Al-Ou or Al-Ghusl Al-Kulli Center Mosque

Donations from the well-wishers, may God reward them with the best recompense. This is a beautiful image of social solidarity and proof that there are still hearts in this society that understand the meaning of giving. However, a comment made by one of the relatives stayed with me for a long time, because it was harsh in its simplicity: “We build many mosques for the patient to pray in one of them, while he needs, before that, a nearby medical center to help him stay alive!” The statement may seem shocking, and some readers might react angrily, hurling various accusations at the article’s author. But what was written opens a door worth pausing at and exploring in detail. In many areas, a kidney patient has to travel long distances, wait, and reorganize their entire life around a single dialysis session. They cannot afford the luxury of postponing it. For him, and for many like him, dialysis is not just a routine medical appointment; it is an appointment with life, repeated several times a week, for months or even years. Hence the question: Why don’t we broaden the concept of charitable work in Kuwait to make building human capacity and providing treatment a larger part of our donation culture? We are not comparing a mosque to a medical center, nor are we for a moment diminishing the value of building houses of God. But there are many doors of goodness, and among the greatest is relieving a patient’s distress, easing burdens, and bringing treatment closer to their home. Instead of building four or five mosques in a single residential area, where the number of worshippers in some of them is barely countable on one’s fingers, why not build a comprehensive dialysis center or another specialized center alongside fewer mosques in the same area? What the patient needs is not just a building and equipment; it is the hours we save for a patient exhausted by illness, the distance we shorten for an elderly person, the anxiety we lift from a family, and a treatment bed that may, God willing, prolong a human life. Why am I talking about dialysis? Because the number of kidney failure patients is increasing, similar to other diseases such as cancer. Although Kuwait, praise be to God, stands out compared to other countries, this aspect still requires greater expansion and encouragement. Based on statistics provided by the Ministry of Health regarding the number of cases of this and other diseases and the areas where patients reside, priorities for specialized health centers are determined. It would also be commendable if the state, in cooperation with the Ministry of Awqaf (Endowments), the Ministry of Health, and charitable associations, established a clear system to guide donors toward the health projects the country needs. The state would provide land, permits, supervision, and standards, while the well-wishers would cover construction, equipment, or operation. The center would remain under strict health supervision to ensure the continuity and quality of its services. Why not have a “map of health charity” in Kuwait, through which a donor would know that this area needs a dialysis center, that one needs a rehabilitation center, and another needs services for the elderly? The value of charity does not change when it shifts from the walls of a mosque to a center with dialysis equipment that cleans a patient’s blood. This itself is one of the greatest doors of reward, as it serves a person today, another tomorrow, and hundreds of patients over the years. We have, praise be to God, many well-wishers, and funds spent with sincere intentions. What we need is to direct a portion of this goodness to where the pain is greatest and the need is most urgent. Perhaps the statement with which I began this article, despite its harshness, deserves to reach both officials and donors alike. Just as relatives think of building a mosque in every residential plot, it is also important not to forget the significance of having such health centers in residential areas, so that the first place close to the patient is not the mosque where they will be prayed over. Let there be a medical center first, where every effort is made to return them home alive, and then let them go to the mosque in another plot to pray in good health. * * * When we pray for mercy for a person, such as the visual artist Sami Muhammad, we have lost a towering figure in visual art, acknowledged by the entire visual art community. I hope the state will adopt his museum, which he worked hard to establish and funded materially, so that it may finally see the light of day. Iqbal Al-Ahmad