A Learning Society: Issues and Challenges to Learners, Educators and Planners

an Islamic Perspective
Muhammad `Uthman El-Muhammady
[this article was first published in our previous website at Geocities in September 2004]
This paper- God willing- will argue for the successful implementation of a knowledge and
learning society and also life of quality in the holistic sense and not only in certain aspects of
both, because Islam as a tauhidic weltanschauung stands for the realization of total human
needs, seeing man in terms of, firstly his theomorphism, and then secondly his social ,
collective and civilizational needs.
Firstly we should be clear about our understanding of the notion of knowledge society as it is
understood in current cultural discourse. What is knowledge society?
As an example concerning one part of the Muslim World, in a recent report about developing
a knowledge society in the Arab world, it is stated in the Arab Human development report
2003: building knowledge society 2003
[means that] the Arab states should also encourage greater interaction with other nations,
cultures and regions of the world, [urging] [o]penness, interaction, assimilation, absorption,
revision, criticism and examination cannot but prompt creative knowledge production in
Arab societies.[this report done ] by a group of distinguished Arab scholars and opinion
leaders, is at once descriptive and perspective, with bold recommendations for change and
analysis of the current state of education, scientific research, the media, the publishing
industry, culture encompassing religion, intellectual heritage and the Arabic language, and
other building blocks of a knowledge society in the Arab states.
It is observed that The Arab Human Development report 2003 (AHDR2003 ) which is the
second of a planned four-part series which will also cover the issues of freedoms and political
institutions, and gender imbalance and the empowerment of women in the 22 Arab states. The
first Report (AHDR 2002 ), issued a year ago, outlined the most important development
challenges facing the Arab states at the beginning of the third Millennium. The Egyptian
renowned journalist Muhammad Hassanain Haikal said AHDR 2002 signaled the regions
last chance to join the trip to the future.(2)
There are a number of important points in the report touching upon information society.
The report is observed as: Written into every line is the unwavering conviction that reform
efforts, which genuinely serve the regions interests must be initiated and launched from
within. Yet the construction of a viable knowledge society requires effective economic,
social and political institutions, Khalaf emphasizing The missing links are.. smothered by
ideologies, societal structures and values that inhabit critical thinking, cut Arabs off from
their knowledge rich heritage and block the free flow of ideas and learning
It goes on to describe it: The report proposes a strategic vision that could support a creative
renaissance buttressed by the five pillars of an Arab Knowledge society guaranteeing the
key freedoms of opinion, and assembly through good governance bounded by the law. A
climate of freedom is an essential prerequisite of the knowledge society, affirms the report
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and argues that It is also imperative to end an era of administrative control and the grip of
security agencies over the production and dissemination of knowledge and the various forms
of creative activity that are the foundations for the knowledge society in Arab states.(3)
In one international; conference last year (2003) dealing with the topic of engineering
knowledge society the organizers noted that:
Engineering the Knowledge Society (EKS)[involve] Information technology supporting
human development Information Technology (or Information and Communication
Technology) cannot be seen as a separate entity. Its application should support human
development and this application has to be engineered.
What has to be taken into account when engineering the Knowledge Society? The Conference
will address:
Lifelong Learning and education, e-inclusion, ethics and social impact, engineering
profession, developing e-society, economy and e-Society.
o
What actions have to be undertaken to realize a human centered Knowledge Society?
The presentations in this World Summit parallel event will reflect the active stance towards
human development supported by ICT expressed in its title. A Round Table session will
provide concrete proposals for action.(4)
In the Forum on Engineering the Knowledge Society the topics covered are:
o

Education

Lifelong Learning in the Knowledge Society

Collective intelligence and Capacity building in the Information Society Social Engineering
of the Knowledge Society

The e-Society Repository: An Open Tool to Build a Human Information Society

Preserving Information Orality, Writing and Memory in a Human Society

Towards an indigenous Vision for the Information Society

Vulnerabilities of Information Technologies and their impact on the Information

Society

Professional Deontology [i.e.theory on duties], self regulation and Ethics in the

Information Society

Development in the Field Software Engineering Professionalism, standards and Best

Practice

The Role of Professional Society in the Information Age

Managing ICT Skills Profiles

Enabling ICT Adoption in Developing e-Societies

Sustainable Development and Information Society (From Rio to Geneva

Impact of Future Technology on Society

Telemedicine for medical Capacity Building in Developing Countries:Experiences

and Lessons Learned in Mali

Understanding and interpreting the Drivers of the Knowledge Economy

Networked Economy Effects on organizational Development and the Role of

Education

Beyond Information Society: the Revolution of non-tangible Assets Social

Engineering of the Internet in Developing Areas

Recently it is observed, in relation to the term: knowledge society or information society

or whatever; it is stated that:
We in Western Europe can probably agree that we have left the industrial society. What,
then, have we entered instead? Information society, service society or knowledge society are,
I guess, the most commonly used designations for the stage we currently are in. What
designation we think is right very likely depends on where we are.(5)
And, further, it is observed :
Journalists would say information society; McDonalds would say service society. Where
you stand depends on where you sit, as the British are fond of saying. It is a question of
what you value the most, for none of them information, service or knowledge are
anything new. They have always existed and will probably always exist; but other phenomena
agriculture, industry have tended to dominate the interpretation of reality.
And:
Hence it is not so much a matter of objective truth as of what interpretation is the most
fulfilling when we have to choose the designation for the current conditions. Knowledge
society can be a very suitable designation for most societies in Western Europe. It is naturally
a matter of definition when a society has become a knowledge society. The easiest criterion is
perhaps the price per pound of a nations export. The higher it is, the more knowledge there is
in the product.
It is also stated : Calling Western Europe a knowledge society the fact that we dont want to
compete with the 3rd world at least not on the 3rd worlds premises and it assumes an
increasing amount of knowledge in the products. We dont even have to go very far. If there
are to be room for the new EU members, we must necessarily escape into a higher
knowledge content in our products. (6)
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The we come to the question of what is a learning society? It is seen in a number of

perspectives. Among others it is seen as: Notions of the learning society gained considerable
currency in policy debates in a number of countries since the appearance of Learning to Be:
If learning involves all of ones life, in the sense of both time-span and diversity, and all of
society, including its social and economic as well as its educational resources, then we must
go even further than the necessary overhaul of educational systems until we reach the stage
of a learning society. (Faure et al 1972: xxxiii)
The notion has subsequently been wrapped up with the emergence of so called postindustrial or post-Fordist societies and linked to other notions such as lifelong learning and
the learning organization (see, in particular, the seminal work or Argyris and Schon 1978). It
is an extra-ordinarily elastic term that provides politicians and policymakers with something
that can seem profound, but on close inspection is largely vacuous. All societies need to be
charactized by learning or else they will die!( in the theory and rhetoric of the learning
society in http://www.infed.org/lifelonglearning/b-lrnsoc.htm )
The writer Donald Schon concerning what is called the loss of the stable state stated his
views in his work providing an early view on the matter, defining it, giving his contribution
(1963, 1967, 1973). He provided a theoretical framework linking the experience of living in a
situation of an increasing change with the need for learning.
The loss of the stable state means that our society and all of its institutions are in continuous
processes of transformation. We cannot expect new stable states that will endure for our own
lifetimes.
We must learn to understand, guide, influence and manage these transformations. We must
make the capacity for undertaking them integral to ourselves and to our institutions.
We must, in other words, become adept at learning. We must become able not only to
transform our institutions, in response to changing situations and requirements; we must
invent and develop institutions which are learning systems, that is to say, systems capable of
bringing about their own continuing transformation. (Schon 1973: 28)
One of his innovations was to explore the extent to which companies, social movements and
governments were learning systems and how those systems could be enhanced. He suggests
that the movement toward learning systems is, of necessity, a groping and inductive process
for which there is no adequate theoretical basis (ibid.: 57). The business firm, according to
Donald Schons argument , was a striking example of a learning system. He charted how
firms moved from being organized around products toward integration around business
systems (ibid.: 64). He made the case that many companies no longer have a stable base in
the technologies of particular products or the systems build around them.
Then he went on with Chris Argyris to develop a number of important concepts with regard
to organizational learning. Of particular importance for later developments was their interest
in feedback and single- and double-loop learning.
However, as Griffin and Brownhill (2001) have pointed out three other earlier conceptions of
the learning society also repay attention.

Another writer to be noted is Robert M. Hutchins writing on the learning society. Hutchins,
in a book first published in 1968, argued that a learning society had become necessary.
Education systems were no longer able to respond to the demands made upon them. Instead it
was necessary to look toward the idea that learning was at the heart of change. The two
essential facts are the increasing proportion of free time and the rapidity of change. The
latter requires continuous education; the former makes it possible (1970: 130). He looked to
ancient Athens for a model. There:
education was not a segregated activity, conducted for certain hours, in certain places, at a
certain time of life. It was the aim of the society. The city educated the man. The Athenian
was educated by culture, by paideia. (Hutchins 1970: 133)
Slavery made this possible releasing citizens to participate in the life of the city. Hutchins
argument was that machines can do for modern man what slavery did for the fortunate few
in Athens (op. cit.).
To the writer of this present paper, in the perspective of the Islamic tradition we can see the
madinan prophetic model as representing every clear example of this module of education
not being a segregated activity but rather integrated into the very rhythm of life, and then
further making it sacred as struggle in the path of Allah, and those who die in its path they die
as martyrs in the path of Allah. (See the Chapter on Book of Knowledge of Ihya of al-Ghazali
rd).
Torsten Husn, technology and the learning society. Torsten Husn argued that it would be
necessary for states to become learning societies where knowledge and information lay at
the heart of their activities.( ibid)
In relation to this concept of the learning society there is also the phenomenon of what is
called knowledge explosion. It is stated that ;Among all the explosions that have come
into use as labels to describe rapidly changing Western society, the term knowledge
explosion is one of the most appropriate. Reference is often made to the knowledge
industry, meaning both the producers of knowledge, such as research institutes, and its
distributors, e.g. schools, mass media, book publishers, libraries and so on. What we have
been witnessing since the mid-1960s in the field of distribution technology may well have
begun to revolutionize the communication of knowledge within another ten years of so.
(Husn 1974: 239)(ibid).
We can observe that Husns approach was futurological (where Hutchins was essentially
based on classical humanism). The organizing principles of Husns vision of a relevant
educational system have been summarized by Stewart Ranson (1998) and included:
Education as something becoming a lifelong process.
The big issue is that education will not have any fixed points of entry and cut-off exits. It
will become a more continuous process within formal education and in its role within other
functions of human life.
It will take on a more informal character as it becomes accessible to more and more
individuals. In addition to learning centers, facilities will be provided for learning at home

and at the workplace, for example by the provision of computer terminals apart from the
conventional media available in the society.
In this new scenario formal education will become more meaningful and relevant in its
application in life and work.
It is stated [t]o an ever-increasing extent, the education system will become dependent on
large supporting organizations or supporting systems to produce teaching aids, systems of
information processing and multi-media instructional materials (Husn 1974: 198-9)
Husns vision was based upon projections from current trends in communications
technology and the likely consequences of these for knowledge, information and production
(Griffin and Brownhill 2001: 58. Significantly, these predictions have largely come true.(ibid)
Roger Boshier, adult education and the learning society. Boshier argued for an integrated
model of education that allowed for participation throughout a persons lifetime. Influenced
by more radical and democratic writers like Freire, Illich and Goodman, and his appreciation
of economic and social change, Boshier looked to the democratic possibilities of a learning
society.
When we turn to current explorations of the learning society it is possible to discern the
various strands developed by these writers: technological, cultural and democratic. (The
philosophical underpinning of these models is discussed by Griffin and Brownhill 2001).
However, it is the technological that appears to have become dominant in many policy
documents.
There are a number of salient points which can be taken into consideration about the current
models of the learning society. Among these points are (ibid):

The learning society can be seen as an aspiration and as a description It is seen as something that is necessary
and regions are to remain competitive within an increasingly globalized economy.
It may be sought after as a means of improving individual and communal well-being.-with three key strands
discourses around the notion of a learning society in which there is a shift from a focus on the provision of le
opportunities to one on learning.
The first is portrayed as a product of modernism,
the third as exhibiting a typically post-modern orientation.
The second strand, with its emphasis on markets, economic imperatives and individual achievement, has been
something which currently dominates the scenario.
an educated society, committed to active citizenship, liberal democracy and equal opportunities.
supports lifelong learning within the social policy frameworks of post-Second World War social democracies
is to provide learning opportunities to educate adults to meet the challenges of change and citizenship. This h
happened in Europe.
A learning society is a learning market, enabling institutions to provide services for individuals as a condition
supporting the competitiveness of the economy.
This supports lifelong learning within the economic policy framework should be adopted by governments
The aim being a market in learning opportunities to be developed to meet the demands of individuals and em
the updating of skills and competences.
Support for this conception has to come also from employers bodies and modernizing policy think-tanks in r
economic uncertainty. The usefulness or performativity of education and training becomes a guiding criterion
learning society is one in which learners adopt a learning approach to life, drawing on a wide range of resourc
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enable them to support their lifestyle practices. This supports lifelong learning as a condition of individuals in
contemporary period to which policy needs to respond. This conception of a learning society formulates the l
series of overlapping learning networks and is implicit to much of the writing on post-modernity with its e
on the contingent, the ephemeral and heterogeneity.
It can be argued that the learning society idea can provide us with a helpful way of making sense of the shift
in the context of the profound changes associated with globalization and other dynamics of social and econom
of the present scenario in human affairs.(ibid).
The above features concerning a learning society are in harmony with the Islam ideal and
tradition, and they provide opportunities as well as challenges whichever way we look at
them- to learners, educators, and polici makers.
In the talk entitled : Knowledge Work and Knowledge Society The Social Transformations
of this Century Peter F. Drucker, with whose important name this term knowledge society
is closely linked, on May 4, 1994(7) made a number of important observations.
In talking about the emergence of the knowledge workers, and hence from the the
knowledge society, Peter Drucker observes:
These are unprecedented developments, profoundly affecting social structure, community,
government, economics and politics. What is even more astonishing and even less
precedented is the rise of the group which is fast replacing both historys traditional groups
and the groups of industrial society; the group which is fast becoming the center of gravity of
the working population; the group, incidentally, which is fast becoming the largest single
group (though by no means a majority) in the work force and population of post-industrial
society and in every developed country: knowledge workers.
Concerning the emergence of knowledge society he says:
Knowledge workers, even though only a large minority of the work force, already give the
emerging knowledge society its character, its leadership, its central challenges and its social
profile. They may not be the ruling class of the knowledge society, but they already are its
leading class. In their characteristics, their social positions, their values and their
expectations, they differ fundamentally from any group in history that has ever occupied the
leading, let along the dominant position.
In the first place, the knowledge worker gains access to work, job and social position
through formal education.
[In stressing the importance of formal education for access to work and social position he
states]A great deal of knowledge work will require high manual skill and substantial work
with ones hands. An extreme example is the neurosurgeon. The neurosurgeons performance
capacity rests on formal education and theoretical knowledge. Absence of manual skill
disqualifies one for work as a neurosurgeon. Manual skill alone, no matter how advanced,
will never enable anyone to be a neurosurgeon. The formal education that is required for
knowledge work is education that can only be acquired in and through formal schooling. It
cannot be acquired through apprenticeship.
He continues speaking in the same vein about the strong points of such a society with the
necessary preparations in knowledge and the infrastructure: first implication of this is that
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education will become the center of the knowledge society and schooling its key institution.
What knowledge mix is required for everyone? What is quality in learning and teaching? All
these will, of necessity, become central concerns of the knowledge society and central
political issues. In fact, it may not be too fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and
distribution of formal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics of the
knowledge society which acquisition and distribution of property and income have occupied
in the two or three centuries which we have come to call the Age of Capitalism.
He goes on giving his observations on this issue:
Paradoxically, this may not necessarily mean that the school as we know it will become
more important. For, in the knowledge society, clearly more and more of knowledge, and
especially of advanced knowledge, will be acquired well past the age of formal schooling,
and increasingly, perhaps, in and through educational processes which do not center on the
traditional school, e.g. systematic continuing education offered at the place of employment.
But, at the same time, there is very little doubt that the performance of the schools and the
basic values of the schools will increasingly become of concern to society as a whole, rather
than be considered professional matters that can be left to the educator.
And then concerning the image and character of the educated person in the knowledge
society he observes:We can also predict with high probability that we will redefine what it
means to be an educated person. Traditionally and especially during the last two hundred
years at least in the West (and since about that time in Japan as well) an educated person was
someone who shared a common stock of formal knowledge what the Germans called
Allgemeine Bildung and the English ( and following them, the nineteenth- century
Americans) called the liberal arts. Increasingly, an educated person, will be someone who has
learned how to learn, and throughout his or her lifetime continues to learn, especially in and
out of formal education.
And concerning the dangers in the concept of the educated person as previously understood
he observes: There are obvious dangers to this. Society can easily degenerate into one in
which the emphasis is on formal degrees rather than on performance capacity. It can easily
degenerate into one of totally sterile, Confucian-type Mandarins a danger to which the
American university, particularly, is singularly susceptible. It can, on the other hand, also fall
prey to overvaluing immediately usable, practical knowledge, and underrate the importance
of fundamentals and of wisdom altogether.
And considering the possible danger of new class conflict in the new scenario he states: This
society, in which knowledge workers dominate, is in danger of a new class conflict: the
conflict between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of people who
will make their living through traditional ways, either by manual work, whether skilled or
unskilled, or by services work, whether skilled or unskilled. The productivity of knowledge
work still abysmally low will predictably become the economic challenge of the knowledge
society. On it will depend the competitive position of every country, industry and institution
within society. The productivity of the non- knowledge services worker will increasingly
become the social challenge to the knowledge society. On it will depend the ability of the
knowledge society to give decent incomes and with them dignity and status to nonknowledge people.
He observes that in the past no earlier society faced such challenges as mentioned above.
8

Concerning the new opportunities in the new society open to all , he states:Equally new are
the opportunities of the knowledge society. In the knowledge society, for the first time in
history, access to leadership is open to all.
Equally, access to the acquisition of knowledge will no longer be dependent on obtaining a
prescribed education at any given age. Learning will become the tool of the individual
available to him or her at any age if only because so much of skill and knowledge can be
acquired by means of the new learning technologies.
And further:
Another implication is that the performance of an individual, an organization, an industry or
a country in acquiring and applying knowledge will increasingly become the key competitive
factor for career and earnings opportunities of individuals; for the performance, if not the
survival of the individual organization; or of an industry, and for a country. The knowledge
society will inevitably become far more competitive than any society we have yet known for
the simple reason that with knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses for
nonperformance. There will be no poor countries. There will only be ignorant countries.
He continues giving his observations on the new developed society with the challenges and
opportunities as follows:
The same will be true for individual companies, individual industries, and individual
organizations of any kind. It will be true for the individual, too. In fact, developed societies
have already become infinitely more competitive for the individual than were the societies of
the early twentieth century let alone earlier societies, those of the nineteenth or eighteenth
centuries. Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of the class into which they were
born, with most individuals following their fathers in their work and in their station in life.
He would like too use the term knowledges for the new phenomenon in this new
development in human culture. He says:I have been speaking of knowledge. But the proper
term is knowledges. For the knowledge of the knowledge society is fundamentally different
from what was considered knowledge in earlier societies, and, in fact, from what is still
widely considered knowledge. The knowledge of the German Allgemeine Bildung or of the
Anglo-American liberal arts had little to do with one s life work. It focused on the person and
the person s development, rather than on any application both nineteenth-century Allgemeine
Bildung and liberal arts prided themselves on having no utility whatsoever. In the knowledge
society, knowledge basically exists only in application.
And arguing for the new form of knowledge in terms of application, he observes:Knowledge
in application is, by definition, highly specialized which was why Plato s Socrates some 2500
years ago, refused to accept it as knowledge and considered it mere techne, that is, mere skill.
And concerning some knowledge requiring a limited amount of knowledge compared to
others, he observes:
Some knowledge work requires a fairly limited amount of knowledge examples are some
paramedical technologists, the X-ray technologist, the technologist in the clinical laboratory,
or the pulmonary technologist. Other knowledge work requires far more advanced theoretical
knowledge, e.g., most of the knowledge work required in business, whether in market
9

research; in product planning; in designing manufacturing systems; in advertising and

promotion; in purchasing. In some areas the knowledge base is vast indeed, as in
neurosurgery and in a good many areas of management, e.g., managing a major hospital, a
big and complex university, or a multinational enterprise.
Whatever the base, knowledge in application is specialized. It is always specific, and
therefore not applicable to anything else. Nothing the X-ray technician needs to know can be
applied to market research, for instance, or to teaching medieval history.
Concerning the central work-force in the knowledge society, he observes:
The central work force in the knowledge society will, therefore, consist of highly specialized
people. In fact, it is a mistake to speak of generalists. What we mean by that term,
increasingly, will be people who have learned how to acquire additional specialties, and
especially to acquire rapidly the specialized knowledge needed for them to move from one
kind of work and job to another, e.g., from being a market researcher into general
management, or from being a nurse in a hospital into hospital administration. But generalists
in the sense in which we used to talk of them are becoming dilettantes rather than educated
people.
This too is new. Historically, workers were generalists. They did whatever had to be done on
the farm, in the household and in the craftsman s shop. This was true of the industrial worker
as well. Manufacturing industry only expanded and became dominant when it learned to take
the specialized skill out of the work. This was when it converted the skilled craftsmen of
preindustrial times into the semiskilled or unskilled machine operator of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
Concerning knowledge workers as specialists, he states:
But knowledge workers, whether their knowledge be primitive or advanced, whether there
be a little of it or a great deal, will, by definition, be specialized. Knowledge in application is
effective only when it is specialized. Indeed, it is more effective the more highly specialized
it is. This goes for the technicians, e.g., the person who services a computer, an X-ray
machine or the engine of a fighter plan.1 But it equally applies to work that requires the most
advanced knowledge, whether research into genetics or astrophysics or putting on the first
performance of a new opera.
As said before: the shift from knowledge to knowledges offers tremendous opportunities to
the individual. It makes possible a career as a knowledge worker. But it equally presents a
great many new problems and challenges. It demands for the first time in history that people
with knowledge take responsibility for making themselves understood by people who do not
have the same knowledge base. It requires that people learn and preferably early how to
assimilate into their own work specialized knowledges from other areas and other disciplines.
This is particularly important as innovation in any one knowledge area tends to originate
outside the area itself. This is true in respect to products and processes where, in sharp
contrast to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, innovations now tend to arise outside
the industry or process itself. It is true just as much in scientific knowledge and in
scholarship. The new approaches to the study of history have, for instance, come out of

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economics, psychology and archeology all disciplines that historians never considered
relevant to their field and to which they had rarely before been exposed.
HOW KNOWLEDGES WORK
Concerning this he observes:That the knowledge in the knowledge society has to be highly
specialized to be productive implies two new requirements: 1. knowledge workers work in
teams; and 2. knowledge workers have to have access to an organization which, in most
cases, means that knowledge workers have to be employees of an organization.
There is a great deal of talk these days about teams and team work. Most of it starts out with
the wrong assumption, namely, that we never before worked in teams. Actually, people have
always worked in teams very few people ever could work effectively by themselves. The
farmer had to have a wife, and the farm wife had to have a husband. The two worked as a
team. Both worked as a team with their employees, the hired hands. The craftsman also had
to have a wife, with whom he worked as a team he took care of the craft work, she took care
of the customers and the business altogether. Both worked as a team with the journeymen and
apprentices. The present discussion also assumes that there is only one kind of team. Actually
there are quite a few.2 But until now the emphasis has been on the individual worker and not
on the team. With knowledge work being the more effective the more specialized it is, teams
become the actual work unit rather than the individual himself.
Concerning the importance of team-work in the new society and the importance of new kinds
of teams for various kinds of work he states: The team that is being touted now as the team I
call it the jazz combo team is only one kind of team. It is actually the most difficult kind of
team, and the team that requires the longest time to gain performance capacity.
We will have to learn to use different kinds of teams for different purposes. We will have to
learn to understand teams and this is something to which, so far, very little attention has been
paid. The understanding of teams, the performance capacities of different kinds of teams;
their strengths; their limitations; the trade-offs between various kinds of teams, thus,
increasingly, will become central concerns in the performance of people.
And in this new scenario the individual knowledge worker has got to learn the capability to
be able to switch over to new kinds of teams :The individual knowledge worker will also
have to learn something that today practically no one has learned: how to switch from one
kind of team to another; how to integrate one s self into a team; what to expect of a team;
and, in turn, what to contribute to a team.
The ability to diagnose what kind of team a certain kind of knowledge work requires for full
effectiveness, and the ability, then, to organize such a team and integrate oneself into it, will
increasingly become a requirement for effectiveness as a knowledge worker. So far, it is not
taught or learned anywhere (except in a few research labs). So far, very few executives in any
kind of organization even realize that it is their job, to a large extent, to decide what kind of
team is needed for a given job, how to organize it and how to make it effective. We are now
in the very early stages of work on teams, their characteristics, their specifications, their
performance characteristics and their appraisal.
Equally important is the second implication of the fact that knowledge workers are, of
necessity, specialists: the need for them to work as members of an organization. It is only the
11

organization that can provide the basic continuity which knowledge workers need to be
effective. It is only the organization that can convert the specialized knowledge of the
knowledge worker into performance.
By itself, specialized knowledge yields no performance. The surgeon is not effective unless
there is a diagnosis, which, by and large, is not the surgeon s task and not even within the
surgeon s competence. Market researchers, by themselves, produce only data. To convert the
data into information, let alone to make them effective in knowledge action, requires
marketing people, sales people, production people and service people. As a loner in research
and writing, the historian can be very effective. However, to produce the education of
students, a great many other specialists have to contribute people whose specialty may be
literature, mathematics or other areas of history. This requires the specialist to have access to
an organization.
This access may be as a consultant. It may be as a provider of specialized services. For the
overwhelming majority of knowledge workers it will be as employees of an organization fulltime or part-time whether it be a government agency, a hospital, a university, a business, a
labor union or hundreds of other types of organizations. In the knowledge society, it is not the
individual who performs. The individual is a cost center rather than a performance center. It is
the organization that performs. The individual physician may have a great deal of knowledge.
But the physician is impotent without the knowledge provided by a host of other scientific
disciplines, i.e., physics, chemistry, genetics, etc. The physician cannot function without the
test results produced by a host of diagnosticians that run the imaging machines whether X-ray
or ultrasound, making and interpreting blood tests, administering brain scans, etc. The
hospital is the lifeline to the physician. It administers the services to critically ill patients, and
provides the physical and/or psychiatric rehabilitation without which there would be no full
recovery. To provide any of these services, whether the electrocardiogram, the analysis of the
blood samples, the magnetic resonance imaging or the exercises of the physical therapist,
physicians need access to the organization of the hospital, that is, to a highly structured
enterprise, organized to operate in perpetuity.
Then concerning what he calls the employee society he observes:
The knowledge society is an employee society. Traditional society, or, society before the rise
of the manufacturing enterprise and the blue-collar manufacturing worker, was not a society
of independents. Thomas Jefferson s society of independent, small farmers each being the
owner of his own family farm and farming it without any help except that of his wife and his
children, was never much more than a fantasy. Most people in history were dependents. But
they did not work for an organization. They were working for an owner, as slaves, as serfs, as
hired hands on the farm; as journeymen and apprentices in the craftsmen s shops; as shop
assistants and salespeople for a merchant; as domestic servants, free or unfree, and so on.
They worked for a master. When blue-collar work in manufacturing first arose they still
worked for a master.
In Dickens s great 1854 novel of a bitter labor conflict in a cotton mill (Hard Times), the
workers worked for an owner. They did not work for the factory. Only late in the nineteenth
century did the factory rather than the owner become the employer. And only in the twentieth
century did the corporation, rather than the factory, then become the employer. Only in this
century has the master been replaced by a boss, who, himself, ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, is an employee and has a boss himself.
12

Knowledge workers will be both employees who have a boss, and bosses who have
employees. Organizations were not known to yesterday s social science, and are, by and
large, not yet known to today s social science. The great German sociologist, Ferdinand
Toennies (1855-1936), in his 1888 book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and
Society) classified the known forms of human organization as being either community, which
is organic, and fate, or society, which is a structure and very largely under social control. He
never talked of organization. Nor did any of the other sociologists of the nineteenth or early
twentieth century. But organization is neither community nor society, although it partakes of
some characteristics of each. It is not fate. Membership in an organization is always freely
chosen. One joins a company or a government agency or the teaching staff of a university.
One is not born into it. And one can always leave one could only emigrate from traditional
communities. It is not society, either, especially as it does not embrace the totality of its
members. The director of market research in a company is also a member of half a dozen
other organizations. She may belong to a church, to a tennis club, and may well spend
especially if an American five hours a week as a volunteer for a local nonprofit organization,
e.g., as a leader of a Girl Scout troop. Organizations, in other words, are not true collectives.
They are tools, i.e., means to an end.
There have been earlier organizations. The professional military as it arose after the
seventeenth century was an organization; it was neither a society nor a community. The
modern university, as it emerged after the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1809, was
an organization.
Faculty members freely joined and could always leave. The same can be said for the Civil
Service as it arose in the eighteenth century, first in France, then on the European continent,
and finally in late nineteenth century in Great Britain and Meiji, Japan (though not until 1933
or World War II in the United States). But these earlier organizations were still seen as
exceptions. The first organization in the modern sense, the first that was seen as being
prototypical rather than exceptional, was surely the modern business enterprise as it emerged
after 1870 which is the reason why, to this day, most people think of management, that is of
the organi-zation s specific organ, as being business management.
With the appearance of the knowledge society and the society becoming a society of
organizations he observes:With the emergence of the knowledge society, society has become
a society of organizations. Most of us work in and for an organization, and we are dependent
for our effectiveness and equally for our living on access to an organization whether as an
organization s employee or as a provider of services to an organization, as a lawyer, for
instance, or a freight forwarder. More and more of these supporting services to organizations
are, themselves, organized as organizations. The first law firm was organized in the U.S. a
little over a century ago until then lawyers practiced as individuals. In Europe there were no
law firms to speak of until after World War II. Today, the practice of law is increasingly done
in larger and larger partnerships. It is also true, especially in the U.S., of the practice of
medicine. The knowledge society is a society of organizations in which practically every
single task is being performed in and through an organization.
Concerning the question what is an employee, he remarks as follows:
Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of their working life as employees. The
meaning of the term is different from what it has been, traditionally and not only in English
but in German, Spanish, or Japanese as well.
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Individually, knowledge workers are dependent on the job. They receive a wage or salary.
They are being hired and can be fired. Legally, each is an employee, but, collectively, they are
the only capitalists. Increasingly, through their pension funds and through their other savings
(e.g., in the U.S. through mutual funds), the employees own the means of production. In
traditional economics and by no means only in Marxist economics there is a sharp distinction
between the wage fund all of which goes into consumption and the capital fund. Most social
theory of industrial society is based, one way or another, on the relationship between the two,
whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficial cooperation and balance. In the knowledge
society, the two merge. The pension fund is deferred wage and, as such, a wage fund. It is
also increasingly the main source of capital, if not the only source of capital, for the
knowledge society.
Equally important, perhaps more important: in the knowledge society the employees, that is
knowledge workers, again own the tools of production. Marx s great insight was the
realization that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools of production and
therefore has to be alienated. There was no way, Marx pointed out, for the worker to own the
steam engine and to be able to take the steam engine with himself when moving from one job
to another. The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had to control it. Increasingly, the
true investment in the knowledge society is not in machines and tools. It is in the knowledge
of the knowledge worker. Without it, the machines, no matter how advanced and
sophisticated, are unproductive.
The market researcher needs a computer. But increasingly this is the researcher s own
personal computer, and a cheap tool the market researcher takes along wherever he or she
goes. And the true capital equipment of market research is the knowledge of markets, of
statistics, and of the application of market research to business strategy, which is lodged
between the researchers ears and is their exclusive and inalienable property. The surgeon
needs the operating room of the hospital and all of its expensive capital equipment. But the
surgeon s true capital investment is the twelve or fifteen years of training and the resulting
knowledge which the surgeon takes from one hospital to the next. Without that knowledge,
the hospital s expensive operating rooms are so much waste and scrap.
This is true whether the knowledge worker commands advanced knowledge like the
surgeon, or simple and fairly elementary knowledge like the junior accountant. In either case,
it is the knowledge investment that determines whether the employee is productive or not,
rather than the tools, machines and capital the organization furnishes. The industrial worker
needed the capitalist infinitely more than the capitalist needed the industrial worker the basis
for Marx s assertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workers, and an
industrial reserve army which would make sure that wages could not possibly rise above the
subsistence level (probably Marx s most egregious error). In the knowledge society the most
probable assumption and certainly the assumption on which all organizations have to conduct
their affairs is that they need the knowledge worker far more than the knowledge worker
needs them. It is the organization s job to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtain
knowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality. The relationship increasingly is
one of interdependence, with the knowledge worker having to learn what the organization
needs, but with the organization also having to learn what the knowledge workers needs,
requires and expects.
Because its work is based on knowledge, the knowledge organization is altogether not one
of superiors and subordinates.
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Using the symphony orchestra as the prototype for the new situation, he remarks:The
prototype is the symphony orchestra. The first violin may be the most important in the
orchestra. But the first violinist is not the superior of the harp player. He is a colleague. The
harp part is the harp player s part and not delegated to her by either the conductor or the first
violinist.
There was endless debate in the Middle Ages about the hierarchy of knowledges, with
philosophy claiming to be the queen of knowledges. We long ago gave up that moot
argument. There is no higher knowledge and no lower knowledge. When the patient s
complaint is an ingrown toenail the podiatrist s knowledge controls, and not that of the brain
surgeon even though the brain surgeon represents many more years of training and gets a
much larger fee. Conversely, if an executive is posted to a foreign country, the knowledge he
or she needs, and in a hurry, is the fairly low skill of acquiring fluency in a foreign language
something every native of that country has mastered by age two without any great
investment. The knowledge of the knowledge society, precisely because it is knowledge only
when applied in action, derives its rank and standing from the situation and not from its
knowledge content. What is knowledge, in other words, in one situation, e.g., the knowledge
of Korean for the American executive posted to Seoul, is only information, and not very
relevant information at that, when the same executive a few years later has to think through
his company s market strategy for Korea. This, too, is new. Knowledges were always seen as
fixed stars, so to speak, each occupying its own position in the universe of knowledge. In the
knowledge society, knowledges are tools and, as such, dependent for their importance and
position on the task to be performed.
One final conclusion: Because the knowledge society perforce has to be a society of
organizations, its central and distinctive organ is management.
When we first began to talk of management, the term meant business management for largescale business was the first of the new organizations to become visible. But we have learned
in this last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of all organizations. All of
them require management whether they use the term or not. All managers do the same things
whatever the business of their organization. All of them have to bring people each of them
possessing a different knowledge together for joint performance. All of them have to make
human strengths productive in performance and human weaknesses irrelevant.
All of them have to think through what are results in the organization and all of them have to
define objectives. All of them are responsible to think through what I call the theory of the
business, that is, the assumptions on which the organization bases its performance and
actions, and equally, the assumptions on which organizations decide what things not to do.
All of them require an organ that thinks through strategies, that is, the means through which
the goals of the organization become performance. All of them have to define the values of
the organization, its system of rewards and punishments, and its spirit and its culture. In all of
them, managers need both the knowledge of management as work and discipline, and the
knowledge and understanding of the organization itself, its purposes, its values, its
environment and markets, its core competencies.
Management as a practice is very old. The most successful executive in all history was
surely that Egyptian who, 4,000 years or more ago, first conceived the pyramid without any
precedent designed and built it, and did so in record time. Unlike any other work of man, that
15

first pyramid still stands. But as a discipline, management is barely fifty years old. It was first
dimly perceived around the time of World War I. It did not emerge until World War II, and
then primarily in the United States. Since then, it has been the fastest growing new function,
and its study the fastest growing new discipline. No function in history has emerged as fast as
management and managers have done so in the last fifty to sixty years, and surely none has
had such worldwide sweep in such a short period. Management, in most business schools, is
still taught as a bundle of techniques, e.g., budgeting or organization development. To be
sure, management, like any other work, has its own tools, and its own techniques. But just as
the essence of medicine is not the urine analysis, the essence of management is not technique
or procedure. The essence of management is to make knowledges productive. Management,
in other words, is a social function. And, in its practice, management is truly a liberal art.
Without going further, we can mention a number of points about the understanding of this
knowledge society. Among these are:

the discovery and the intensive use of the new technology, the information and
communication technology (ICT)

the necessity for greater interaction with other nations, cultures and regions of the
world

the necessity for an attitude of openness, interaction, assimilation, absorption,

revision, criticism and examination which will prompt creative knowledge
production in societies

the attitude of society characterized by being descriptive and perspective, with

readiness for positive change and involving analysis of the current state of education,
scientific research, the media, the publishing industry, culture encompassing religion,
intellectual heritage and the use of the national language, and other building blocks of
a knowledge society

people should be educated to be concerned about construction of a viable knowledge

society which in turn requires effective economic, social and political institutions,
involving solutions for negative attitudes and situations related to ideologies, societal
structures and values that inhabit critical thinking, which cut off Muslims and others
from their knowledge rich heritage and block the free flow of ideas and learning

People should be trained and educated so that they will be involved actively in the
production and dissemination of knowledge and the various forms of creative activity
that are the foundations for the knowledge society in the country..

the discussion about knowledge will involve engineering the knowledge society,
which may involve the issue of Information technology supporting human
development , since, Information Technology (or Information and Communication
Technology) cannot be seen as a separate phenomenon in human culture; it should be
seen as a tool for helping human development and has be taken into account when
engineering the Knowledge Society.

16

This will involve issues of life-long learning, e-inclusion, ethics and social impact,
engineering profession, developing

e-society, economy and e-Society.

And the question: What actions have to be undertaken to realize a human centered
Knowledge Society? Is of utmost importance for the realization of the objective.
In relation to quality of life, we can begin to see this issue in relation to concept of knowledge
which is of collective obligation (fard kifayah). Imam al-Ghazali observes in the Ihya as
follows:((8)
(COMPULSORY DUTY ON COMMUNITY)
Know, 0 dear readers, that learning about the duties are divided into two categories those
which are connected with religion and those which are not so connected. The religions
learning are those which came from the Holy Prophets and in which there is no question of
intellect, and the learnings that are not connected with the religion are Mathematics,
Medicine etc. They are of three kinds praiseworthy, blameworthy and permissible. The
sciences which are necessary for progress in the world are praiseworthy, such as Medicine,
Mathematics etc. These are Farz Kifayah or binding on the community as a whole. Fard
Kifayah is such compulsory duty without which no nation can go on in this world. If a man at
least acquires such learning or science in a town or locality, all other people in the town or
locality get absolved from its sin. If, however nobody learns it, all will be transgressors. The
sciences which should be learnt for agriculture, administration, industry, horticulture,
weaving etc. are Fard Kifayah. To be expert in such learnings is not Fard Kifayah. The
learnings which are blameworthy are sorcery, talismanic science juggling, gambling and the
like. The branches of knowledge which are permissible are poetry, history, geography,
biology etc.
All learning connected with the religion is praiseworthy, but when any other learning is
mixed with any of them, it becomes sometimes blameworthy. The praiseworthy branches of
learning comprise sources and branches helpful and supplementary to those disciplines of
learning. They are therefore of four kinds.
1) Sources of religious learning are four in number (a) the Book of God, the Sunnah or usages
of the Holy Prophet, the unanimous opinions of Muslim jurists (Ijma) and the sayings of
companions. Ijma is the third source of Islam as it shows the path towards the usages of the
Prophet. The first source is the Quran and the second is the Sunnah. The fourth source is the
sayings of the companions because they saw the Prophet, witnessed the coming down to
revelations and they saw what others did not see through their association with the Prophet.
2) Branches of learning of religion are drawn from the sources not according to the literal
meaning but according to the meaning adduced by the mind, thereby writing the
understanding as indicated by the following Hadith: A judge shall not sit in judgment when
angry. This means that he shall not pass judgment when he is pressed by calls of nature,
hunger and disease. The last thing is of two kinds. One kind relates to the activities of the
world, such as the books of law and is entrusted to the lawyers and jurisprudent; and the other
kind relates to the activities of the hereafter. The latter is the science of the conditions of the
heart and of its praiseworthy virtues and blameworthy evils.
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3) The third is the sciences helpful to the praiseworthy sciences such as the science of
language and grammar which are necessary to know the Quran and Sunnah. They are not
themselves religious education. They were not necessary for the Holy Prophet as he was
illiterate.
4) The fourth kind is the supplementary sciences and is connected with pronunciation of
words and different readings and meanings, such as tafsir, knowledge of revocation of verses,
books on authoritative transmission, biographies of illustrious companions and narrators of
traditions.
These are the religious learning and are praiseworthy and as such Fard Kifayah or binding on
the community as a whole.(9)
In discussing the importance of knowledge in relation to human life, al-Ghazali states in the
Ihya as follows:
The affairs of this world do not become orderly except through activities, but the human
activities are divided into three categories. 1) The first category includes four fundamental
activities without which the world can not go on in order. (i) Agriculture for raising food
stuffs for maintaining lives, weaving for manufacturing clothes, architecture for building
houses and government for regulating human relations for living in peace and harmony. 2)
The second category includes such activities as are helpful to the above mentioned activities,
such as iron crafts or ploughs for cultivation, instruments for spinning and weaving clothes
and other implements. 3) The third category includes such activities as are supplementary to
the principal industries previously mentioned, such as eating, drinking, making dresses,
sewing clothes.
These activities are necessary for human habitation just as the various organs of the body are
necessary for up-keep of the human body. The organs of the body also are divided into three
categories 1) The fundamental organs, such as heart, liver and brain. 2) What is helpful to
these principal organs are stomach, veins, and back-bone without which they can not
function. 3) What is supplementary to the above two categories for perfection are nails,
fingers, eye brows etc. Out of these three categories, the most noble are the fundamental
things, out of which the most noble is government on account of which peaceful habitation
becomes possible. For this reason, experienced and expert men are necessary to run the
government.
Administration is divided into four classes.
1. The first class is the highest as it is the government of the prophets and their
jurisdiction spread over the public and private matters of the people.
2. Next is the administration of temporal rulers over the public matters of the people and
not their private matters.
3. Next is the administration of the learned and the wise over the people in the matter of
the religion of God as they are the heirs of the prophets. It involves thoughts of the
privileged few.
4. Next is the administration of the preachers which involves the thoughts of the
common men. After the administration of the prophets, the most noble is the diffusion
18

of knowledge whereby the people are saved from evil and destructive habits and are
led towards fortune and constructive virtues.
This is the goal of knowledge and education.
Intellectual activities are more excellent than the other activities, because the excellence of an
activity is known by three things
1. by examining the natural qualities of a man by the help of which an activity is
recognised. For instance, acquisition of knowledge is better than learning a language
as knowledge can be acquired by intellect, while language can be learnt through the
sense of hearing. As intellect is better than the sense of hearing, so knowledge is
better than language.
2. By examining the extent of human usefulness, for instance, agriculture is superior to
the craft of a goldsmith.
3. By observing the excellence of a business, for instance, the business of a goldsmith is
better than that of tanning hides.
Knowledge also has got the above three qualities.
The inculcation of the various useful sciences will lead to the preservation of which will be
instrumental in the preservation of the fundamentals of human life in the Islamic discourse on
philosophy of law or jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh).
In discussing the five necessities in human life which are considered as the five aims
preserved by the sacred law are termed as the al-kulliyat al-khamsah or also termed as the
daruriyyat al-Shatibi mentions religion, self, intellect, progeny, wealth.In the al-Muwafaqat
(I.38,II.10, IV.27) the author mentions the necessities in the following order: religion, life
(nafs), progeny, wealth, and intellect. In the al-Itisam (II.179 and al-Muwafaqat II.299) the
mention is in the following order: religion, life, progeny, wealth, and intellect.Al-Zarkashi
mentions these in the following order: life, wealth, progeny, religion, and intellect.Al-Ghazali
in the al-Mustashfa, I.258 mentions these in the order: religion, life, intellect, progeny, and
wealth.Al-Ghazalis opinion seems to be more acceptable. Whatever the order is, the issue of
progeny and its importance is accepted by scholars of Islamic jurisprudence. Abdullah Darraz
in his commentary of the al-Muwafaqat II.153 mentions that the view of al-Ghazali is
adopted by most scholars. Hence, in the matter of these daruriyyat the matter of religion is
the first, then life, then the intellect, then progeny, then wealth.
Therefore we can state that these are the necessities of life determined by Islamic discourse in
its philosophy of law.
In relation to this, we can find reformulation of such needs in the duties of the caliph in the
Sunni theory of the caliphate.This is clear the Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah of al-Mawardi.(10)
These duties include: the preservation of the religion according to the original principles;
carrying out justice between parties involved in litigations in the state; the implementation of
the laws and regulations of the religion including punishments for crimes; preserving the
security of life for women in families so that people can carry out their business of looking
19

for livelihood in peace; safeguarding the boundaries of the country so that people are secured;
collecting revenue for the state according to the proper rules and regulations; putting proper
people in charge of their duties in the state so that proper functioning of the administration is
maintained; paying of salaries in the proper time neither too late nor too early; carrying out
the jihad in cases where situations demand; and inspecting the administration so that all run
smoothly.
To these can be added the other duties of the state which are for the welfare of the subjects.
Then concerning human rights which constitute the essential aspect of human quality of
life in Islam, there are several observations which can be made. Among these are as follows:
We can begin with several basic concepts of the Islamic worldview. Since God is the absolute
and the sole master of men and the universe, and since He has given each man human dignity
and honor, and breathed into him something of His own spirit, it follows that men are
essentially the same. In fact, the only differences between them are such artificial ones as
nationality, color, or race. Thus, all human beings are equal and form one universal
community that is united in its submission and obedience to God.
And we can observe that at the centre of this universal brotherhood is the Islamic confession
of the oneness of God and that, by extension, includes the oneness and brotherhood of
humanity and hence an Islamic state may be established anywhere. While the state is
geographically limited, the human rights and privileges granted to humanity by God are not.
The Quran states that these are universal and fundamental, and that all individuals are to
enjoy and observe them under all circumstances-including war-regardless of whether he is
living in the geographical confines of an Islamic state or not:
The Quran asserts clearly:
O believers, be you securers of justice, witness for God. Let not detestation for a people move
you not to be equitable; be equitable-that is nearer to God-fearing.(11) (5:8)
And then from the last sermon of the Prophet in the Farewell pilgrimage in the year before
his demise we can learn a number of important matters; among these are:human blood is
sacred in any case and cannot be spilled without justification. Violating this rule is equivalent
to killing all of humanity.
The text of the sermon is as follows:
After praising, and thanking Allah (The One True God) the Prophet began with the words:
O People! lend me an attentive ear, for I know not whether after this year I shall ever be
amongst you again. Therefore, listen carefully to what I am saying and Take These Words to
Those Who Could Not Be Present Here Today.
O People! just as you regard this month, this day, this city as Sacred, so regard the life and
property of every Muslim as a sacred trust. Return the goods entrusted to you to their rightful
owners. Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you. Remember that you will indeed meet your
Lord, and that he will indeed reckon your deeds.
20

Allah has forbidden you to take usury (interest), therefore all interest obligations shall
henceforth be waived. Your capital is yours to keep. You will neither inflict nor suffer any
inequity. Allah has Judged that there shall be no interest and that all the interest due to Abbas
ibn Abd al-Muttalib (Prophets uncle) be waived.
Every right arising out of homicide in pre-Islamic days is henceforth waived and the first
such right that I waive is that arising from the murder of Rabiah ibn al-Harithiah.
O Men! the unbelievers indulge in tampering with the calender in order to make permissible
that which Allah forbade, and to prohibit which Allah has made permissible. With Allah the
months are twelve in number. Four of them are holy, three of these are successive and one
occurs singly between the months of Jumada and Shaban.
Beware of Satan, for the safety of your religion. He has lost all hope of that he will be able
to lead you astray in big things, so beware of following him in small things.
O People! it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women but they also
have rights over you. Remember that you have taken them as your wives only under Allahs
trust and with His permission. If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be
fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your
partners and committed helpers. And it is your right that they do not make friends with
anyone of whom you do not approve, as well as never to be unchaste.
O People! listen to me in earnest, worship Allah, say your five daily prayers, fast during
month of Ramadan, and give your wealth in Zakat (obligatory charity). Perform Hajj if you
can afford to.
All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a nonArab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black
has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a
brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be
legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and
willingly.
Do not therefore do injustice to yourselves. Remember one day you will meet Allah and
answer your deeds. So beware, do not astray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.
O People! No Prophet or Apostle Will Come after Me and No New Faith Will Be Born.
Reason well, therefore, O People! and understand words which I convey to you. I leave
behind me two things, the Quran and my Sunnah (i.e., sayings, deeds, and approvals) and if
you follow these you will never go astray.
All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and
may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly.
Be my witness O Allah, that I have conveyed your message to your people.
As part of this sermon, the Prophet recited them a Revelation from Allah which he had just
received and which completed the Quran, for it was the last passage to be revealed:
21

This day the disbelievers despair of prevailing against your religion, so fear them not, but fear
Me (Allah)! This day have I perfected for you your religion and fulfilled My favor unto you,
and it hath been My good pleasure to choose Islam for you as your religion (Surah 5, Ayah 3).
The sermon was repeated sentence by sentence by Safwans brother Rabiah (RA), who had a
powerful voice, at the request of the Prophet and he faithfully proclaimed to over ten
thousand gathered on the occasion. Toward the end of his sermon, the Prophet asked O
people, have I faithfully delivered unto you my message? A powerful murmur of assent O
Allah, yes!, arose from thousands of pilgrims and the vibrant words Allahumma nam
rolled like thunder throughout the valley. The Prophet raised his forefinger and said: Be my
witness O Allah, that I have conveyed your message to your people.(12)
Then again the Quran states to the effect:
Whose slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, should
be as if he had slain mankind altogether.(13)
It is not permissible to oppress women, children, old people, the sick or the wounded.
Womens honor and chastity are to be respected under all circumstances. The hungry must be
fed, the naked clothed, and the wounded or diseased given medical treatment regardless of
their pro- or anti-Muslim sentiments and activities.
In Islam, human rights are granted by God, not by kings or legislative assemblies, and
therefore they can never be taken away or changed, even temporarily, for any reason. They
are meant to be put into practice and lived, not to stay on paper or in the realm of
unenforceable philosophical concepts or United Nation declarations. Every Muslim is
required to accept them and recognize the peoples right to have them enforced and obeyed.
The Quran states that: Those who do not judge by what God has sent [while denying its
validity] down are the disbelievers (14)
Human Rights in an Islamic State
Concerning the security of life and property, we have seen in the Prophets address during his
final pilgrimage,that he had proclaimed: Your lives and properties are forbidden to one
another till you meet your Lord on the Day of Resurrection. He also had stated : One who
kills a man under covenant (i.e., a non Muslim citizen of a Muslim land) will not even smell
the fragrance of Paradise.
Concerning the protection of honour, the Quran does not allow ones personal honor to be
abused:; the Quran clearly states: O You who believe, do not let one set of people make fun
of another set. Do not defame one another Do not insult by using nicknames. Do not backbite
or spear? ill of one another (15)
And concerning sanctity and security of human privacy, the Quran guarantees this right.It
says: Avoid having suspicion, for some suspicion is a sin.And do not spy on one another
and let not some of you backbite others (16)(49.12)and do not enter houses which are
not yours until you have asked for the permission thereto and given greetings of peace to
the inmates. (17)

22

As for personal freedom, Islam guarantees this, and it prohibits the imprisonment of any
individual before his guilt has been proven before a public court. This means that the accused
has the right to defend himself and to expect fair and impartial treatment from the court.
The Quran also prohibits tyranny against people through the spread of their misdeeds to
others. This is mentioned clearly in the Quran: God does not love evil talk in public unless it
is by some one who has been injured thereby. In Islam, as has been stated earlier, an
individuals power and authority is a trust from God. This is an awesome responsibility for a
person, for he must use this trust in a way that is acceptable to God or else suffer the
consequences.
The heavy responsibility involving power and authority has been acknowledged by Abu
Bakr, who said in his very first address when he was made the first caliph of Islam:
Cooperate with me when I am right, and correct me when I commit error. Obey me so long
as I follow the commandments of Allah and His Prophet, but turn away from me when I
deviate.
Concerning freedom of expression , we can observe that Islam allows complete freedom of
thought and expression, provided that it does not involve spreading that which is harmful to
individuals and the society at large. For example, the use of abusive or offensive language in
the name of criticism is not allowed. In the days of the Prophet, the Muslims used to ask him
about certain matters. If he had received no revelation on that particular issue, they were free
to express their personal opinions.
Freedom of Association:
The formation of associations, parties, and organizations is allowed, on the understanding that
they abide by certain general rules.
Freedom of Conscience and Conviction:
The Quran states: There should be no coercion in the matter of faith. Totalitarian societies of
all ages have tried to deprive individuals of their freedom by subordinating them to state
authority This condition is equivalent to slavery, the only difference being that physical
slavery has been replaced by mechanisms of control that allow the individual no freedom of
choice Islam forbids such a practice.
Protection of Religious Sentiments:
Along with the freedom of conviction and freedom of conscience, Islam guarantees to the
individual that his religious sentiments will be given due respect and the nothing will be said
or done which may encroach upon his right.
Protection from Arbitrary Imprisonment:
Islam states that each individual is responsible only for his own actions. Therefore, he cannot
be arrested and imprisoned for the offenses of someone else. We read in the Quran: No
bearer of burdens shall be made to bear the burden of another.
The Right to Basic Necessities of Life:
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Islam recognizes the right of the needy to demand help from those who are more fortunate:
And in their wealth there is acknowledge right for the needy and the destitute.
Equality Before the Law:
Islam gives its citizens the right to absolute and complete equality in the eyes of the law.
Rulers Are Not Above the Law:
According to the Islamic concept of justice, absolutely no one is above the law, for all men
are equal. This point was made in a very dramatic fashion by the Prophet himself. One day, a
woman belonging to a high and noble family was arrested in connection with a theft. The
case was brought to the Prophet with the recommendation that she be spared the mandated
punishment for theft (amputation of the hand). The Prophet replied: The nations that lived
before you were destroyed by God because they punished the common man for their offenses
and let their dignitaries go unpunished for their crimes. I swear by Him Who holds my life in
His hand that even if Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad, had committed this crime, I would
have amputated her hand.
The Right to Participate in the Affairs of State:
In the Quran, we find the statement And their business is (conducted) through consultation
among themselves (18).This procedure is known as shura, which is usually translated as
consultation. In practice, it means that the executive head of the government and the
members of the assembly should be elected by free and independent choice of the people.
However, the leader is not bound to follow the decision that results from this deliberation.
Lastly, Islam seeks to achieve the above-mentioned human rights and many others through
the provision of certain legal safeguards, but primarily through calling upon individuals to
transcend their lower animal-like instincts so that they can go beyond mere ties fostered by
the kinship of blood, racial superiority, linguistic arrogance, and economic privilege Islam
urges man to move on to a plane of existence where, by reason of his inner excellence, he can
realize the ideal of the brotherhood of man(19)
Concerning knowledge society there are a number of observations which can be made.
These are:

Muslims should understand accurately the nature, characteristics and objectives of

knowledge society in the current cultural discourse.

They should take stock of the situation and see where they stand and understand what
are their strengths and weaknesses.

Muslims should prepare themselves so that they can perform their task in the new
knowledge society making the best use of the tools available in the new information
and communication technology, with the internet, the intra-net, the e-mail, and
whatever is available.

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They should master the secrets of the trade in the new technology so that they are not
duped. The Prophet s.a.w. has said that a person who knows the language of another
people he cannot be fooled by them. The knowledge of the tongue of a people does
not merely mean langiuage of communication in the ordin ary se4nse, but the present
writer would like to suggest even the most up-to-date technical and scientific
language and philosophy, so that we are not duped in any way.Imam al-Ghazali rd
says in the al-Munqid that a person who can evaluate one form of knowledge is one
who understands that knowledge, and goes beyond that knowledge so that, if he is
knowledgable enough, he is capable of giving a critique of that knowledge or an
aspect of it.

And the government has prepared infrastructure for this venture and is encouraging
and supporting development in this arena.

Of course knowledge society for us is not merely society promoting skills in

commerce, economics, and administration, [including for war for defending the nation
and the ummah], but also for understanding about God, his doctrines and rules in
human life, as well as understanding and preserving our identity as Muslims, Malays,
Malaysians, in Asean, in the world community , within the matrix of the ummah.

Knowledge for us comprises of Divine and Prophetic Wisdom for our guidance, then
the knowledge from human experience and the intellect, supported by evidences from
the human senses and wisdom from collective history.

Concerning quality of life, we can observe a number of points, among others, as the
following:

Life quality must relate to the human body, spirit, and intellect. Hence in Islam the
basic necessities of life preserved by Islam are; life, religion, intellect, wealth,
progeny, wealth, and honour.

Hence shelter, food and drink, clothing, family life, communal and societal life.

The state have certain functions relating to: life, intellect, religion, wealth, progeny,
wealth and honour, relating to facilities in health, education, law, economic planning,
the implementation of law, guaranteeing rights, and cultural milieu, including the
media. All these are reflected in the administration of the state with the various
ministries and departments, and government related organizations and bodies.

In the present cultural setting this is aided by the non-governmental organizations

The integrity of the nation should be monitored by the National Integrity Board.

Life quality includes within its purview, apart from matters relating to education and
cultural matters, the provision of good roads, power supply, water supply, and now
supply of broadband access to the electronic superhighway for informations, data,
systematic knowledge, communication, and we can say, within the balanced
perspective, even wisdom.
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Of course, we cannot forget the question of national security and integrity.

Finally the quality of life in Islam is determined by the three categories of needs of
man: the absolute necessities (al-daruriyyat), the important needs (al-hajjiyyat), and
the ones which make life pleasant (al-tahsinat) which has been well explained by Dr
Yusuf al-Qaradawi.(20) Wallahu alam.

==
Notes:
(1) http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/031020/2003102009.html
(2) ibid.
(3) ibid.
(4) http://www.ngi.nl/docs/bureau/FlyerXP3.pdf
(5) of http://www.cifs.dk/scripts/artikel.asp?id=847
(6) ibid.
(7) http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/ifactory/ksgpress/www/ksg_news/transcripts/drucklec.htm
(8) http://www.ghazali.org/ihya/english/ihya-vol1-C1.htm
(9) http://www.ghazali.org/ihya/english/ihya-vol1-C1.htm
(10)Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah,chapter on the contract of the imamah and other categories of
duties concerning the administeration of the State.Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah, of al-Mawardi,
Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, Beirut, Libnan, 1985, p.18.See also in http://feqh.alislam.com/Display.asp?Mode=0&MaksamID=1&DocID=9&ParagraphID=16&Diacratic=0
(11) (5:8)
(12) ( http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/sermon.html )
(13) (5.32).
(14) (5:44).
(15) ( 49: 1 1-121.)
(16) (49.12)
(17) (24.27).
(18) (42:38).
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(19) ( http://www.iad.org/books/WAMY10.html.)
(20) In his Fiqh al-Awwaliyyat.
Concerning the neglect of the fiqh of priorities, Dr Yusuf writes:
The Neglect of the fiqh of Priorities Among many Muslims
The problem with many groups of the Islamic Awakening advocates is that the fiqh of
priorities is nonexistent to them, as they often seek the secondary before paying attention to
the principal, try to examine the particulars before grasping the generalities, and hold to the
controversial before familiarizing themselves with the established. It is a pity that we ask for
instance about the blood of a gnat, and do not care about the shedding of Al-Husseins blood,
or fight for nafila, while the. people have wasted the faridas, or quarrel over a form,
regardless of the content.
This is the situation today for Muslims in general. I see millions making the umra [minor
pilgrimage] every year in Ramadan and other months and others making hajj for the tenth or
even the twentieth time: if they saved the money they spent on these nafilas, they would
accumulate thousands of millions of dollars. We have been running around for years trying to
collect one thousand million dollars for the Islamic Philanthropic Institution, but have not
collected a tenth, or even one- twentieth or one-thirtieth, of that amount. If you ask those
performers of supererogatory umra and hajj to give you what they would spend on their
voluntary journeys so that you may direct it to resisting Christianization or communism in
Asia and Africa, or to combating famine here or there, they will not give you anything. This
is a long-time ailment that no heart doctor has ever been able to cure.
The fiqh of priorities requires that we know which issue is more worthy of attention, so that
we may give it more effort and time than we give others. The fiqh of priorities also requires
us to know which enemy is more deserving of directing our forces and concentrating our
attack against him, and which battle is more worthy of waging, for people are divided into
several kinds in Islams eye, as follows:
There are the Muslims, the unbelievers and the hypocrites.
Unbelievers have in their ranks the pacifists and the militant. They also include those who
only did not believe, and those who did not believe and also blocked the path to Allah [before
those who believed].
Hypocrites include those of the lesser hypocrisy and those of the greater hypocrisy.
With whom do we start, then? Which area is more worthy of work? Which issue is more
deserving of attention?
The fiqh of priorities requires that we know the time-limited duty so that we may treat it
properly and not delay it and thus waste a chance that may not present itself again until after a
long time, if it ever does.

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A poet admonishes us about the value of time by saying: Avail the chance, for a chance, If
unavailable, becomes a grief. Our Arabic adage also says: Do not put off todays work till
tomorrow.
When Omar Ibn Abdel-Aziz was once advised to postpone some chore to the next day, he
replied, I am already tasked by a days work, how will I feel if I have two days work to do
tomorrow?
A wise saying by Ibn-Ata is There are certain duties with plenty of time given for their
fulfillment, so they could be cautioned within the time-limit, but there are, besides, timelimited duties that, if out of time, are irredeemable, for with every new time there is a new
duty and a new task demanded by Allah!
Imam Al-Ghazali and the fiqh of Priorities
In his book Al Ihiya, Imam Al-Ghazali criticized those who were content with worship
and did not pay attention to the | ranks of deeds. He said: Another group is keen on nafilas
but not as keen on faridas. We see some of them very pleased with the duha [forenoon
optional] prayer and tahajjud nighttime optional prayer] and other nafilas, but they find no
pleasure in the faridas, nor are they as keen on performing the farida prayers early in their
time. They forget what the Prophet narrated from the Qudsi hadith [inspired by Allah the
Almighty to His Messenger]: Nothing that my slaves shall do to bring themselves closer to
me shall be better than doing what I have ordered them to perform [as faridas] (Al-Bukhari).
Neglecting the order of prominence in good deeds falls under evil conduct. An individual
may even find himself obliged to do only one of two compulsory things, or forced to do two
things with a very limited time for one and ample time for the other: if he does not preserve
their order, then he is deceived. The similar instances are countless, for obedience and
disobedience [of the commands of Allah] are both obvious. What is really ambiguous is
giving precedence to some forms of obedience over others, such as giving prominence to
faridas over nafilas; to individual duties over collective duties to a collective duty with no one
to fulfill it over that fulfilled by other people; to the more important individual duties over
those which have a lesser importance, to what cannot be postponed over what can be
postponed; and to the needs of ones mother over those of ones father. The Prophet was
asked, Who is more entitled to be treated with the best companionship by me? He replied,
Your mother. And the man said, Who is next?, and the Prophet said, Your mother. And
the man asked again, And who is next? and the Prophet said, Your mother. And the man
asked for the fourth time, And who is next? and the Prophet said, Your father. And the
man further asked, And who is next? and the Prophet replied, The closest and then the
closer of your relatives.). A person should devote his companionship by the closeness of
relationship. If two of his kins are of the same degree of relation, then he should help the one
who needs help more, and if they need help equally then he should help the more pious of
them.
Similarly, if someone cannot meet the Costs of spending on his parents and making a
pilgrimage at the same time, he should not make the pilgrimage because if he does, he would
be acting in ignorance, for he should give the rights of his parents precedence over
pilgrimage. In this case, he will be giving prominence to a religious duty over another
religious duty that is of a lower rank.

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Moreover, if someone has an appointment and the time for jumua [Friday congregational
prayer] comes upon him, then he has to go to the prayer. If he goes to his appointment, he
will be committing an act of disobedience [to Allah], even though the fulfillment of the
appointment is, as such, an act of obedience.
Someone may also find some najasa [impurities] on his garment and speak roughly to his
parents on that account. While najasa is unacceptable, hurting the parents is also
unacceptable, and caring to avoid hurting the parents is more important than caring to avoid
najasa.
The examples of the combination of tabooed deeds and of compulsory duties are countless.
He who neglects the order of Priorities in any of them is certainly deceived
(ttp://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Books/Q_Priorities/.)
*Originally a paper, now with additions and modifications, to be tabled in the conference
organized by UPM on 30th September, 2004, which was previously presented in the Seminar
organized by Sultan Iskandar Institute of Johor on the 19th of May 2004, Kuala Lumpur (11th
Leadership Seminar of the Southeast Asian Centre of Enviromental and Urban Management
(SEACEUM), Hotel Istana, Kuala Lumpur.)
The writer is currently Very Distinguished Academic Fellow, ISTAC, IIUM.
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