Suffering as Equalizer and Teacher

Rabia experienced slavery, poverty, hunger, and rejection—not as separate from her spiritual path but as integral to it. This suffering wasn't noble or redemptive in the Christian sense; rather, it gave her direct knowledge of vulnerability that the privileged can only theorize about. Favoritism often stems from asymmetric empathy: we imagine the inner lives of our group members with detail and generosity, while flattening outsiders into stereotypes. The wealthy default to assuming poor people are less intelligent or deserving; the healthy assume the sick are less valuable; the dominant group assumes minorities are less credible. Rabia's poverty wasn't metaphorical—she knew hunger, knew dependence, knew the humiliation of powerlessness. This knowledge created a baseline empathy that prevented the psychological distance favoritism requires. In our context, this suggests both direct practice (spending time in unfamiliar circumstances, listening to people unlike ourselves) and imaginative discipline (deliberately constructing the inner life of people we're tempted to dismiss). Shared suffering creates solidarity; the invitation is to build empathy even without shared pain.