Compassion at Christmas

Are our children, who already have so much, going to be given even more things? Then I watched in amazement. Children rushed up to the van bearing pre-wrapped parcels, falling over each other in their rush to give. Within minutes the van was full, and ‘Father Christmas’ slowly drove away though the crowds, on his way to give the presents to children who are not like ours – to children who are in need.

Compassion is a natural feeling that our children have for others. We only have to nurture it. But do we do enough to nurture that feeling within ourselves?

Compassion is defined in English as ‘the deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it.’ But it is so much more than a human emotion. In Islam, foremost among God’s
Allah is the standard Arabic language word for God. While the term is best known in the Western world for its use by Muslims as a reference to God, it is used by Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, in reference to “God”….
attributes are mercy and compassion or, in the Arabic, Rahman and Rahim. The Semitic root letters r-h-m have an array of meanings including womb, kinship, tenderness, nourishment, and compassion. Compassion is actually about a tenderness which emerges from the source of all creation, a tenderness that protects us all.

All of the major faiths teach us about compassion.

In the Jewish tradition, God is invoked as the Father of Compassion. Rabbis speak of ‘the thirteen attributes of compassion’. And, with the same root letters as the Arabic, with the same connection to a womb, compassion is ascribed to both God and man: in Isaiah 49, it is written ‘Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee.’

Asked for a summary of the Jewish religion in the most concise terms, the Jewish sage and scholar Rabbi Hillel the elder replied (reputedly while standing on one leg): “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah. The rest is the explanation; go and learn.”

Many years ago, at my own school, I used to hear frequently the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, related by Jesus (pbuh). In the story, a Jewish man was travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho along a dangerous road. He was attacked, beaten up and stripped, and left for dead. A Priest came by and simply crossed over the road. A temple assistant did the same. And then a Samaritan came by. Samaritans were despised immigrants from a different race and a different religion. But the Samaritan stopped to help the injured man, bandaged his wounds, and even paid for him to stay at an inn for the night. As a child, I was learning that we should not only rush to help those who are like us, but also those who are different.

In Islam, 113 of the 114 chapters begin with the verse: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful the Compassionate.’ Daily, every single prayer and every significant action undertaken by a Muslim is meant to begin with that same verse. The world ‘rahman’ (translated here as Merciful) conveys the endless depths of God’s compassion to all creation. ‘Rahim’ describes the continuity of God’s compassion across time.

But compassion is not meant to be an attribute reserved only for God. Muslims are encouraged to develop the quality by following the ‘pillars’ of Islam. Zakat is compulsory charity, to be given to the poor and needy, the widows and the orphans. A Muslim is also encouraged to give sadaqah, or voluntary charity, whenever and however much one feels able. And fasting has many spiritual and practical purposes: one of them is to develop empathy for all those who experience hunger and a striving to assist in relieving it.

We can learn further through the examples of the earlier Prophets. There is story related by the Sufi saint Zubayr that Abraham (pbuh) would only eat if he had a guest to share his food with. One day, when no-one had come to join him, he went to look for a fellow diner. He found an old man who was hungry and happy to come home with him. As they talked on the way to his house, Abraham discovered the man was an atheist, and promptly cancelled the invitation.  Then he heard a voice say: ‘O Abraham We tolerated him for seventy years despite his disbelief and you could not tolerate him for seven minutes.’ Abraham (pbuh) realised he must show compassion to all, and brought his guest home for dinner.

We also have the practical teachings of Muhammad (pbuh). Muhammad (pbuh) is reported to have said that even if one person remains hungry in a neighbourhood, no angel will descend there until that hungry person is fed. He also said that it is more meritorious to feed a hungry widow than to pray whole night.

The Dalai Lama has said, “If you want others to be happy? Practise compassion.? If you want to be happy? Practise compassion”

Last week, a Muslim refugee, receiving training on HIV and AIDS at the international charity where I work, quietly asked for help. She was a single mother with two young children, a history of sexual abuse, and no income. She had tried to start a business but the place had burnt down, and she had lost both her business and her savings. Now she obtained her only source of income by sleeping with a man who would then pay her sufficiently to cover the month’s expenses. The training day was the day before the rent was due. During the session, this man was phoning her to check she was coming over that night. She needed help.

The organisation could have rejected her plea out of principle. What kind of Muslim woman turns to sex to earn an income, especially when she is knowingly exposing herself to the risk of HIV and AIDS? Or the charity could choose to help her, both immediately and through providing her with training and the possibility of paid community work to help others like her in future.  She was assisted without judgement.

But it is not always like that.

As part of my fundraising work, I visited a Muslim general manager of a medium-size business to present the practical efforts being undertaken ‘on the ground’ by the charity to help orphans affected by HIV and AIDS. The children were desperately in need of food, education and life skills training. At the end of the presentation, he said decisively that he would like to give money for food for the orphans being supported at a named community centre outside Johannesburg. That was a good start – food is one of their most basic requirements and enables the children to survive the school day without having an empty stomach. But then he added: ‘Can I provide food only for the Muslim orphans?’ I explained it wasn’t possible to separate out the Muslim children from all the other children there: and it wasn’t possible to feed one set of children with more food than another. He withdrew the offer.

When we give, are we really showing compassion? Or are we wanting to help people only because they are like us? How can we tell who is a Muslim child anyway?

Karl Barth (1886-1968) was a notable Christian thinker of Swiss origin who was very aware of this issue. He had to leave Germany in 1935 when he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. But before that, in 1931, he was warning about the principle of the system he could see unfolding, whereby some humans mattered and others didn’t. The system was about helping only ‘me and people like me’, putting the need for prosperity by a certain group ahead of the needs of others.

In the Jewish tradition, God is described as ‘the Father of Compassion’; Muslims refer to God as ‘the Most Merciful and the Most compassionate’. As people, we have been shown how to display the human side of this attribute through the Prophets –through both their behaviour and their teachings. And we have ample opportunities to develop and nurture that natural spirit of giving to humanity further through fasting and through charity. It is inevitable that sometimes we relate to those most in need and sometimes we find it difficult. Regardless, the poorest of the poor need our help.

In the original Christmas story, far removed from men in red outfits, Mary, mother of Jesus (pbuh) was an unmarried mother without a father for her child. Would we show her compassion today? Or would we reject her out of principle, because she is not one of the ‘people like us’?

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