Kindness and generosity: A lesson from The Prophet

I’ve been wondering if the Quran, the book of Islam, teaches kindness and generosity? If it does, two Muslim men from St. Cloud were following the teachings of their Prophet recently.

Here’s how it happened.

We were on a journalism assignment in St. Cloud. The assignment took us down Division Street at a very busy time. The traffic was pretty much crawl and stop. Crawl and stop. If you’ve been on Division Street you know what it can be like. All the traffic lights are against you. There’s a car nibbling at your tail pipe, two on either side of you, and one in front of you. All the drivers are on their cell phones.

Since we drive a stick shift this kind of traffic situation requires lots of clutch work and shifting. Our little Chevy has 100,000+ miles on it and it has been shifted more than one-hundred thousand times. As a consequence the clutch has been sticking. By sticking, I mean that when we push the clutch to the floor it stays there. Or, it stays there for a minute or two and pops back up. 

This automotive condition creates the possibility for driving mis-adventures. Wanting to avoid these story telling opportunities we asked our local mechanic to repair the clutch. And they did.

But at the stoplight at 25th and Division the clutch pedal forgot that it had been repaired. When the light turned green our clutch stayed glued to the floor.

Following a quick and intense family conference we decided to push the car off of Division, around the corner, and along side the curb on 25th. I’ve got to credit those crazed and cell phone addicted St. Cloud drivers because they gave us all the time and space we needed to move the car.

So, 25th has no place to park a car but it’s not as busy as Division. Busy, but not as. So, once on 25th we begin reviewing a list of hopeless options. We’re Luddites and don’t own mobile phones. To be honest we were up a creek without a paddle.

That is until Sharif came.

“I see you are in trouble,” the twenty-something black man said. “Can I help you?”

This young man had seen us from the parking lot across the street. Instead of saying to himself, “Oh, there’s some old white people in trouble” and then driving away, he waded through the speeding traffic to offer us assistance.

We explained what the problem was. He said I think you need a tow truck. We agreed. He offered to take me in his car to find a tow truck.

For the next forty-five minutes this Somali youngster drove me around trying to find a tow truck. It soon became apparent that Sharif, that’s his name, understood half of what I was saying. It also became clear that he didn’t know how to navigate the white world very well. He didn’t understand, for example, that Jiffy Lube doesn’t have tow trucks and doesn’t fix clutches. That didn’t matter. He was determined to help. He was my young hero.

We finally ended up at a tiny Somali owned garage.

“You can trust this man,” Sharif said about this older gentleman. “He helped my sister last week.”

Sharif stayed until he saw that I was ready to go with the tow truck. He was also very careful, in Somali, in giving the driver directions to our car.

Once on board the tow truck I thought I should ask the driver how much he was going to charge. Fifty-five dollars. Do you take credit cards? No. Checks? No. I don’t think we have fifty-five dollars.

“That’s ok,” he said. “I think you need help.”

So we gave him about half of what he asked for and he was courteous, efficient, and more than generous. He delivered us to the Chevrolet garage on Division.

These two Somali Muslim men generously helped us through a difficult day. When I asked my computer search engine whether the Quran taught Muslims generosity I came up with a quote from the Quran that says we must compete with each other to do good. These modest and quiet spoken men were very competitive in that way.

I also came up with this:

“Our worldly possessions are bounties from God, who is Al Kareem, the Most Generous. Muslims believe that everything originates from God and everything will return to Him, thus, it is logical to behave as if that which we possess is merely a loan, something we are obligated to preserve, protect and ultimately share.”

That’s something people of all religions can all live by.

-- Tim (originally published in the Long Prairie Leader)