The Pursuit of Happiness

This post takes a slightly different tack to my normal blogging but I have had reason to consider this issue, our pursuit of happiness, in recent days for a number of reasons and it always helps me to clarify my own thinking if I write things down – this means you have to put up with these odd musings every now and then.

 You know you are starting to get old when you find yourself thinking about why ‘young’ people do what they do and now that I’m on the other side of 40 I guess there is no escaping from this.  But this is what I have found myself thinking about over the last few days – why it is that young people do some of the things that they do and as a parent with children who will soon be at the age when they want to ‘make their own decisions’ it becomes even more important.  Because on what basis do they make these decisions?

In Praise of the Prophet

ٱلرَّحِيمِ

ٱلۡحَمۡدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ ٱلۡعَـٰلَمِين

إِيَّاكَ نَعۡبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسۡتَعِينُ

 والسلام والصلاة على سيدنا محمد وأهله وصحبه والتابعين لهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.  All Praise to our Creator and Sustainer, He whom we Worship Alone and He in whom we seek Refuge.

  And peace and blessings upon our Master Muhammad, his Family, Companions and those who follow them with excellence until the Day of Reckoning

 In recent times there has been a trend within some parts of the Muslim community to question the practice of praising the Prophet  or, to be fair, praising him ‘excessively’.  The reciting of poems, the singing of qasidas and the practice of holding mawlids, have all been challenged and in some cases labeled as blameworthy innovation (bid’a). It is not my intention to get into a debate about sufism or salafism or wahabism or any other ‘ism’ in relation to this issue.  Let us put all that nomenclature aside for the moment. 

 What I want to discuss is the practice of praising the Prophet  and whether this claim of ‘excessive’ praising is a valid one or not. It is common ground that praise is due to the Prophet , the only real question is how much and what form should this take.

[For the full article click  Mahaba]

Structure and Strategy

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.  All Praise to our Creator and Sustainer, He whom we Worship Alone and He in whom we seek Refuge.

 Prayers and Blessings upon our Master Mohammad, his family and companions.

 In writing this work I do so as a reminder to myself first and foremost and then to all my brothers and sisters in Islam, intending through such advice to benefit the ‘Umma of Allah(swt)and allow each and every one of us to better meet our obligations to He whom we owe all Praise and Thanks.

 

This will be the first of a series of articles, insha’Allah, which will look at fundamental structural issues within the Australian Muslim community with a view to providing both an explanation for some of the current inhibitors to community development and ultimately to recommendations for moving forward.

The topic I’d like to cover in this discussion is Structure and Strategy – even a cursory knowledge of the issues confronted by the community over the last decade and the manner in which those issues have been responded to will show an approach which is anything but strategic.  One of the factors, and I wish to make it clear that it is only one, that contribute to this failing on our part is the representative organisational structure and a lack of clarity of the role that organisations at different levels of that structure should and do play.

Muslim-Jewish Relations in Australia – Challenges and Threats

The Institute for Global Jewish Affairs, an initiative of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, published in its most recent journal an interview with Jeremy Jones, a well known identity within the Australian Jewish community.  The subject of the article was the Muslim-Jewish Relationship in Australia: Challenges and Threats.  Given recent events and the subsequent increase in tensions between the communities, as evidenced by the break in relationship between the two peak bodies, it seems an admirable subject to be talking about it. The full article can be read here:

 http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=4&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=623&PID=0&IID=2974&TTL=Muslim-Jewish_Relations_in_Australia:_Challenges_and_Threats

 Islam is the second largest non-Christian denomination in Australia comprising 1.7% of the population as recorded in the 2006 Census, some 400,000 people.  While the Jewish community is significantly smaller in size it has a long and active history in Australia.  It is only right therefore that the two communities should identify those matters which pose a challenge or threat to ongoing harmony and seek to overcome some of those issues.

 In hindsight I probably should not have had high expectations given the publication and the audience it is aimed at but I am ever the optimist.   The disappointment stems essentially from the following:

Islam, Justice and the West : Part III

In Parts I & II of this discussion we explored the concept of Justice in Islam and how it may apply to non-Muslims and our dealings with them.  What we saw was a general obligation to treat non-Muslims justly.  The question we left open was did this apply to the ‘enemies’ of Islam and who or what constitutes an ‘enemy’.

This issue of who is an ‘enemy’, I must admit, had been a hard one to grapple with and the experience is just another reason why we should leave these matters, ultimately, to the scholars.  Without having a deep understanding of the primary sources it is far too easy to draw the wrong conclusions.  I guess I am saying this as a disclaimer in relation to what comes next.  As I deepen and broaden my own knowledge I may very well return to this issue and revise the situation.

Personal Development -v- Leadership

There are many programs out there these days which are billed as ‘Leadership’ programs but which are in fact nothing more than just glorified development sessions.  Not that there is anything wrong with them, they do in fact provide some very good tools and insights.  But they are not ‘Leadership’ programs.  There is a saying that goes, if something sounds too good to be true it generally is.  Well, the same applies in leadership – any program that says it can turn you into a great leader over a day or a weekend or even a month or two, sound too good to be true – and it generally is.

What these programs generally cover off are some good fundamental personal skills – presentation, communication, negotiation and the like.  All excellent skills to have and skills which all good leaders have.  But they are not the ONLY skills that leaders have and in the absence of anything else they may make you better at your job but wont really progress you very far along the leadership road.

To genuinely build your leadership skills you will need to have 3 elements:

1. The theory – an understanding of what it is that makes good leadership;
2. The practice – an opportunity to practice the theory in a staged approach; learn from that experience and then use it to move on to the next stage of development;
3. A Mentor – someone who can guide you along the journey.

Obviously there are those rare individuals who have the inherent ability to become great leaders on their own but for the vast majority of us it will take time and hard work – not something that you will get in a 1 day workshop or even a week intensive.

So the first piece of advice if you want to develop your leadership potential is to find a structured program that builds on the learned knowledge, provides an opportunity for you to implement the learnings before moving the next stage and which also provides the possibility for you to access a mentor along the way.

Islam, Justice and the West : Part II

In Part I, I contextualised this discussion in relation to what the obligation on Muslims living in non-Muslim lands is.  In this instalment we will explore some of the principles which may apply.

 

There are two camps here – one, which says that the ‘West’ as a collective is an enemy of Islam and so any support at all is a betrayal of the religion; and the other which intuitively takes the position that this is not correct but which has difficulty in articulating its reasons other than if we are aware of a wrong being committed we should stop it.

 

I am neither a scholar nor a ‘leader’ of the community, but I am a Muslim and so I need to understand for my own peace of mind what I believe to be the case.

 

For me the whole issue is bound up in the concept of Justice.  Justice, or ‘Adl’ in Arabic, is one of the main themes running through the Quran and it seems to me that there is something inherently wrong, or unjust, if I, as a Muslim, am aware of something that will cause great harm to many innocent people and choose to stand by and do nothing about it. 

Islam, Justice and the West: Part I

For Muslims living in a western country there are many issues that we have to deal with every day that are challenging for us – the whole gender interaction, both at and outside the workplace; how we manage our prayers and making our ablutions when we’re away from home; finding halal food options and of course the way we dress, in particular for Muslim women, is a much talked about issue.  But we muddle our way through most of those and find a way to meet our obligations to Allah (swt) without causing too much anxiety for our neighbours and colleagues – if you see a Muslim washing their feet in the office bathroom it’s not because they are trying to save water at home and there is no need to call the terrorism hotline either! 

 

At the feet of the Scholars

The Internet has had a huge impact on our lives and will undoubtedly continue to do so.  Overall it has been a positive impact but clearly there are some downsides – the proliferation of pornography and the access to inappropriate material for our children the most obvious one.  Another aspect of course is the availability of a huge amount of information on almost any topic one could imagine – suddenly we can all be instant experts in almost all fields.

And this then leads to one of the more serious repercussions of the w.w.w. when it comes to religions and religious knowledge.  From an Islamic perspective, budding students of knowledge sought out specific scholars and, if the scholar consented, learnt by listening and observing the person of knowledge.  For attaining religious knowledge was more than just receiving and memorising information – it included the Adab(etiquette) of the student to the teacher (something which is geared to instilling a sense of humility and humbleness to go along with the knowledge); it included the contextualising of discrete pieces of information within the ocean of religious knowledge; but more importantly it represented a personal relationship between student and teacher which could be traced all the way back to the time of the Rasul(saws).  It is this last factor which is at the heart of what is now referred to as ‘traditional scholarship’ within the battle that is taking place for the middle ground in both scholarship and Islam generally. 

Palestine

It is almost impossible as a Muslim blogger not to write about the situation in Palestine.  Particularly given the paucity and bias of the reporting that generally takes place in the western media.  It is also a colossal failure on the part of all the so-called ‘leaders’ of the world.  That we can allow a situation where millions of people are forceably removed from their homes, then barricaded behind a concrete wall and left without any food or supplies allowed into the ghetto from outside, would be bad enough, but to then stand idly by while their jailers systematically attack and kill them is just beyond the pale.

Sometimes however, the truth can’t but be spoken and in this case it can’t be better said than by someone other than me.  I came across this article by Deb Reich, an American Jewish lady living in Israel.  It is well worth reading the whole article – below is just an excerpt:

Alas, Jews in Israel and abroad often behave as if Palestinian Arabs are present in Palestine/Israel purely as some kind of devilish provocation – to deny us the fulfillment of our dream of a return to Zion. As if the hundred-year-old olive trees of those long-suffering villagers on the West Bank are standing there only to create make-work for IDF bulldozers and keep our dedicated Army Corps of Engineer boys from getting home in time for dinner. It’s always about us, and we never fail to judge ourselves by our best intentions while busy judging them by their Baruch Goldsteins.

J’accuse…. whom? Either we are all guilty, or none of us is guilty. Governments and partisans and ordinary citizens and religious leaders and followers on all sides of the conflict, back to Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, have certainly made mistakes and made themselves part of the problem. But most Israelis and Palestinians alive today were born after the state of Israel came into being, so they aren’t responsible; and none of us was alive when the Zionist movement was born in the late 1800s in Europe, so that’s not our fault either. Most were not around when Haj Amin al Husseini sided with Hitler in WWII, so they can’t be blamed for his choice. Most of today’s Israelis were not around when Prime Minister Golda Meir made her notorious pronouncement – “There are no Palestinians!” – and so cannot be blamed for that, either.

The full article can be found here:

http://asiapacific.mediamonitors.net/Headlines/J-accuse-won-t-work-anymore