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In a recent conversation with my youngest son he spoke of his friendships while he was at university. There were many highs but also times when he really struggled, feeling let down, betrayed, and how lonely it can feel when those you thought were close friends no longer listen nor seem to show much empathy for how you are feeling. I thought about the word empathy, often seen as an essential human virtue, the glue which holds us together in society, helping us to feel connected, and even feel another’s pain. Indeed, we see it today in the dominant news story of the week – the Horizon IT scandal and the increasing call for justice for the postmasters who’ve suffered for two decades. Yes, media reporting and inquiries had been rumbling on for years. But it’s fair to say that it’s when we watched the misery of the postmasters lives gradually unfold in the moving ITV drama, the power of public empathy galvanised political momentum and a flurry of activity. In the rush to be seen to be doing something quickly to both exonerate and compensate the victims, the government has announced emergency legislation to quash all the convictions – an exceptional step which while it may be for the right reasons, blurs separation of powers between the political and the judicial and paradoxically, doesn’t give innocent victims the opportunity to clear their names in a court of law. And while public empathy can inspire action, like all virtues, empathy requires boundaries, it needs to sit alongside other virtues to be truly effective. In Islamic thought, empathy is being there for someone, present and listening but not carrying all their burdens. Always putting others’ needs before your own can be emotionally damaging and lead to a loss of self. When scripture speaks of `not going to extremes in faith’, this also apply to human emotions. Because empathy is also unreliable, selective and biased, often driving us to make the wrong decision for ourselves and others. The Post Office affair is often talked about as a technical systems issue, when it’s essentially a moral scandal in which many institutions and people were and continue to be complicit. For society to flourish, we have to foster other virtues such as trust, decency, fairness, and personal and institutional accountability, where those who do wrong can’t hide behind ignorance and apathy or power and privilege. Empathy on its own can draw us to one another but empathy alone isn’t enough – it often fails to offer the depth we need in our relationships - whether it be between employer and employee or between two friends.