Cleaning up the streets of Mekarjaya Indonesia
There is a village in Indonesia (we visited) that is home to 600 families. A place where prostitution had gone rampage. An occupation is passed down from generation to generation. Mothers teaching daughters, sisters sharing clients, husbands too poor and desperate to object and teary-eyed fathers looking on.
This village is overwhelmed with desperation and poverty. The prostitutes would work for as little as $5 per client with up to 15 clients a day. The pimp would take 40% of the prostitute’s income. Too desperate to complain, the women were left with very little. Barely enough to feed themselves and their families.
When our sisters (yes, this village consists of Muslim households) were asked why they did such work, their response was ‘poverty’. Too poor to purchase food, these women were forced to sell their bodies to survive. But not anymore.
The local imam managed to clean up the streets and gave families much needed Islamic education and support. With the streets now clean, the women feel somewhat liberated and instead of selling their bodies, they now make and sell other things.
During Ramadan 2016, the team at Al-Ihsan foundation visited this village and we were very much impressed with it. We distributed food packs to all the locals and assured the local imam that we would conduct routine visits and that we would not forsake them, should they require aid.
On 28th September 2016, we visited the village again and found that the people were doing quite well. This is an amazing example of when someone discontinues an evil act for the sake of Allah, Allah will not forsake them. We asked the Imam what other needs they had, he informed us that the Masjid was in need of a carpet so we quickly got into the action as you can see in the picture above.
It was narrated from Abu Hurairah that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said:
“Every good deed of the son of Adam will be multiplied manifold. A good deed will be multiplied ten times up to as many as seven hundred times, or as much as Allah wills…”
(Ibn Majah)
Since the cessation of their previous work, the sisters of this village have managed to provide for themselves and their families. They collect unwanted clothing and material and turn them into something useful such as cleaning cloths, headbands, blankets etc. and sell them for a small profit. Their honesty and hard work have not gone unrewarded as they have managed to maintain a stable income for themselves and their families. But their ultimate reward will be from Allah (SA) for their righteous actions.
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