Ramazan and Heat Exhaustion

Kh. Muhammad Asif Minister for Water and Power informed the house that more than 70 per cent of the dead in Karachi were the labourers who had died of heat exhaustion and not because of load shedding. 

This is exactly what I have been pondering over since long that how would it be possible for a labourer to observe fast of 16 to 17 hours long and that too continuously for 30 days at a stretch who has to toil outdoors in the scorching sun and heat during the summer months of June and July in places like Thar, Cholistan, Saraiki belt, Libyan desert or for that matter the Saudi Arab desert?! Most of them eke out their livelihood on the daily wages basis and unless they work during the day they, their families and their children shall have nothing to eat in the evening.  I am fully aware of the Taqwa, Sabr, Imtehan,Training to endure hardship, etc.,  but please, I beseech you, kindly think it over dispassionately and rationally and then answer. Is it not a hardship that could fall in realm of being unbearable and which Islam promises to be not there in practicing it?  Please think what that weak emaciated, old and poor to the extent of being a destitut! e labourer should do – do the daily outdoor labour with fast and get heat exhausted and die or what?  To answer it honestly and realistically just walk – only walk – at noon or afternoon for an hour without umbrella on a dusty road with no trees in a city like – say Multan or Bahawalpur, leave aside Sibi, Jacobabad or Mithi in Thar.

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)