Cybernetics of Commitment

David Whittaker’s anthology of Stafford’s papers titled “Think Before You Think” was my companion during the flight to Jakarta. Earlier this week, I thanked Denis Adams for putting the book into the jiffy bag for it to be couriered to me. In that e-mail I asked Denis to convey my gratitude to David for sharing what he “saw” when he stood on the shoulders of giants.

The meeting in Jakarta was a commitment made some weeks ago – to accompany the postgraduate students to UIN Syarif Hidayatullah for them to present their thesis proposal and develop the first draft of their thesis.

Commitment is said to precede action. Without commitment, there will be no action. But commitment is a commodity short in supply these days …. Interestingly, many want to do or act but without making any (further) commitment.

Prof Azyumardi Azra asserted that intention (read: “inna ma a’malu bin niyyah”) is synonymous to commitment for there will be no action without commitment, in the same vein, there will be no action without intention.

Interestingly, the Vice Rector of Universitas Hamka discussed the different models of ownership between Muhammadiyah and NU for their institutions: schools/pesantrens, hospitals, child care centres and universities. Muhammadiyah’s members and activists raised funds and sought donations to purchase land and buildings but later bequeathed the properties to the organization. Muhammadiyah the organization, hold all titles to the properties, voluntarily handed over by her members.

He shared a story of a (lady) member who started a child care centre next to an empty plot of land. When the owner of that land told her that he is selling the land and offered to her, she hesitated to purchase until when she found that it could possibly end up with an unfriendly party. To avoid such possibility, she purchased the land without a clue how she will raise the funds to pay for it. She succeeded to raise the funds, built an extension building for the child care next to it and handed over the properties to Muhammadiyah.

I found the story fascinating but inspiring, no less.

Cybernetics of commitment does not require a complete blueprint to initiate action. Instead of specifying in full detail, you simply ride on the dynamics of the system to where you want to go.

That dynamo is commitment.
Hence act therefore commit.

Sekolah Pascasarjana
UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta

Back to the Future

The book titled How Do You Know? Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations is one of the several books selected for pre-Ramadan reading this year. Ehsan Masood introduced Sardar as a writer, thinker, scholar, theorist, broadcaster, critic, journalist and futurist; Muslim, British, Pakistani, South Asian. He has many occupations and more than one identity. Indeed, many of his critics complained that he deliberately cultivates "a carefully calculated ambiguity" projecting several things at once, yet none of them on their own. Sardar wants to be seen simultaneously as both traditionalist and modernist - while at the same time being a severe critic of both.

I stumbled upon Ziauddin Sardar's works during the literature review phase of my doctoral work more than a decade ago. He was (and still is) the editor of Futures and his papers on Islamic Futures were seminal and thought provoking. In some ways those papers sparked my interest in second-order cybernetics, syntegration, scenario planning, strategic analysis and open futures - crystal ball gazing stuff!

If my memory (still) serves me well, Sardar argued that Muslim societies have ignored the future-oriented message of their faith - the very source of the dynamism inherent in Islam. As a result, Muslim understanding of the worldview of Islam has been frozen in history. Muslims have (now) lost the capability for developing fresh insights, appreciations and interpretations of the fundamental sources of Islam: the Quran and the examples from the life of Prophet Muhammad (saw). Contemporary Muslim societies prefer to look back, wallow in nostalgia for their "golden past" rather than plan and work towards a vibrant future.

I share Sardar's assertion that Islam is intrinsically a future-orientated worldview. The Qur'an specifically asks the believers to be conscious of their history as well as their future: "Beware of what lies before and behind you, so that you may be given mercy" [Q 36:45]. The idea of the future and the notion of accountability in Islam are tied up in two fundamental concepts - akhirah (hereafter) and khilafah (trusteeship of humans over God's creation).

Our life do not end with our death and our deeds on Earth continue to impact on our life in the life to come. The concept of khilafah adds another dimension to the synthesis of accountability and future. Believers, as trustees of God's creation, are required to manage the trust (amanah) in an ethically and socially responsible way. This means that the planet and the well-being of its people must be delivered to future generations in at least as good, if not better, condition that they found it.

Islam does not only emphasise that we be aware of our future, it insists that we should actively shape our future. By the very nature of our faith, we are required both to engage with the world and change it. The Qur'an repeatedly asks us both to change ourselves and to constantly strive to change the world so that it could become a more just, equitable and peaceful abode for humanity.

Man will only have what he has worked towards, that his labour will be seen and in the end he will be paid in full for it. [Q 53:39-41]

The answer to the question "How Do You Know?" posed by the book depends on who "we" are: how we look at the world, how we shape our inquiry, the period and culture that shapes our outlook and the values that frame how we think.

Knowing is accompanied by shaping.

Champions

I arrived early at St Pancras for the train to Leicester, and wondered whether I should get a book from the bookstore to read on the train. As I visually browsed the shelves, I saw Garry Kasparov's How Life Imitates Chess. Interestingly, I recalled Deepak Chopra's Golf For Enlightenment: The Seven Lessons for the Game of Life, when I saw Kasparov's book.

Chess was one of the two games I played when I was younger. The other is Monopoly. I picked up chess by observing how my other classmates played in class to kill time (so to speak) when teachers were busy marking exam papers during my primary school days. I felt a great sense of achievement when I played my first game, and occasionally won games played in class. Now my two sons too play chess, and they too learnt it from observing how their classmates played.

Grandmaster and World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov's pieces on strategy and winning tactics in Chess had appeared in Harvard Business Review (no less) which are useful and relevant for business. He beat his opponent, fellow Soviet Anatoly Karpov in 1985 to become world champion and went to hold the title for 15 years. Despite the win, he acknowledged Karpov as the adversary who shaped his life.

Kasparov woke up to find the best present he ever had for his 6th birthday. It was an enormous globe - he had always been fascinated by maps and geography, and his favorite stories were those of voyages of Marco Polo, Columbus and Magellan. These stories fired his own sense of pioneer spirit. He wanted to blaze new trails, even if at that point that meant little more than taking a new route on the walk home.

Every Grandmaster left behind legacies and Kasparov was no exception.

Mikhail Botvinnik who was titled "the patriarch of Soviet chess", left professional chess in 1970 to concentrate on coaching. He invited the top junior chess talents from all over the country two or three times a year to join the Botvinnik School. It went on to produce several generations of champions. In the first "graduating" cohort in the early 60s was the young Anatoly Karpov. In 1973 one of its students was the ten-year-old Gary Kasparov. By 1987 when another (future) world champion Vladimir Kramnik arrived in 1987 it had become the joint Botvinnik-Kasparov School - quite impressive record of champions.

What makes someone a better manager, a better writer, a better chess player - a champion?

For there can be no doubt that not everyone performs at the same level or has the capacity to do so. What is critical is to find our own paths to reach our peaks, to develop our talents, improve our skills, and to seek out and conquer the challenges we need to push us to the highest level.

I am not a devout chess player.

But Kasparov's lessons about mastering the strategic and emotional skills to navigate life's toughest challenges are worth more than the 8.99 Pounds Sterling price marked on the book.

And even the cashier told me that he will be reading this book on his train ride to Yorkshire, this weekend.

Messenger of God for Mankind

I wanted to write about my visit to the Cave of the Seven Sleepers (referred to in Surah Al-Kahf) and the Dead Sea, which I made during my short stay in Amman and Irbid, Jordan, but I have yet to put my thoughts together. The other piece that I wanted to write was my reflections on my meeting with the Hadramis, the Yemeni society and Yemen, but this too will take some time for me to weave it into a meaningful tapestry ... and in the meantime many other life stories are unfolded as days passed by ...

Today, we had our inaugural International Hajj Seminar attended by delegates from some 19 countries. Alhamdulillah, I am grateful to be able to chair the presentations by delegates from Singapore, Philippines and South Africa. But I was both overjoyed and moved when the delegate from Albania, Dr Ramiz Zekaj, General Director of the Albanian Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation gave me 3 books on Albania and Kosovo, as well as a set of books titled This is Prophet Muhammad (saw), Messenger of God for Mankind in 5 European languages -- Italian, German, French, Albanian and English. This 90-page book which has been translated into 12 languages, including Russian and Spanish, consists of 4 chapters, a) Let us get to know the last Messenger, b) The Prophet who perfected the human virtues, c) The Prophet in the view of world personalities, and d) A few lessons derived from the life of the Prophet.

What intrigued me was the simplicity and the poetic style used to present the life of the Prophet and his virtues. At the end of the book, readers are served with a chapter of Prophetic sayings. This chapter features a set of colourful drawings of roses each accompanying a hadith (sayings) of the Prophet to correspond the single red rose against a colourful wave that serves as the cover of the book. Let me try to explain what I meant through the introduction at the beginning of the book:

Personalities resemble high mountains. They stand above the others, are easily visible from the distance, but climbing up is a long and tiring road. The traveller, aiming to reach the top, should walk across the footpaths and uphill and rocky roads and cope with patience and persistence the difficulties and tiredness. Up high, the air is fresher and cleaner, and the horizon is vast. In the people's conscience, the mountains symbolize pride, greatness, beauty and eternity. Views from all the points of horizon cross on top of the mountains.

The personality of Prophet Muhammad (saw) is the highest of all mountains. From their peaks one can see in all directions. The fields look toward this peak, as well the hills and the high mountains look towards this point as a point of orientation. The road towards this peak is the longest but not tiresome - soft and nice, as was also the Prophet Muhammad (saw).

During the climbing, the traveller walks across valleys full of colourful flowers, where thousands of bees gather nectar and pollen; taste the pleasure and freshness of pure water running down the water continuously; listens to the songs of the birds mixed with the whistling sound of centuries old forests. All these amazing beauties spiritually lift the traveller to a world as pure as the water and air of this mountain ...

Prophet Muhammad (saw) is the personality that God equipped with all the beauties and heights of the spirit, with the best and special virtues, with the wisest mind and purest heart. Viewed from any direction, he (saw) radiates and serves as a model the people of his time and the following generation of mankind.

Several books including Professor Tariq Ramadan's The Messenger are waiting patiently to engage and interact with me. Dr Ramiz Zekaj's gift adds to this collection.

Dr Zekaj has also introduced me to the Albanians and to "remind the civilised world about this forgotten people", through these books.

Resilience

Islam taught us to be progressive and resilient. These concepts are not foreign or alien to Muslims as the Quran and the Prophet (saw) demonstrated injunctions and traditions to be of service to mankind, to be useful members of society and to face challenges and difficulties as trials for a higher station of iman and taqwa.

Resilient may be a relatively new term in our life vocabulary, but it certainly is not new in terms of how the Prophet (saw) and his Companions dealt with various challenges and trials, some worth mentioning include the blows the Prophet suffered at Taif and the repeated attempts to seek support for the eventual migration of the Muslim community. The Prophet and his Companions did not lament and despair over the difficulties. In fact the Quran contained verses to remind believers not to despair, and that every difficulty comes ease.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, The Tipping Point gave an interesting example of how the City of New York eradicated street crime. Every train that was vandalized during the night (at the depot) will be repainted to its original paintwork before it is used for passenger service. Similarly all glass windows that are broken will be replaced and fixed as no trains with broken windows by vandals were allowed to run for passenger service.

It will appear that this approach will incur high cost, as each act of vandalism will be replaced by new paintwork, new glass windows or any repairs needed. To allow the trains to operate with graffiti and broken windows will reinforce the perception that the authorities are not in control of the city, and will only encourage vandals to do more, and worse.

When a vandal graffitised a train, he or she felt elated to see their graffiti on the train. But when the vandals did not get to see their graffiti and realized that the authority had repainted the train even before it got out of the depot, they eventually gave up their vandal act, as it no longer served their misplaced pride.

Malcolm Gladwell attributed the eradication of such crime to the idea of tipping point, a point at which transformations happed. We could also infer that the City of New York demonstrated resilience to reach the tipping point. Resilience is evident if the organisation or entity become stronger and more effective when faced with, or overcoming a challenge. Resilience, in this example, means to bounce back stronger (than before) from a crisis or calamity.

In Tel Aviv, debris and clear blood stains immediately are immediately cleared and cleaned when a bombing incident happened. Damaged buildings are repaired almost instantly to return to normalcy. When citizens knew that their government was able to turnaround situations at fast speed it created confidence and renewed strength to handle similar difficulties and challenges in the future.

A resilient community is also defined as one that does not lose its identity, belief, principles or set of values when faced with external challenges. A Muslim community that is religiously resilient, therefore, holds strongly to Islamic principles, morally and spiritually strong and are top of the changing context and the challenges of modern society.

This however does not imply that the community creates enclaves to self-preserve or protects itself. Rather than becoming a hermit, the community contributes to, and benefits from the interaction and engagement with others. A resilient community deals with the challenges as positives and views it as opportunities to develop and grow.

Through it, the community become more self-confident and stronger.