Compassion is not only to have an open heart, but also to speak out

Dubai: Compassion in its general meaning and in religion and politics was discussed by intellectuals - Karen Armstrong, Mohammad Abdul Haleem, Tariq Ramadan and Dr Abraham Varghese - at the Emirates Festival of Literature.

In November 2009 Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun, set up the Charter for Compassion - a declaration of support for the Golden Rule that underlies Islam, Christianity and other religions: to treat others as you would like to be treated. Since then more than 60,000 people worldwide have already affirmed the Charter, people as diverse as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Grand Mufti Shaikh Ali Goma'a and Richard Branson.

"I'm a struggler to be compassionate. Compassion is difficult. To be compassionate you have to fight against selfishness," Karen said.

"I think that had I had a less privileged life, I can imagine I could have become a terrorist and had all this rage in me about all kinds of things, but fortunately I've been nurtured.

"As a Roman Catholic nun I was most uncompassionate and people used to say I had a very, very sharp tongue and someone once said to me: 'You realise you never say something nice about anyone'. But I've been bullied as a young girl, and so you learn to fight back, so I have over the years, through my study of all the world's religions, had to find in me this core of compassion," Karen said.

Tariq Ramadan said from the Islamic point of view, there is a capacity to look at yourself and the way you have to deal with your own suffering.

"Suffering is just a signal that you need something to get peace. The way you look at your suffering should be a positive way, in order to get inner peace, or Salam," he said.

"Compassion is not only to have an open heart, but also to speak out and to be courageous. It is impossible for me not to speak out against what is happening in the US when we go killing Iraqi people and Muslim people while speaking about democracy," he said.

"It's a question of respecting the dignity of the people and justice," he added.

Abdul Haleem said as a Muslim he is reminded of compassion every day of his life. "Because the first description of Allah is Al Rahman, which means the most compassionate, and this is something I repeat more than twenty times every day," he said.

The principle of treating others like you wish they would treat you is at the heart of the teachings of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), he added.

As an example of that, Abdul Haleem told the story of a man who came to Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and told him that he wants to become Muslim, but wanted one exception which is to be able to commit adultery.

The prophet's companions wanted to attack the man, but the prophet instead asked him if he wants it to be done to his mother or sister of daughter, and when the man said no, he told him that others also do not want this to be done to their relatives.

Abraham Varghese, professor of medicine at the Standford University School of Medicine and an author of many books, described how medicine students arrive full of compassion and willingness to help, and gradually lose this compassion.

So much so that "if a patient arrives with a cut finger, they have to get an X-ray, an MRI-scan and an orthopaedist consultation just to prove that their finger is cut off", he told the audience.