There is no Guinness World Records “human suffering” entry in which groups or individuals vie to outrank one another. The natural response to another human’s suffering is empathy and compassion, yet, in this day of hyper-nationalism and militarism, we treat the suffering of racial, religious and ethnic groups comparatively. We act as if acknowledging one group’s pain diminishes another’s.
One year after Hamas’ horrific attack on Israel and Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza, Charlotte-area leaders and diverse communities seem to struggle to recognize the pain that the Muslim and Arab American communities are experiencing. Unlike narratives about the suffering of other ethnic minorities, stories about Palestinian suffering have not received a welcome reception. In Mecklenburg County, our county commissioners issued a resolution last October that condemned the massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas. A year later, our county commission has failed to recognize in no uncertain terms the loss of nearly 42,000 Palestinian lives since the start of the war.
The silence of our local leaders on the deaths of innocent Arab civilians distresses me. It leaves me wondering if I belong in this community. It leaves me wondering if my children, who are proud Arab Americans, will grow up feeling like their lives matter in this community. It provokes the same question I felt as a college student in the post 9-11 climate — I love my country, but does it love me back? By rendering my pain invisible, it makes me feel politically insignificant.
Since then, I’ve witnessed the Democratic Party refuse to allow an Arab American to speak at their National Convention. I’ve witnessed members of the Republican Party use Arab Americans and other immigrant groups as fodder to fuel hatred and fear. I’ve witnessed increasing levels of violence against people who share my heritage, cook the same dishes and sing the same songs as me. Why is it so difficult to give space for the pain of people who look like me? I grapple with this question as Israel’s war expands to Lebanon, where I studied Arabic as an undergraduate student, Yemen, Syria and Iran.
The ongoing violence in Gaza is not theoretical to me or many others who are connected to the land by ethnicity, friendship or other affiliations. I have friends who have lost loved ones while they were sitting in their homes or seeking shelter at a refugee camp.
As an Arab American, the inability to empathize with the loss of Palestinian life sends a clear message to my community, a message we have heard time and time again — Palestinian lives don’t matter to most who wield political power. This silencing and erasure of Palestinian stories from the public space plays a role in their dehumanization. It implicitly determines who is worthy of our public sympathy and who is not. What if we no longer deemed it necessary to erase or diminish one group’s suffering in order to empathize with another group?
The fear that amplifying the suffering of one group would diminish empathy for another group stems from a scarcity mindset — a mindset that believes there isn’t enough empathy to go around.
Rejecting the notion of comparative suffering is critical for those who are committed to social justice, human rights and antiracism. Every human life has value. No one’s life is of greater value than another in the eyes of God. If we find ourselves unable to empathize with Palestinian suffering, then we need to interrogate the ways we have been conditioned to dehumanize and deny sympathy to different groups of people.
As we witness a disproportionate level of violence and intense suffering in the world today, we do not have to be bystanders. We can create spaces to listen to each other’s stories, call for the end to vilification — a form of rhetorical violence — and denounce violence against all innocent civilians, irrespective of their religion or nationality.
Hadia Mubarak is an associate professor of religion at Queens University of Charlotte. She specializes in Islamic studies.
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