By Omar Nassimi
When One of Our Own Suffers
In recent days, many of us were struck by the news that our brother, Sami Hamdi, was arrested by ICE despite coming to the US legally. Many Muslim community leaders and institutions in America seemed to collectively raise their voice in outrage at one of its own people becoming victim to the terrorizing force of ICE.
But, it struck me that people who might otherwise have stayed silent spoke about the cruelty of immigration enforcement, the fear families live under, and the dehumanizing systems that have quietly destroyed lives for years, may not be speaking out about its evils per se, but they were speaking out about the fact that the systems came after one of ours. One of our people, our public voice, our brother.
A Missed Moment of Universal Empathy
What could’ve been a moment of empathy for all people afflicted by this, a rare moment of empathy, was instead a strange moment of self-centeredness. A moment that revealed both our potential and our weakness. Because it took the suffering of someone known and respected for us to care about an injustice that has existed all along.
The Qur’anic Call to Selfless Goodness
The Qur’an calls us to something higher than selective compassion. In Surah Al-Hashr (59:9), Allah describes the early believers in Medina who welcomed the Prophet ﷺ and his companions fleeing persecution: “They give [others] preference over themselves, even though they may be in need.”
This verse reflects one of the higher forms of faith: to want good for others, even when it comes at a personal cost. It reminds us that righteousness is not comfort in isolation, but generosity in community.
The Prophet’s ﷺ Standard of True Faith
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ deepened this principle when he said, as narrated in both Bukhari and Muslim: “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”
Together, these teachings form a moral axis on which real community turns. Faith is not merely belief in God. It is the moral courage to hope, give, and work for the good of others as earnestly as we do for ourselves.
A Mirror of the World’s Fractures
This may be our community’s greatest problem. Too many of us have fallen into the fractures of the world around us: men and women at odds, cultures divided, races resentful, and classes envious. We scroll through social media and see bitterness masquerading as authenticity. Men lament how corrupt women are. Women dismiss men as lazy and selfish. Each group paints the other as the obstacle to happiness. These same divisions, gendered, racial, and political, infect our mosques and Muslim spaces just as they do society at large.
A Qur’anic Cure for Resentment
But the Qur’an also speaks directly to this temptation to envy and comparison. In Surah An-Nisa (4:32), Allah says: “Do not wish for that by which Allah has made some of you excel others. For men is a share of what they have earned, and for women a share of what they have earned. And ask Allah of His bounty.”
This verse dismantles the entire logic of resentment. It tells us that each of us has our portion of divine opportunity, and that rather than resenting one another, we should turn our aspirations toward God’s vast bounty.
Faith Beyond Coexistence
Faith calls us to something far more demanding than mere coexistence. It calls us to love for the other, even when that love costs us something. The Prophet ﷺ did not simply tolerate others; he desired their success, their peace, and their salvation. He loved for others what he loved for himself.
If we wish to build a real community, this is the cornerstone we are missing. We cannot rise together while resenting one another’s ascent. This includes the wellness of our neighbors that aren’t Muslim. We cannot speak of unity while secretly hoping others fail. Real belief, iman, means celebrating the good that happens to others, even when we are struggling ourselves.
The Prophet’s ﷺ Vision of a Living Ummah
The Prophet ﷺ described this spirit of empathy vividly in another hadith recorded in Bukhari and Muslim: “The believers, in their mutual love, mercy, and compassion, are like one body. If one part of the body suffers, the whole body responds with sleeplessness and fever.”
Toward Radical Empathy
In an age of radical selfishness, Muslims should be the model of radical empathy. That means men wanting good for women, and women wanting good for men. It means caring about immigrant suffering even if we are citizens. It means seeing the moral crises of America: divorce, addiction, loneliness, not as “their problems,” but as our problems too. Because we live here, we are shaped here, and our faith compels us to heal here.
If we only care when our own group is hurt, we are not yet believers. But if we can begin to love for others what we love for ourselves, if we can forgive, forbear, and empathize even when it is inconvenient, then perhaps we can start to become what this moment desperately needs: a community that heals rather than mirrors the brokenness of the world.