Annisa Essack | kzn@radioislam.org.za
8 August 2025 | 16:30 CAT
2 min read

“And they give food in spite of love for it to the needy, the orphan, and the captive, [saying], ‘We feed you only for the countenance of Allah.’” — Qur’an 76:8-9

I grew up in a home where the kitchen was always alive — pots bubbling, spices in the air, and family gathered around the table. Cooking was love made visible. But it was not at our table that I first saw the face of hunger. It was when my family cooked in great pots for people experiencing poverty, handing out warm meals to those who came with empty hands and hollow eyes. In those moments, I learned that food was more than taste — it was dignity, mercy, and life itself.

The Qur’an reminds us that feeding others is not an act of generosity for which we deserve praise — it is a duty done purely for the pleasure of Allah. Yet on an earth overflowing with blessings, more than a billion people still sleep with empty bellies. This hunger is not from the scarcity of rizq, for Allah has written sustenance for every soul, but from the injustice of those who hoard, waste, and forget their amaanah.

The Ache Beneath the Ribs

Hunger is more than an empty stomach.
It is the tightening of your chest when you cannot cry, the numbness when you can no longer even taste hope.

Food has always been more than fuel — it is comfort, choice, celebration. A bite of something we love can bring a moment of peace in a storm. That is why the Prophet ﷺ said: “He is not a believer whose stomach is full while his neighbour is hungry.”

Yet for millions, the simple comfort of bread is a distant dream. We live in a time when the world’s leaders speak of equality and dignity, but the promises remain empty, like the bowls of people experiencing poverty.

Fields Without Souls

Today’s hunger is not just the result of drought or disaster — it is often artificial.
Farming has been stripped of its soul, turned into an industry ruled by machines, chemicals, and greed. As seed activist Vandana Shiva calls it, this is the struggle of “oneness versus the 1%.”

The earth has been poisoned, rivers run dry, and crops that grow are swollen with chemicals but starved of nutrition. Corporations own the land, the seeds, and even the water — the very gifts Allah created for all of humanity.

Nature resists — pests adapt, weeds return — but the price is the slow death of the soil that feeds us. We are bleeding the earth that Allah entrusted to us.

The Feast That Poisons

Food now wears a mask.
Beneath bright packaging and sweet flavours hides sickness — processed fats, mountains of sugar, and empty calories. What should nourish the body now acts like a drug on the mind.

Even trends like mukbangs (a live or recorded online video where the host eats large amounts of food while chatting with viewers or reviewing the dishes), once meant to share a meal with strangers, have turned into spectacles of waste — people gorging for entertainment while millions starve. It is not only excess, but also a blindness to the reality that hunger is the daily trial of so many.

The Starvation We Inherited

In my postcolonial world, hunger is not just an accident of poverty — it has been used as a weapon.
The British starved Bengal to feed their war effort, leaving bodies on the streets of Calcutta. The Irish famine, too, was no accident, but a human-made disaster.

Hunger reveals the ugliest face of humanity. It humiliates, breaks the mind, and steals the will to live.

And yet, some still dismiss it — or worse, offer substandard food in school meal programmes and call the problem solved. Feeding a child with poor nutrition is not kindness; it is cruelty disguised as charity.

The Amaanah We Will Answer For

The Qur’an and Sunnah call us to act: feed the hungry, clothe the poor, honour the orphan. Hunger is not only a social issue — it is a spiritual test. Allah will ask us about every blessing we enjoyed while others went without.

The cure is not in handouts of empty calories, but in ensuring access to real, wholesome food for all — food grown with respect for the earth, shared with sincerity, and given without expecting anything in return except the pleasure of Allah.

Because on a full earth, no stomach should remain empty.