Assalaamu alaikum,
It seems to me that there are two fundamental (and excellent) questions here. First:
can someone be compassionate and good to others if they reject Allah? And second:
can someone who connects with Allah lack compassion and be bad to others?
(smile) please bear with me. These questions are complex, so I have had to bring in various elements. It may seem that I am bringing in unnecessary points, but I believe them necessary to fully explain how doing good, faith and empathy can connect. Or not.
What is compassion? Generally speaking, I would define it as
empathy in motion. Empathy is when you can put yourself in another person's place and understand how they are feeling. We usually talk about empathy in the context of suffering, but actually, an empathetic person can also share another person's joys, too. Compassion, on the other hand, focuses on the empathizing with
suffering and trying to
do something to alleviate it.
Compassion is also something that a person
must have in order to get to paradise. Because if we are not compassionate, Allah will not be Compassionate with us. And we need His Mercy and Compassion to get to Paradise.
AbuHuraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)as saying:
None amongst you can get into Paradise by virtue of his deeds alone. They said: Allah's Messenger, not even you? Thereupon he said: Not even I, but that Allah should wrap me in His Grace and Mercy.
Reference |
: Sahih Muslim 2816 f |
In-book reference |
: Book 52, Hadith 69 |
USC-MSA web (English) reference |
: Book 39, Hadith 6764 |
Jarir reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,said, "Allah will not show mercy to a person who does not show mercy to other people."
Reference |
: Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 375 |
In-book reference |
: Book 20, Hadith 4 |
English translation |
: Book 20, Hadith 375 |
The root r-h-m means mercy/compassion/love/kindness/grace. If you search through the Qur'an and ahadith with these terms (they are variously translated,so don't just search under
compassion, or you'll miss many references), you will find an overwhelming number of references. And it is telling, I think, that the most-used Names of God are:ar-RaHMaan and ar-RaHiiM: variously translated as: the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Most Loving, the Most Kind, the Most Gracious.
I have read that in order to have compassion, you must be able to empathize. And this made sense to me. Because who has no empathy? Well, for one, narcissists (I'm talking in the clinical sense, not just a bit of selfishness. Narcissists, by definition, have no empathy). These are very destructive and hurtful people. If you read what kind of behaviour narcissists exhibit (pride, egotism, manipulativeness, disregard for morality, sexual promiscuity and depravity), these are traits of the
thaalimoun, the
faasiqoun, the mufsidoun. These are the people that Allah says in the Qur'an that he does
not Love.
But then I had to think about autistic people. I have read that autistic people also don't have empathy.This is because they can't “read” another person's emotional language. It's as if they are blind to other people's feelings. However, if you know any autistic people (and as autism is increasing rapidly in frequency, you probably do), they tend to be very honest and well-meaning people (though socially, they are very clunky). And if you know an autistic person as well as I do, then you know that it isn't true that they feel no distress at another person's pain. It's more that they are so puzzled at another person's distress, that they freeze or try to ignore it. They can sense your distress, but they have no idea
why you are distressed. So they don't know what to do about it. But if you tell them: ok, if you see someone doing
this, then do
that, they will happily follow your instructions. They still can't understand what your emotional signals are saying, but if they do sense that something is wrong, they would like to put it right, if they only knew what was happening and what they could do.
What I am trying to say is that thereis a subtle difference between narcissists/faasiqoun and autistic people: the narcissist
can perceive your emotional signals. He just doesn't
feel anything (though he can fake it, if he needs to). The autistic person
can't read your signals. But he feels some sort of inner distress if he knows something is upsetting you. He just doesn't know what is upsetting you, or what to do about it.
We all have an innate connection with Allah. On one end of the spectrum, we can actively accept it and try and strengthen it, and on the other, we can actively deny it, and try to extinguish it. But generally, people are somewhere between these two poles.
There are many people today who call themselves atheists because they don't know any better. They think they know about God, but they do not. Often, they have been fed misinformation about God in school and/or through the general culture.They may also have had such a bad experience with people who
call themselves believers (but behave terribly), that they may make the mistake of thinking that being a believer led this person into wrongdoing. I would classify these sorts of atheists as passive atheists. They have not actually consciously rejected God, but sort of just drifted or run scared towards a lack of faith. And these people still have at least a small connection with Allah, I believe,and it can be expanded fairly easily into a large and healthy channel. Indeed, there are many examples of this happening.
Allah has Created us with variousabilities. Intellect is one, and I've read of seven subcategories of intellect. And one of them is emotional intelligence. "Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions."
Our hearts are another ability, it seems to me. This is where we find our
leanings towards goodness, kindness, mercy, love, morality... It is connected with our
fitrah, I think. Our spiritual hearts, it seems to me, can function in the presence of a poor connection with Allah, just as they can function with little or no emotional intelligence. However, I think that having a good connection with Allah greatly augments our hearts' capacity for compelling us towards compassionate acts, just as having emotional intelligence can augment our hearts' capacity.
An autistic person can have a healthy heart, but lack emotional intelligence. Indeed, many autistic people are known for their honesty and good (though sometimes unknowingly inappropriate) behaviour. They're just not good at perceiving and knowing how to respond to suffering. So their compassion is limited. But it is still there, in a very simple form.
A narcissist can have excellent emotional intelligence, but have a closed heart. They can read you like a book, and behave very, very badly. Modern psychology says that they have no empathy and therefore no compassion. But I think Islamically I would say that they have a diseased, closed heart and therefore they have no compassion. The difference is subtle, but I think, important.
It seems to me that a person can have a weak connection with Allah, but have a functioning heart, just as an autistic person can have weak emotional intelligence and have a functioning heart.
But if the person has a strong connection with Allah, the heart is augmented, expands, and overflows with the goodness that is flowing into it from its Lord.
True and full rejecters of God have a blocked connection, I believe. And their hearts tend to wither from the lack of Allah feeding their spiritual hearts with goodness. And they end up not nice people, in my experience. But passive atheists seem to have a weak connection. And they are more likely to have working hearts, in my experience.
I suppose that in the end, we are all unique in our patterns of Gifts and our uses of them. Allah Gifted some people with strong innate leanings towards goodness, as well as high emotional intelligence. So that, even if their connection with Him is weak, they can still do some limited goodness in this world. But if those who have a weak connection with Him were to strengthen their connection, they would be much more effective in their goodness.
Those who have closed hearts effectively block their connection with Allah, and are those who do the worst damage in this world. And they use what emotional intelligence they have for destructive purposes. They may
pretend to have a good connection with Allah but they do not. They are those who Allah condemns the most: the hypocrites (fakers)/
munafiqoun.
So in answer to the question:
can someone be compassionate and good to others if they reject Allah? I would say, if they
actively reject Allah (and therefore stifle the connection), their hearts may start out with a high degree of strength, but this wanes over time, and they eventually cease doing good. If they
passively reject Allah (and therefore do have a weak connection), and they have strong hearts, they can do quite a lot of good in this world, though they are not nearly as strong and as effective as if they had a strong connection with Allah.
For the second question:
can someone who connects with Allah lack compassion and be bad to others? I would say that
as the degree of connection varies, and
as the strength of the heart varies from person to person, the amount of compassion a person has, and the amount of wrongdoing they can commit, varies. So yes, someone who connects with Allah can do wrong, though the level of wrong is
inversely proportional to the strength of their connection with Allah (i.e. the stronger the connection, the less wrong they are likely to do), if all else is equal (remembering that the intellectual and physical capacity of a person also influences their level of
effective compassion (what acts they can
actually do for another to relieve suffering)).
But someone who has a
completely closed heart, it seems to me, cannot have a nourishing connection with Allah. A person with a completely closed heart can
pretend to love and be compassionate, but he does it only for gain. He can also
pretend to have a connection with Allah, if he thinks he can gain something in this world by so pretending.
I imagine the heart as a core within that is connected to Allah by a luminous channel that flows Light into the heart. The stronger a person's connection to Allah, the thicker the channel, and the more Light flows into their heart. The channel can be closed off, and the heart leak light till it dwindles away, or the heart can be sealed, and the channel cannot flow. So in the end, whether you decide to
close down your connection to God and thus starve your heart, or whether you decide to
close down your heart and so block your connection, the final result is pretty similar.
However, it should not be forgotten that if people who have smothered their hearts sincerely
ask Him to open their hearts, their hearts may be Opened, and His Light may then flow in, and their hearts may be renewed.
May Allah Open and Nourish all our hearts and Help us to be as compassionate as we possibly can be.