There Is Nothing In Islam That Is

Compassion Is Aptly Summed Up In The Golden Rule, Which Asks Us To Look Into Our Own Hearts, Discover What Gives Us Pain, And Then Refuse, Under Any Circumstance Whatsoever, To Inflict That Pain On Anybody Else. Compassion Can Be Defined, Therefore, As An Attitude Of Principled, Consistent Altruism.

Today We Often Think That Before We Start Living A Religious Life We Have First To Accept The Creedal Doctrines And That Before One Can Have Any Comprehension Of The Loyalty And Trust Of Faith, One Must First Force One's Mind To Accept A Host Of Incomprehensible Doctrines. But This Is To Put The Cart Before The Horse.

Let Us Bring Something New To The Table. Let Us Use Our Pain Always To Remember The Others, Bring Them Into The Conversation, And Get Beyond The Stereotypes And Prejudices That Create Injustice All Over The World.

And Sometimes It's The Very Otherness Of A Stranger, Someone Who Doesn't Belong To Our Ethnic Or Ideological Or Religious Group, An Otherness That Can Repel Us Initially, But Which Can Jerk Us Out Of Our Habitual Selfishness, And Give Us Intonations Of That Sacred Otherness, Which Is God.

I Have Become Convinced, Through My Studies, That The Only Way To Achieve A Safe, Just And Viable World Is To Live By The Golden Rule. This Is What Drives My Writing. I Want To Point Out This Interconnectedness, Point Out The Beauty Of The Faith In All Traditions Without Exception, Show The Complexity Of The Atrocities That We Have Experienced, And Our Shared Culpability As A Species.