Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #105 – Should Muslims Be Compassionate

			There's something called concept creep. Okay, so that's when we there's a sort of a term that we use
to define something, but then the content of what that term defines changes over time, right. And
this is super important for when we're translating between languages, right. And it's super
important when we're translating between time periods, right? Because we have concepts in Islam that
are so indigenous and important and central to Islam. But then when they're rendered into English,
and we think about them with a modern lens, they kind of shift and they kind of take on different
content. And sometimes it produces sort of unnecessary misunderstandings or drama, like compassion
		

			is one of those things, right compassion. However, we want to translate it, you know, there's
multiple Arabic terms that get at it is something that is obviously from the dean of a sentence from
Allah as dean, it was the way of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu. So you had the hadith of Alisha,
or the law on her where she says that the Prophet alayhi salatu salam never hit anything with his
hand, not a woman, not a child, not an animal, except when he was on the battlefield, fighting the
enemy, right. And so that compassion and we have so many Hadith about the compassion, the mercy you
know, Allah azza wa jal called him mercy for all the all the creation. So you know, we can't shake
		

			this idea that that compassion is so central to our faith and what it means to be a Muslim. However,
we have to be aware of the content of that compassion, the definition of what compassion looks like,
because people can get it twisted, and people can, in a modern era, or in a different language have
a different understanding as to what the content of compassion is. So some people for example,
imagine that being compassionate is just always being like a yes man, or always being meek and weak
and stuff like this, or not standing up for the truth. Right? And and that's not our compassion,
right? That's not the compassion of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. That's not the
		

			compassion of a snap. And so that sort of, you know, misunderstanding kind of, it results in a very
unfortunate situation where people will react to that shift, or that, yeah, the the shift or the
change in that concept across languages across times, and then they end up sort of mocking it or,
you know, saying that this is bad. This is not how we should be, but we can't necessarily mock
compassion in and of itself, we just have to remain it right, we have to re signify it. We have to
take it back. Right? We can't leave compassion for people who if we're even, like, if we submit to
the argument, there's some people out there who are misrepresenting what compassion looks like. And
		

			in reality, it's weakness or in reality, it's meekness, or it's something that's not our compassion.
We can't leave the term compassion to them, we have to take it back. And we have to find what is the
true balance and the true balance is always in the Sunnah of the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam if
you ever want to know what how do I balance between being too harsh and too soft? Or how do I
balance between being to this or to that? The answer is always in the Sunnah of the Prophet Mohammed
Salah setup that's why Allah azza wa jal gave us the Prophet alayhi salatu salam, and didn't just
send us a Quran as a book, right? He gave it through the messenger so that we would see the example
		

			of the messenger alayhi salatu salam, and then follow it. So we can't we can't leave those things go
compassion is Islam and Islam is compassion. But what type of compassion? What's the content of that
compassion? You can find it in the sun?