Refugees inspire compassion

I MARVEL at how the supposedly dour and unsympathetic Austrians and Germans have risen with warmth and sympathy to welcome and host the deluge of refugees to their country – in stark contrast to their neighbours, the Hungarians, who subjected this desperate stream of humanity to indignity and humiliation.

I wonder with incredulity at the growing number of individuals in Britain who, despite the crass insensitivity and downright meanness shown and peddled by Prime Minister David Cameron and his callous comrades and the chorus of cavilling from elements of the media, have brushed aside weasel words and the doomsaying and are doing their hearts’ bidding.

Across the social spectrum, people are casting aside their own petty concerns and displaying their humanity and compassion. It is admirable and heartening beyond words. It tells us that ordinary people can display and rise to greatness and nobility, even when leaders deter or discourage them and try to cast fear and invoke selfishness.

Reactions and responses in such moments in life define the mettle and substance of the individual and the collective. Compassion is the quality of nobleness and the divine in us. There is no religion, nor any estimable concept or ideology, or heroic precedent that discourages or disparages it, or that does not enjoin compassion. Aside from religion, it is what makes us conscious and sentient beings. It heals and cures, and whenever we see it, it warms the heart. Without it, we may as well be robots, and those who hold that we are robots are indeed such.

We owe it to everyone we care for to convey this story of heroism and nobility, and the contrasting meanness of the naysayers. It is education of the highest order.

With it, we must inform them that what happens in the world in distant parts often is due to what is done in our name, with our presumed sanction and for our supposed good, often without our knowledge, but the consequences of such are real and more immediate to us than we care to imagine: that one day the boot may be on the other foot. We must learn to care, as much for our sake as for those of others.

The photograph of a body of a 3-year-old washed ashore galvanised the Europeans and, in Britain, made them change their leader’s hard and uncompromising stance. One hopes that Cameron changed his mind because he, too, was affected, and not merely because he realised that his conduct as it was until then would stain and define his political character and the remainder of his career.

In the recorded sayings of the Prophet Muhammad is mentioned the following: “When the child (of Zainab) was brought to Muhammad, dying, its body trembling and moving, the eyes of the Apostle of God shed many tears. Saad (a companion) said: ‘O Messenger of God! What is this weeping and shedding of tears!’ Muhammad replied: ‘This is an expression of the tenderness and compassion which the Lord hath put into the hearts of His servants; the Lord doth not have compassion on and commiserate with His servants, except such as are tender and full of feeling.’

In another saying, more tellingly, is the following: “God made mercy in one hundred parts. He held back ninety-nine parts and sent down one part to Earth. It is from that part that creatures show mercy to each other, such that a mare will lift her hoof over her foal, fearing that she might harm him.”