Humility
Islam discourages the practice of seeking leadership; if a person desires it for power and glory rather than serving the people by implementing the divine laws, he is not fit to occupy it. In a well-known Hadith, the Prophet has said that he who seeks leadership is not fit to assume it.
A Muslim leader should restrain from behaving unjustly — whether to community members, to customers, to suppliers or to anybody else. Muslims believe that a leader with a firm faith (iman) will not get out of responsibility for his actions, and will continuously emphasize good deeds.
In Islam a leader must be kind, compassionate and forgiving towards those whom he leads. A leader must also consult the people before taking a decision but once a decision has been made no weakness is shown and the policy be pursued with single-mindedness of purpose, determination and courage. The leader, however, must first articulate the vision and demonstrate the ability to turn it into action by aligning performance with vision to create a climate of success for the realization of the stated goal.
In summary the qualities for leadership in Islam are: knowledge and hikmah (wisdom, insight); taqwa (love and fear of Allah); ‘adl (justice) and rahmah (compassion); courage and bravery; shura (mutual consultation); decisiveness and being resolute; eloquence; a spirit of self-sacrifice; and sabr (patience).
Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has written of the way in which the “wisest is not one who knows himself wiser than others: he is one who knows all men have some share of wisdom and is willing to learn from them, for none of us knows all the truth and each of us knows some of it.”
Sacks has written about argument, debate and conversation as being a fundamental aspect of Judaism. He argues that this is because Judaism is “an attempt to do justice to the fact that there is more than one point of view; more than one truth.” :
“Judaism gives dignity to the multiple perspectives from which we perceive reality and, most importantly, it says that the truth is not only as it appears to God looking down from heaven. Truth is also how it seems to us down here on earth. And the only ways we can handle that are either by having a dialogue and conversation, or by having different perspectives at different times.”
Sacks argues that, “we must learn the art of conversation, from which truth emerges not, as in Socratic dialogues, by the refutation of falsehood but from the quite different process of letting our world be enlarged by the presence of others who think, act, and interpret reality in ways radically different from our own.”
Hinduism contains similar resources for peaceful coexistence between those holding differing views. Jay Lakhani has spoken of the way in which the Hindu understanding of pluralism holds potential for resolving interfaith conflicts. Lakhani suggests that pluralism “says that the same ultimate reality called God can be thought of and approached in different ways.” The difference comes because each of us are different, coming from different backgrounds and inspired by different prophets and scriptures. No religion can claim absolute truth because by making that claim the religion would be claiming to be absolute as God is absolute. Therefore, each religion must always be less than the Absolute. As Hindu teaching states, “At best even the most esoteric religions can only offer a ‘perception of the Absolute’ – but never the Absolute.”
Lakhani suggests that on this basis we can simply say, “Your prophets and scriptures suit you and are best for you, my prophets and scriptures are fine for my purposes so why threaten or feel threatened by each other?” He suggests that true leadership involves the humble recognition of the necessary limitations of what we perceive as absolute.
Service
A servant style of leadership is fundamental to Christian teaching because of the example understood to be set by Jesus Christ in washing the feet of his disciples and in laying down his life for humanity. A servant style of leadership reverses the pyramid of hierarchy in an organisation by suggesting that frontline staff are those who are most important in the organisation (“the first shall be last and the last first”) because they are the people who actually deal with customers and that the role of managers/leaders is to serve these people by properly resourcing them for their work.
For Christians, the primary reason for adopting this style of leadership is that it was the approach of Jesus, the pattern for both his life and death: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” As a result, for Christians there should be a radical rejection of hierarchical power that creates dependence and patronage in favour of a servant style of leadership.
Servant styles of leadership are found in other faith traditions too. From the Buddhist tradition comes the example of the Emperor Aśoka, a great ruler of the Maurya dynasty who lived about 200 years after the Buddha. Initially, like his father before him, Aśoka expanded his kingdom but his sorrow at the slaughter involved in conquest led him, through his understanding of Buddhist beliefs, to turn towards the service of those he governed and to the upholding of their welfare. H.G. Wells wrote, in The Outline of History, that:
“Amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the pages of history … their majesties and graciousnesses and serenities and royal highnesses and the like, the name Aśoka shines, and shines almost alone, a star.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U2 - Peace On Earth (Remix).
No comments:
Post a Comment