Knowing the Prophet and integrity

By DR MOHD ZAIDI ISMAIL
Senior Fellow / Director, Centre for Science and Technology, IKIM

To genuinely celebrate Prophet Muhammad’s Birthday, or Maulidur Rasul, is to embrace integrity, to fight for the triumph of truthfulness and trustworthiness in society, and to reject hypocrisy.

ON MARCH 17, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Razak launched The National Integrity Plan report, dubbed “Target 2008” (Tekad 2008), at the Malaysian Institute of Integrity.

The report, purportedly an assessment of the country’s progress in promoting integrity, among other things, recommends that all the five priorities set in the plan’s first five-year period (2004-2008) be carried forward to the second phase covering the period 2009 to 2013.

Those priorities are: to reduce corruption and the abuse of power, to increase efficiency of the public delivery system, to enhance corporate governance, to strengthen the family institution, and to improve the quality of life and people’s well-being.

Earlier this month, Muslims in Malaysia celebrated what may by now be deemed as their official annual routine: the commemoration of Prophet Muhammad’s Birthday, or more commonly known in its Arabic equivalent, Maulidur Rasul.

Unfortunately, like what has frequently happened to a once noble or virtuous act that has been rendered a routine, the commemoration seemed to be more ceremonial than the embodiment of the message and spirit of his prophecy.

In fact, many have been lamenting about the deterioration in the quality of such a momentous occasion, though not much has been done to improve it.

Perhaps, the reader may have begun to wonder: what actually is my point in drawing attention to these two apparently separate events?

Simply to prove that the Muslims have become so segregated and accustomed to piecemeal undertakings that they continually, if not continuously, fail to notice the intimate relation between these seemingly disparate occasions, so near chronologically but which, were they to be held at once in a more organised fashion, would most probably have saved a substantial amount of public monies and yet would have given a more significant impact.

How can I make such a claim? Because the Prophet Muhammad is indeed the epitome of integrity.

And to genuinely celebrate his birth and his prophecy is to embrace integrity, to fight for the triumph of truthfulness and trustworthiness in society, to reject hypocrisy and all that is antithetical to honesty and virtue.

Muslims have been proud that their Prophet demonstrated perfection and comprehensiveness of life.

His life, as the late Saiyid Sulaiman Nadwi, a renowned modern biographer of the Prophet, correctly pointed out in his Mohamed the Ideal Prophet, “from ... birth to death, is before us like an open book”.

But many Muslims somehow fail to realise that for his life to be so, for every aspect and moment of it to be reported and preserved for the benefit of posterity, required that he be a complete man of integrity, exemplifying transparency at its fullest, distinguishing not between one’s private and public lives.

He never tried to hide anything about himself; on the contrary, he even instructed that his every word and action not only be recorded, but also transmitted.

He never lied. How could he have done so while at the same time professing to be the model example for humanity? How he appeared to the public is exactly how he was in his most secluded life.

Indeed, the Prophet knew full well that to Allah everything is transparent, nothing is concealed.

Hence, the explanation of a famous Muslim mystic-cum-theologian, Abul-Qasim al-Qushayri, in his al-Risalah al-Qushayriyyah, “the lowest degree of truthfulness is that one’s innermost being (al-sirr) and outward appearance (al-‘alaniyah) are in harmony”.

Or as Abu ‘Ali al-Daqqaq once remarked: “Truthfulness is that you be with people just as you perceive yourself to be or that you perceive yourself to be just as you are.”

Or, as noted by Abu Sa‘id al-Qarshi: “The truthful one is he who is ready to die and he who would not be ashamed if his secret were disclosed. Allah Most High says: ‘Wish for death if you are truthful ’.”

Yet, lacking consciousness of the Divine Presence and Scrutiny, how can all this be actualised in modern life?

- THE STAR