Dr Mohd Sani Badron Senior Fellow and Director of IKIM wrote an article in the Star (Feb 16) with the title “Competent professionals with adab .

If I get it right the gist of this article states that Islam has its own special principles and understanding about education, particularly in educating the professional class of people. Modern professionals, he seems to say, must be properly and adequately educated so as to be equipped with high degree of adab , the Malay word for ethics and morality.

I have nothing negative to say about this philosophy as it has its own attractions. But I do wish to mention that unfortunately Sani did not follow through by defining what it refers to. Morality can mean many things to many people. In this writing I am offering mine.

To me morality comes at two levels, the individual and the profesional.

At the individual level it is the empathy felt by one person towards another when the first is at a higher plane of personal comfort than the second. The first person then would do something to help the second.

For example, a normal and healthy person sees a blind man trying to cross a road. With all the traffic moving past at breakneck speed, no way can the blind man cross it safely and in good time. The normal person empathises with the blind man, and feels it his moral duty to help. So he holds the blind man by the arm and leads him safely across. Now that’s good morality. It is a good act voluntarily made by one normal human being in assisting a disadvantaged another.

In this case morality means (a) the empathy of one person directed to another; and (b) the act he made as a result of this kindness or empathy is entirely voluntarily. He furthermore (c) does not expect any kind of payment in return from his act, apart from perhaps a ‘thank you.’ More than that (d) this Good Samaritan will not suffer any punishment or blame had he chosen to just ignore the blind man’s plight in the first place.

I might add (e) that the kindness as illustrated need not be repeated by the Good Samaritan, nor would it be felt and emulated by other people.

So to surmise, morality at the personal and individual level has five basic features.

At the professional level morality has another meaning altogether. In this case it relates to the facts that the world we live in today is highly populated, plus that the reservoir of human knowledge has increased so much and increasing further that in no way could one person alone can know and do everything. Each person would therefore need to specialise in his wealth-creating role and function in society.

Moral duties

Also, as the social, political and economic systems we live in can be likened as a huge machine with each person playing his specialised a role within it. He has to play it well, or else pay for his incompetence. In this competitive world he has to be professional in his job. It is his moral duty to work well.

In the second case therefore morality means a professional doing his job to the best of his ability, knowledge, training, skill and experience put together.

Professional morality thereby has the following features:

a. He has to be competent and an expert in his chosen profession. He has to develop his God-given talents well. In this case, a lawyer will want to be the best lawyer, a doctor the best doctor and the architect the best architect. And so on down the line, to the extent that a bank teller will want to be the best teller, the photographer the best photographer, the soldier the best general the world has ever known.

b. He undertakes his responsibility with dedication and hard work, with accountability and transparency, and with honesty and integrity.

c. He strives for excellence, and will forever look for ways and means to better his performance, productivity and skill come tomorrow.

Thus, professional morality has three features. Sani might have referred to this total of eight principles of personal and professional morality that need to be educated to the professional.

Nagging doubt

But my nagging doubt is that this isn’t the case. This is in view of Sani using the word the Malay word adab , and in Malay culture morality is closely linked with religious principles. Therein is a telling clue to what he probably have meant it – morality as what the Islamic religion sees it.

In Islam so far as I can gather there are two features of morality, or more precisely, the two sides of one coin. It falls under the ambit of amri bil ma’aruf nahi an al munka r i.e. that man strives to do good things or deeds and not to do bad ones.

Again I harbour no complain about this, for every other religion tells its adherents to do good and not to do bad. But I have two reservations on this Islamic perception: good and bad are both predetermined by a central authority. Let’s have a look at them both.

Firstly, the word ‘good’. In a nutshell it is having faith and belief in Allah God Almighty and His Prophet Mohammad, and in adhering to the Rukun Iman and the Rukun Islam.

(For the less knowledgeable Rukun Iman comprise the following, inter alia, having faith in the existence of Allah, the angels and jinns, belief in the Hereafter and belief in Qada’ and Qadar or fate and predestination.

Rukun Islam is the more familiar five pillars of Islam, namely inter alia praying five times per day, fasting throughout the month of Ramadan, and doing the pilgrimage to Mecca).

All Muslims are required to observe all these. Any ulama worthy of his salt will unfailingly tell you that missing a prayer for example is a sin. So is missing your day-long fast on the month of Ramadan.

Secondly, the word ‘bad’. It has also already been centrally defined and determined inter alia as per the following familiar list: not to eat pork or drink liquor; to eat only halal meat; you must cover your ‘aurat’ or modesty at all times; you have sex within the confines of the married couple’s bedroom and for procreation purposes only, and you must not have same-sex sex.

In both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ instances, they do not have the element of empathy of one person to another. There is only a set of binding instructions, rules or decrees that have to be followed. To illustrate, eating pork or drinking liquor are sinful and are obligatorily to be avoided. The same goes for exposing one’s body (especially the women folks, obliged to cover more than 90 percent of their anatomy) and for sex outside of marriage and procreation.

The important point to note is that both doing good and not doing bad are no longer voluntary, but instead the reverse; they are completely obligatory.

Finally the accumulation of sin from not doing what you are supposed to be doing and doing what you are not supposed to be doing will render you going to the deepest pits of Hell - there is the nagging element of punishment in the event of non-compliance.

In other words morality in Islam carries with it the element of coercion and punishment -- you either accept and practise good morality as centrally defined, or you’d be punished for not doing so. And for this you go to Hell!

Freeing the mind

When seen in this light, I take exception to Sani’s point for professionals to be educated with copious adab .

This exception is made for another reason. Namely that educating the professionals (indeed for everyone else) requires the mind to be wide open, free from blocks and encumbrances, free from predetermined parameters. In this way the mind can explore from the deepest oceans, the innermost depths of the earth’s core, the smallest atoms and neutrons, to the largest stars and the farthest universe, and anything in between them be they large or small, visible or invisible, young or old. It studies and analyses everything over, under and beyond the sun and nothing is sacrosanct.

To facilitate this exploration of the vast open horizon the human mind conceptualises, intellectualises, deduces, induces, seek alternatives, explore hypotheses, formulate theories, conduct experiments, record their results, check and recheck them, all of which is done in the name of seeking truth and knowledge. (Truth in this case is a fact or theory that have been supported by evidence and universally accepted by the rational human mind, without any exception). This thinking process is known as the scientific method.

This thinking method also has the admirable feature of its products being predictable and falsifiable. It is predictable for we can be sure of its product, like for instance the law of gravity pulling any object or matter from an elevation down to the ground. It is also falsifiable for anybody can challenge any scientific law.

And you know what? It is this scientific method through its scientific conceptualisation, intellectualisation, discoveries and inventions that has largely brought the human civilisation to what it is today.

Scientific method

On the other hand the teachings of Islamic religion does not compare with the scientific method. I’d articulate some of the thinking modules which to my mind are the possible products of adab -based education:

a. The stance that religion means Islam. To the Malay mind at least, religion invariably means Islam; other religions are frowned upon.

b. The claim of monopoly on truth; that other beliefs are immediately branded as wrong. Islam says all the time it is right; other religions are at all time wrong. Also, at present the Malay mind is imbued with the ‘truth’ that non-Malays are immigrants or pendatang, with the Chinese-Malaysian women-folks coming in as prostitutes, and Indian-Malaysians as beggars.

c. It brooks no alternatives, as evidenced by the present debacle centring on the alternative use of the word ‘Allah’.

d. It goes for loyalty, not honesty. Just ask any civil servant: when a legislative leader commits a mistake, would the civil servant act according to his conscience or goes all out to ‘protect’ the leader? For this the Chief Secretary is on record stating that civil servant loyalty is with the government.

e. It has questionable predictability, when one ulama from one state may not teach or lecture in another, as experienced by Dr Asri Zainal Abidin.

f. It has no avenue for falsification, for all rules and prescriptions are god-sent decrees.

g. It has no transparency, responsibility or accountability. Just look at the way the three ladies who had sex outside of marriage and thereby caned on Feb 9. The public knew nothing about them (e.g. who they were, when were they caught, were they adequately given legal protection) until after the penalty had been meted out.

In any case when was the last time we hear a Muslim denying an ‘ignorant’ Muslim from openly discussing religious issues? All issues are to be dealt with only by the learned ulamas! And the ulamas are generally a reclusive lot, most of the time anyway.

My critics might take umbrage to my list of Malay-Muslim thinking modules above. To those I would reproduce below the list of ‘advantages’ offered by adab education formulated by Sani himself:

“Ritually there will be less superstition; socially, less disorder; organisationally, less disrespect for superiors; politically, less faction and wanton opposition to legitimate government; and, bureaucratically, less rash and capricious judgment of public affairs.”

Will someone tell me that these are not the products of adab -inspired education?

AB SULAIMAN is an observer of human traits and foibles, especially within the context of religion and culture. As a liberal, he marvels at the way orthodoxy fights to maintain its credibility in a devilishly fast-changing world. He hopes to provide some understanding to the issues at hand and wherever possible, suggest some solutions. He holds a Bachelor in Social Sciences (Leicester, UK) and a Diploma in Public Administration, Universiti Malaya.