive their prayers or religious obligation of Zakat.
In the clip, you can see a division between the healthy land filled with grass and the impoverished land with dry, cracked soil. When coins fall onto both the impoverished soil and the green land, only the coins on the cracked soil produce a crop of wheat! The movie finishes with a quote from the Quran that states that money is like a seed of grain and God will multiply the wheat depending on how it is sowed. I incorporate the main theme of The Beggar’s Strike with this quote of the Quran to develop an animated interpretation of Zakat,