Dinner for the hungry

"All religious places should start distributing food packets. If each and every religious place, irrespective of its religion, starts...feed(ing) the poor in its area then, I think, no poor will sleep hungry,” noted Amin Dabbawala, trustee of the Sunni Muslim Bilal Masjid in Grant Road East while communicating with Parsiana on April 2, 2018. "Feeding the poor amounts to... good deed... The Almighty says that a true Muslim will look after his neighbor,” he added. The mosque currently provides a free vegetarian evening meal consisting of pickle, three rotis and vegetables to about 150 people under its project named Langar-e-Rasool (the Prophet’s kitchen). "We can give food to at least 400 people every night,” noted Dabbawala.

Feeding the needy at the Sunni mosque in Grant Road

While langars (community kitchens) are common in Sikh places of worship and at the mausoleums of some Sufi saints, The Times of India (TOI) of March 18 noted that "rarely does a mosque or trust which runs a mosque manage a langar.” Started at the beginning of March this year, the food packets are distributed to the needy who have queued up at the Idgah Maidan (grounds for offering Ramzan prayers) on the eastern side of the mosque, prior to the call for the night prayers.
The project led by spiritual leader Syed Moin Ashraf Quadri, a co-trustee of Dabbawala’s, whose trust manages both the Masjid and the Idgah, was quoted in the TOI report as stating "We have kept (the meal) vegetarian deliberately to widen its appeal to non-Muslims who may not be comfortable to take non-vegetarian food from a Muslim-run organization,” The food is prepared at a nearby madressa (religious school) also headed by Quadri and reaches the ground just before the night prayers begin. The idea was proposed and initially funded by one of Quadri’s followers, said the newspaper report.