Faiz al-Mawaid al-Burhaniyah
Faiz al-Mawaid al-Burhaniyah (FMB) is the communal kitchen system of the Dawoodi Bohras, a small, widely scattered community of Ismaili Shi'i Muslims. Its aim is that every household in the community receives one wholesome meal a day.[1]
Origins
FMB was founded in 2011 (1432 AH) by Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, in the year his father, the 52nd Dai Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, named him as successor. According to Arwa Hussain and Dawood Mirza, he set it up after learning that some followers might be going to bed hungry.[1] The name explains the idea: faiz means a continuous outpouring or abundance, mawaid is the plural of maida, a full platter, and Burhaniyah honours Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin.[1]
The religious case rests on feeding as one of the highest forms of worship. A saying attributed to the Prophet in the classic Ismaili law book, al-Qadi al-Nu'man's Da'a'im al-Islam, holds that "there is no deed greater than feeding the hungry". A Fatimid imam, asked whether feeding was only for the poor, replied: "Is it only the poor who feel hunger, and the wealthy do not?"[1] So FMB is framed not as charity flowing from rich to poor but as a shared duty of every member.
The authors trace precedents through Bohra history: Imam Ali declaring his food "permitted for everyone" at Kufa, the Fatimid caliph-imams hosting feasts for all of Cairo and running a workshop making sweets for the public, and the 43rd Dai, Syedna Abde Ali Saifuddin (d. 1817), who housed and fed famine refugees at Surat for nearly a year.[1]
Scale and logistics
Each day FMB delivers tiffins, called thalis after the thaal or round steel plate, to about 135,000 households in 869 cities. It is run from a central office in India with more than 7,000 volunteers plus paid staff, and it is funded by voluntary donations according to means. Every local congregation has a service (khidmat) committee covering finance, purchasing, operations and IT.[1] Larger centres hire cooks; small ones, such as Montreal with about 20 households, rely on volunteers or local Muslim caterers. During the COVID-19 pandemic raw food was delivered to homes instead.[1]
A diaspora menu
A typical meal is rice, roti and a lentil, vegetable or meat curry, and on major ritual days the whole world eats one menu. Volunteer doctors, dieticians and chefs help set standards.[1] Because Bohras live in India, Pakistan, the Gulf, East Africa, North America, Britain and Southeast Asia, the menus have absorbed local food: kuku paka (an African-Indian coconut chicken), chowmein, kottu roti, pav bhaji and even Tex-Mex chilli.[1]
Equality, family and gender
Everyone receives the same food whatever their wealth, and carrying the deliveries is presented as an honour.[1] The shared plate, around which family members sit in a circle, is also a place of upbringing (tarbiyat), where children learn blessings before and after the meal and not to waste food.[1] In large centres the cooks are mostly men, while women advise on menus, test recipes and make roti, often paid. The authors argue that FMB eases women's "second shift" at home. Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin rolls roti in front of congregations, citing Imam Ali, to encourage men to share domestic work, though some critics read the same encouragement as sending women back to the kitchen.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Hussain, Arwa; Mirza, Dawood. "Nurturing: Faiz al-Mawaid al-Burhaniyah and the Dawoodi Bohra Community". In Zeller, Benjamin E.; Kornberg Greenberg, Yudit (eds.). The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Food. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 67–83.