Sharing nota seorang peserta sesi talk semalam dgn dr tareq suwaidan. Alhamdulillah, I have been privileged by Allah to get the chance to listen to the talk by Dr Tareq Suwaidan last night. I try to shasre a little bit of my personal notes from the talk. Personal, because this is based on my own interpretation and the lessons that I learned. Pardon me, this may not make a perfect sense but I try to get the messages across. Dr Tareq started off with the chronology of ‘Arab Spring’. In a nutshell, it’s not all roses and sunshines, just because we’re fighting for the cause of Islam. If anything, he stressed on the importance of being REALISTIC by having a STRATEGIC THINKING. Understand the people, gauge the situation on the ground, in the public sector, international relations and ECONOMICS. Many times, the islamist movements seemed to play down the importance of economic strength and hence failed the whole revolution. Despite all that happened, the rise and fall of many recent revolutions especially in the middle-east, he’s convinced that there’s still very much hope for Islam to rise. After all, when do you lose hope? When there is no action. So as long as the islamist movements continue to struggle inside out, hope is there. He advised us to understand history not by events, but by the cycle because the history keeps repeating itself. I have not revised this myself, but he did mention about reflecting what’s written in Surah Ali-imran, to learn the lessons from our past defeat. This may be sensitive or offensive to some people. But, with all honesty Dr Tareq made a strong statement on how most of the problems, if we’re looking at middle-east, were not caused by the young people. Instead, it’s the Ulama who seem to not be deprived of knowledge but the value instead. The knowledge is so abundant, but the value is scarce. All that’s happening, what does it mean? It means that we are in need of CHANGE. Talking about the science of change, you cannot change without pain and when there is little pain you don’t want to change. This, we can see from affluent arab countries, when life gets too easy you become complacent and tend to lose the motivation to progress. Let us look at the time of Muslim’s golden age, when the two cities of Cordoba and Baghdad were thriving as the houses of knowledge. Only two cities, but they’re responsible for 50% of the discovery of all knowledge. Why? If we look at the time of King Abdul Rahman Nasir (umayyah ruler), when Cordoba was the centre of knowledge, he gave incentives, enormous pay for those who would want to move to Cordoba to learn and expand knowledge. Regardless of creeds, Muslims or Non-muslims. That should be the aspiration. Going back to revolutions. There can be two reasons for revolution 1) democracy 2) Religion. In the fight for democracy, people will revolt when their basic needs or ‘complacency’ is taken away from them. For e.g when subsidies are, prices of goods increase and inflation soars. In religion, when something that they believe is sacred is touched, thats when they start a revolution. If the ummah were to have hopes for the future, it’s in those who have faith. Somebody asked Dr Tareq, when do you think that the ummah will attain victory. I could not agree more with his answer. The answer is when people who go to masjid put their shoes properly on the shelves. Why? If those who have faith are so lazy to take extra effort just to put their shoes on the shelves, then theres no way they can start a revolution. Ideology and poor leadership are the culprits of our digression. You cant change a behaviour unless you change the ideology behind the behaviour. Lack of effectiveness and digression are due to the problem in the ideology while the principles are the major part of any ideology. Whats the purpose of Islam? People always mention the maqasid syariah. That is true, but what is above maqasid syariah? Is to free humans from misery in this life and the next. It is Rahmatan lilalamin. On relation with the non-muslims. We ought to think with love. It is not our purpose to prove that theyre wrong. Our purpose is to save them and get them into heaven. Its not even our purpose to prove that were the best. On politics, dont confuse tactics with principles. This (mis)understanding that moves us backwards. Don’t be attached to individuals, be attached to principles, be attached to values. Whenever theres a difference in opinion, no scholar should attack one another. The major rule of ideology: do not punish mistakes, if you punish mistakes, people will never try again. Dr Tareq also listed what are the kinds of bad leaders? Those who have - Bad goals - Bad ethics - Good ethics, good goals, good knowledge but incompetent. This is the MAJOR problem in any leadership nowadays. A good leader must posses all the qualities of good goals, good ethics and COMPETENT. Dont confuse leadership with seniority, knowledge, taqwa, age and gender. Imam ahmad on leadership and taqwa. Should we elect a leader who has taqwa but is weak or a leader who is fasiq but competent? The answer is to choose the competent leader. As for taqwa is only for himself whereas his weakness will jeopardise the people whereas the the fasiq, his fasiq is only for himself whereas his strength serves for the rest. Dr Tareq rejected all arguments that deter women from having a leadership position just because of the gender. In fact, he stressed on the fact that during the Muslim civilisation, women had better position and scholarship. However, he had great difficulties to trace such upstanding women in the past 400 years. Dr Tareq Suwaidan on women and leadership Three qualities of women that make them good leaders or even better in some cases - theyre 45% more creative than men - they tend to Consult the people more (more democratic) - women make good plans. But the problem is they dont have enough plans because theyre busy with all the little things. The only drawback women have - they tend to hesitate to make decision. So my only advice to the women, if they were to be the leaders, they should not hesitate in making decisions Leaders should be chosen based on their abilities. They should have - Vision for the future - Initiatives - Seriousness in leadership Islam will not be effective unless with human efforts. Therefore, let us be EFFECTIVE. Before the struggle of power, we must strive for humanistic cause of freedom and fairness. Syariah only functions in free and fair environment. There are two major tools that can change people’s ideology. Media and education. Sadly we’re poor in these two. Realising this, more should be done to empower and better the media and education. There are few more recordings that I may need to revise and digest. But hopefully, this can give us some motivation to do better and improvise ourselves in LIVING the cause of Allah. Di akhir kata, saya ingin berkongsi soalan Ustaz Hasrizal sewaktu usrah PAPISMA semalam. “Apa ruginya alam ini bila Islam mundur?” “Apakah kebaikan kewujudan kita kepada manusia dan alam sekeliling?” AISHA ADAM 25 Zulhijah 1435
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 09:04:47 +0000
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