An Answer

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem
In the Name of God, The Most Merciful, The Compassionate

I asked a question. Some readers gave some answers. Here's what it all comes to as I see it:

God & Global Consciousness

Every action has to begin with an intention. As Muslims we would say that the best actions are the ones done for God, whatever they may be. In addition to that, to fuel our motivation we may find it prudent to keep a global consciousness in our work. To remember that for every moment of safety and security we enjoy, there are many who fear bombs, murder and rape during those same moments; to recall when we eat and drink lavishly that there are innumerable people in the world who die from polluted water, lack of nourishment and poor hygiene; to realize that our life styles are the way they are because there are other people whose basic human rights are considered worthless next to the profit that must be made by the companies we buy from. This is the nature of the world we live in currently. It is not enough to think of only one group of people suffering in one part of the world, but rather to think of humanity as a whole, and the relationship between those whose basic rights are being trampled upon and the few of us who demand and receive much more than those rights. What is the purpose of this kind of thinking? The first feeling elicited from such reflections should be one of gratitude to God for blessing us with all our needs, general safety and security. But this feeling of gratitude is incomplete without the next inner response: a deep and heavy sense of responsibility. Just as in Islam we are taught that the fundamental drive of the human being in all their actions should be a deep-seated feeling of gratitude to God (for life, family, sustenance, love, etc), but that that feeling must be manifested via actions, so must we transform this global consciousness (and resultant gratitude) into action; action that is seen as nothing less than obligatory responsibility, given all that we have been blessed with by God. The knowledge of the dismal state of many of our human brothers and sisters around the world should not then be a cause for frustration or despair, but rather a fuel for purposeful, dedicated action.

This being established, what does it mean to "take action"?

Action in Focus

No matter how we act we must first recognize our scope of effect, or, “circle of influence” as Steven R. Covey refers to it in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. What I took from some of the responses to my previous post was that we can break down our “plan of action” into three primary areas of concern from all that is in the world around us - and I will add a fourth:

1. Self
2. Family
3. Community
4. Career

These are self explanatory. We can change ourselves to the greatest extent. We can also exert a certain level of influence over our family and we can work for positive change within our communities. Depending on what our careers are, we can produce change via whatever the “effect” of our work is – whether it be in teaching, journalism, art, medicine, architecture, etc. These are the things we know we can influence in one way or the other (although in actuality we really only have complete control over our own selves) and so this is where we should be directing our action. Another, I think better, way to look at it is the way Covey describes the relationship between the “circle of concern” and the “circle of influence” in our lives. This section is part of habit 1: being proactive – a very important trait of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upon him) and for that matter anyone else who wants to bring about change in themselves and their environment. Read about the concepts in Covey’s own words (and diagrams; italics inserted by myself).

We each have a wide range of concerns – our health, our children, problems at work, the national debt, nuclear war. We could separate those from things in which we have no particular mental or emotional involvement by creating a “Circle of Concern.”

As we look at those things within our Circle of Concern, it becomes apparent that there are some things over which we have no real control and others that we can do something about. We could identify those concerns in the latter group by circumscribing them with a smaller Circle of Influence.

By determining which of these two circles is the focus of most of our time and energy, we can discover much about the degree of our proactivity.

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase [think of the Prophet when you read this]. Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization. The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Circle of Influence to shrink… As long as we are working in our Circle of Concern, we empower the things within it to control us. We aren’t taking the proactive initiative necessary to effect positive change.

This Circle of Influence-Circle of Concern model is an excellent way to organize our thoughts with regards to what we want to do and what we can do, realizing that if we maximize on what we can do we will gradually begin to increase the effect of what we can do, ultimately resulting in reaching the goals we set. If we combine this method of acting with the aforementioned four primary areas of concern we have a clear model with which to move forward – our circle of concern may be the entire world, but our circle of influence is primarily in our jobs, our communities, our families and most of all in our selves.

Activism vs. Spirituality

Establishing the fact that we have influence over ourselves and then those around us (family, community, career), let’s take a look at the relationship between the two. There often seems to be an inverse relationship between “Islamic activists” (those who work in their communities, jobs, etc. to get things done for the sake of Islam) and those who want to “purify themselves first” (i.e. improve their worship, work on their character). We find many people working for Islam in different ways, deeply involved in the community, in their masajid, in various organizations, who will –admirably– spend many dedicated hours, yet their time spent with the Qur’an, for example, is minimal. There are others who spend most of their time on the prayer rug remembering God and reading the Qur’an, but their activity is limited (or their efforts at character building is absent). I will not state the obvious. I will instead state that work in our communities will be much less effective if carried out by people who have a minimal relationship with God through their prayers, their reading and reflection upon the Qur’an, and their general struggle to better their souls. It may be prudent for us to actually take some time out – to stop all but fundamentally necessary activities for a time, and re-connect to God (isn’t Ramadan coming up?). Starting and maintaining that relationship is the first and vital step to change. It was after all, the Prophet Muhammad’s spiritual state and its consequences as witnessed in his character that resulted in his being a great teacher, husband, father, statesman, warrior and general leader. There have been other great humans in history to be some of the above, but it was – it could only have been – the internal state of the Prophet Muhammad that allowed him to be all of the above all at once, peace and blessings be upon him. Thus, in the same way, it is absolutely necessary that we are constantly working to deepen our relationship with God, and as we do we will find that the “activist” within us will naturally manifest itself in ways that will be best for our communities, given whatever skills, talents and abilities we may have.

Facing our Challenges

It would be pointless (and impossible) for me to list all the available challenges that exist out there for us to rise to. They span the gamut from education (getting deeply involved in academia, teaching Muslims and people of other faiths) to the pertinent social issues that Muslims face as a minority community to watching and working with the media. Instead, I would encourage myself and anyone else reading this to identify a real problem within their community, set realistic sub-goals, and start systematically working towards them. The ultimate goal may be long term; in fact, it shouldn’t be anything but. You may not accomplish your goal in your life time, but this isn’t about personal satisfaction – it is about addressing a needed issue for the sake of God. It doesn’t matter whether we accomplish our end result or not, what matters is that we do our best to do so: either by putting something in motion or become a part of something already in motion. In both cases, our work may have its ultimate effect by the hands of others who continue it after we’re gone. Again, the point is to do our best at what we can, and leave the rest up to God.

An Example

Since I was the one that brought this topic up and asked people for the input, I’ll use what I decided as an example. Without getting into specifics, I used the Self-Family-Community-Career model to think clearly about what is within my circle of influence.

Self – What I do with myself is my personal decision, but needless to say I realized that this must involve most of my effort, in terms of achieving spiritual and character goals that I set, which – God willing – will help me the most in everything else that I do.

Family – Communities are generally aggregations of families, and one of those families is mine and my wife’s. God will ask me about what I did for them before I am asked about what I did for anyone else. My wife and I decided to get more involved in the “fard-ayn” (individually obligatory knowledge of basic Islamic principles such as prayer, fasting, charity) education of our younger extended family members.

Community – God willing, I’ll be working with M.E.C.C.A. (Muslim Education & Converts Center of America), a budding non-profit organization based in my community dedicated to providing the necessary education and support systems for new Muslim converts. Islam is America’s fasting growing religion, and our brothers and sisters of humanity who chose to become our brothers and sisters in Islam need support that is often not readily available for them in an organized fashion. This group, under the guidance of noted Muslim American leaders such as Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir, will be putting together classes and support services for new Muslim converts. If you’re interested in getting involved, visit www.meccacenter.com, and if you live in the tri-state area, get in touch with me.

Career – I am a medical student, and I have a while to go before I am a fully trained physician, but by doing my best to be an excellent physician in terms of knowledge, skills and the way that I interact with patients, I can have positive effects on my surroundings through my every day work. In addition, there are non-medical ways a physician can become involved in his or her community so as to contribute to growth, development and change.

An Answer

I would like to thank everyone who shared their thoughts with me on this question, either through commenting on this blog or otherwise. I apologize for the time it took to get this up, but my philosophy is that I would rather spend more time thinking things through than putting up something mediocre and disorganized. Your ideas helped me form the framework that I will use to be sure that I am doing everything within my ability to affect positive change in the world, to whatever extent and ability God gives me. This is all just one way of thinking about things, which I put out to the public so that it is there for people as, minimally, one more set of ideas that may or may not help an individual form their own, or at most, a model for someone to act by. Whichever is the case, I pray that God helps all of us, Muslim and otherwise, to find the best way to positively impact our selves, our communities, and ultimately our world. Ameen/Amen.

> Saleem