Identification and correction of contradictory post-modern approach to business and management science from an Islamic point of view and an introduction to some conspiracies

my aim is

The information era we live today is very chaotic. The nature and type of interaction among humans have changed, but the intention and outcomes still seems the same. We are moving towards a new global world order, where some people see through the fog and some remain blind.

My aim is to provide an advice for those sisters and brothers in Islam who may have cognitive, intellectual, spiritual or such disease or difficulties and lost Guidance. My intention is not to determine the way a Muslim should be, I rather aim to identify and criticize contradictory post-modern approach to business and management science from an Islamic point of view. Starting with the name of Allah, hopefully I will identify our problems, advise solutions, then hopefully, with His Guidance we will start to “see”.

2006, March

my approach

First of all, I would like to draw a picture of today with its major characteristics. In this picture, I will try to reveal human / Satan planned things. This will follow an explanation of how they could become enabled to make these plans if there's any. After then, I believe it will be beneficial to explain the problems we may face out of these, to be able to know ourselves and to see what available solutions exist.

Then we can move to the core of this essay; the issues we are faced. At each point I have questioned from various resources what can be opposing / contradictory to Islam, and noted down any doubtful ones. Then I have grouped them. The resources included a lot of books and online materials. Parts of the Bible and the Torah; my text books and lecture notes from “Business Management and eBusiness” studies at university; books about Illuminati, NLP, psychology, hypnosis, management, personal development; online materials on modern approaches to management, cognitive sciences, personal development, sociology and philosophy are some examples of these resources. After then, for each point, I tried to criticize using some resources, Istisharah and my personal knowledge. The resources I used were Al-Quran, authentic Hadis and the people I made Istisharah with who I trusted their knowledge. I could not put references, support and much of an explanation for my conclusions because of time restrictions.

Finally, I drew my conclusion from all these.

where are we

We live in the information age. Every information is widely available, and there are decisions to be made and the use of information gains importance. There is continuous change and chaos. There is a need for clarity, simplicity, knowing what to do and making good decisions. We need to be dynamic. There is an emerging global nation which has one economy, one religion and one government governing us. They will determine the rules of the game, they will control the media, military, networks, information channels, manipulation, books, arts.. our money will depend on the “system”. We will have to buy everything, which means to ask permission first and buy what is available. And finally there is the science. The effort of human to assign meanings to stuff around us. This is by their five senses only, and their imagination / brain.

There are wars, more fatal then ever. The color and shape of the war varies. Only the furthest end of resistance is the war we know. The group of people today who face this oppression and cruelty are the ones who form a potential danger for the “system”. Examples are Korea , China , Iran , Afghanistan , Iraq , Pakistan , Bosnia , Kazakhstan , Indonesia or Turkey . I am not going into history, but please do a quick review of modern or post-modern history. Look at the wars, big events, disasters, revolutionary trends. You will see something.

who does all this

One answer is its human made. There are two possibilities: it is planned or naturally happening. I accept the control and power of Allah above all, but that does not mean human cannot make plans and go against Him.

I will try to identify some of those plans (conspiracies) that may exist.

• Once you separate people from their belief, values and norms (culture), you gain the power of changing them. Because these are the base of us; if you erase them you would be empty, zero, new born. If you then push some role models, some “life-style”, or some “fun” things to people they will take it. They will hold on to the belief of those given things. They will be in harmony among people, they will feel the belonging and they will follow the steps given. Examples, the career and family balance, Al-Pacino and clubbing.

• If you keep someone busy with something, they will hardly move away and choose the other option. Make people fall in love with each other. Make them suffer. Give them drugs or alcohol. Make them listen R&B. They will die for winning the lottery, and will die for their favorite teams.

• If you believe that a ball is a ball, that's good. How about if you forget the word ball? Or assign another meaning to a ball? You would never play with a ball then. If you do not have a word for a concept, how can you be knowing it?

• Take a look at he big revolutions in history. Example , Turkey . Destroy, divide and conquer. Put someone on the top. Change the constitution, so that people who supposed to be making it wont be able to change it and they are forced to separate religion from the government. The alphabet, so that people will forget their history. Use their belief against them, empathize. Change them, do not show them any women with scarf on the TV. Determine what is good and what is bad, who is high and who is low. Restrict their education, exclude them as much as you can from government offices. Oppress people, the government is father. Delegate the power – in media, military, legislation, etc – to the ones you trust.

• Tell people that you are going to help them by “bringing democracy, order and technology??”. Destroy the country. Take resources, rebuild it, move the monetary system, make it dependant and take the control. Offer the choices to people. Shift the demand.

• Make chaos and bring order out of it. Example, start a chaos between religions. And start to push similarities among them, make people friends. Muslims are isolated, priests are isolated too. Use influence and persuasion tactics for assigning the roles for each parties.

• Take a look at the biggest slogans: just do it, carpe diem, run or fall, you can do it, for fun, what I like, what I want. Example is that people may have to look at what they need instead. Can you see the point?

• The stock market, economies, speculations, multinational monetary organizations, imperialism, the GDI, multinational corporations. These are all backbones of the “system”. A business is not someone's business, its everyone's business. These things have extreme power. Where do you get all this power? Frauds, corruption.. a lot of games to play. They take the lead and eat the big slice. And power brings more power.

• The USA ones said to Turkey , your public doesn't like us, change this.

• Once, the military said your wife has a scarf, and the man expelled.

• The earthquakes, viruses. Where do all these come from and why they visit specific areas. Terror, who are these people, why are they doing it. Nuclear weapons, mass destruction weapons. Who makes them, who used them.

• Do not forget to introduce yourself, so that they wont ask more. Illuminati, middle east project. To give two options. Believe me they won't ask for a third one.

what is missing

Why is this happening? What is missing in all this, in the black picture? We are diluted from the straight path. We want a white picture where we are happy, in peace. We do not know why we are here, what we are doing, what we want / need to be doing.

They know themselves. They have their own belief in science for that. They know where to be headed, they know otherwise they wont be happy. They use their Nafs very well. They know how to manage and market. They know how to “personally develop” themselves. They seek to solve their psychological problems, they believe in that. They accept the power and they know how to survive in the “system”. They have hobbies, they go jogging in the morning. They love arts, and people seriously and contently follow them.

We are not somehow able to use these as a tool, but we take them. We do not see the root of the tree. We are blind. Our Ruh is crying because its so suppressed. We are torn apart from our selves. Our aims and intentions are changing. The meaning of business and earning money is changing. The meaning of owning, the time... We can't or don't understand the real system, us. We get away from thinking and understanding, meanings, learning and using the information, eliminating what is irrelevant or useless. We have lost our “core”. The only thing we have that makes us, us. We pray, do our duties. But its limited only to marry four wives and doing Zikr. What was Zikr? The purpose, the meaning, the concept? We do not see with the light of Al-Quran, we do not perceive the things as wanted. We are diluted with wrong hopes, wrong aims. Examples; it is important to be something in the eyes of people, our role in the society. Or, we fear to speak, to ride a bike, to marry someone who we wont love, to be unsuccessful. We have social phobias. Our image is very important. We can change our lives.

Because, the power is given to them. We got away from the path.

Slowly, they will discover (attach meanings) some more things. They say they will resolve the system. They will create.

our problems, disorders

From above, we can say that we could be submitting to another power, following our desires and so on. Some points to mention might be; exclusion from society, identity disorders, feeling of belonging, cultural pressure, unsuitable nature (such as heat, habitat, other creatures, the things we eat), wrong excitement and wants, acceptance of temporality, pursuit of perfection, feeling of ownership, sexual desires, loving something else too much, over valuation of money, living for fun, loving self and life, and so on. I will try to list you only the problems they may cause.

First of all, if we are the ones who are mentioned above, we could perform worse. This is to say that our performance is hindered some way and we can not be as active as we should be. We could have some health problems. We could have panic attacks, extreme stress and loss of motivation; depression, suicide, emptiness and lost purpose; feelings of unworthy, feeling unsuccessful; lost in confusion and complexity.

what are we

What is a human?

First level: environment and characteristics (genetic, physical etc).

Second level: memories, experience, knowledge.

Third level: conscious mind, belief, values, norms, thoughts and reasoning.

Core: Ruh, Nafs, interaction of the Satan.

solutions and 2 approaches

1.Human thought: capitalism and work (finding a job:), NLP, personal development sessions, psychology (cognitive dissonance etc), hypnosis, alternative sciences and therapies, changing the perception, adopting into the new world order, scientific discoveries, social support.

2.Divine (which human thought will end up with): Islam, believing in Allah and knowing him from his 99 names, freeing the interaction between the Nafs and Ruh (educating and controlling the Nafs) to increase consciousness, putting the divine message in the core (center of perception), increasing divine (real) knowledge, Hidayah and Tavfiq, killing the arrogance, Zikr and to pray, focusing on the duties, to appear as is, fearing from the essentials, Shukr, assigning correct importance to stuff, acceptance, controlling the energy we have, avoiding the Zulm to pure self (Ruh), avoiding partnership with Satan, learning to believe, achieving the balance between all the characteristics of human (kindness, empathy, being just etc) and all the opposites, controlling our fear and anger, making prayers to set goals, making our intentions pure and appropriate thus having a vision, achieving self satisfaction acceptance, content and praise, living and doing not for self but Him, having the right expectancies, knowing when to submit and when to withdraw, knowing the limits and the one solution, knowing that there are people who are hungry and can't move and there are the ones who are full but cannot move and still want more, knowing that if the ceiling was low everyone would be equal, knowing that Islam does not advise to Zulm Nafs but to do the good... It seems too complicated already. There is no need to worry, take a look at the issues below and jump to the conclusion.

issues

macro issues

• Work is life. Is that true? I think it is, at least in today's capitalist societies. Islam however, is not composed of work only. It is a way of life itself. On the other hand, work has not got the same meaning as before, it has a broader mission. It is power, it is knowledge, it is service to others, it is what we do good, it is how others get to know us and so on. The point is that as long as the work is beneficent, i.e. resulting in a sufficient Islamic good, then it is good to see work as life. If however our work is not beneficent to us in any way – ex. it takes all our time, it makes our friends, it changes what we like – it should not be our life.

• Life and work is an adventure or play. Because there is the responsibility of using the two most effective and irreplaceable objects (time and effort), it cannot be seen as play / adventure. However this should not be interpreted as to take them too seriously. A Muslim should be in perfect balance. A Muslim does what is wanted of him, and she/he tries her/his best. Puts all the effort and dedication. And the result does not matter, the work itself does not matter that much, life itself does not matter that much (remember the balance).

• This is my life, I accept no interruption, I am my own judge. Can we see life as this? It is correct to be self centered in this, however there are people who are better than you, has more knowledge, more experience, better knowledge, etc.. and there is Allah. Thus, we have to accept the interruption. We have to judge ourselves and try to put our life in order. However we have to look at other sources willingly and these sources should base our judgment.

• You are what you do, your title, your projects; so be action oriented. Is the action or the intention is important? Does the action really defines you and determines what you are before Allah? That is not the way. The Kalb matters and the intention is important here. However, there is no obvious reason for not having good actions / projects / doings for a good Muslim who has good / proper intentions and a good Kalb.

• Living for: clients, exciting life, money, wants, fun (needs, growth, pride, independence, to make a difference). Humans created to worship. A Muslim is different from others that life is for Allah, we live for Him and will return. But, if something is holding us from our worship, we can put efforts to make a difference, for independence, to serve or to make an effort against. A Muslim should aim growth, but should not live for growth. A Muslim can put effort for pride, if pride is damaged. But the point is that in the central core there has to be Allah (living for Him, the main purpose, seeking His pleasure..). These are all artifacts and not the purpose. Why don't we love our life? What's the difference between happiness and peace? Are we living for pleasure, happiness?

company level issues

• An organization may have a rational, strict, HR etc structure. Making all the strategic and tactical management and making analysis and identifying CSFs and positioning so on does not contradict with Islam.

• In DM, involvement and participation (chain of command and authority) there are some points to be made clear. Participation has to be high, and related people should be involved. Authority and hierarchy are a must. However, authority can be decentralized.

• Is organizational or personal good / interest important? Collective versus individual. Basically, it is the collective interest more important as long as the limits / regulations (by Allah) are followed for ind ividuals.

• We should not be working for, be in partnership with, accept authority and command of a non-believer especially if she / he is Zalim. There may be an exception (remember the balance plus limits), if the result is for good, if we can get away from the partnership by not accepting full authority, by putting some of the rules of the game then the partnership may be accepted.

• We should not be withholding any kind of scarce resource (human, information, raw materials etc). We also should avoid stocking, try to run with minimum stocks. We should not buy service / good before it is made available to its intended users. How correct is to shift the demand, rather than following it? It must be completely false, as we can not modify what people want and need. It is their will. If we are to do something good from our point of view, we have to wait until the market demands (wants) it. Otherwise, we will be in same situation with those imperialists.

• Can an Islamic government take taxes and adjust inflation rates? Yes for taxes and no for inflation. But again the parties has the ethical responsibility and following Islamic rules.

• How true is de-regulation? It is peoples will / choice, if I want to / choose to watch pornography I can watch it. Well it is not correct, because people are not free creatures. They have many interactions with environment, with Nafs and Satan, with non-believers.. People may not make good decisions / choices. May not want the good.

• Is it correct to earn with no effort? What is effort anyway? I believe it is the use of any kind of resource that belongs to you directly (i.e. not your money or house); intellect, time, body, knowledge and so on. If we are wasting no resource, that is unjust and incorrect.

• There is no argument in engaging with forbidden things (drugs or such), fraud, making everything in written and witnessed, swearing falsely, falsehood.. but what is honesty? Is it our intention, what we do or whether the other party is deceived / mislead / tricked? I think in this instance it is our intention and it is not what we do. The outcome and income is important here.

• What is waste? A Muslim should not waste we say but how do we determine something is wasted? Everything is used by something anyway in the end (the bacteria eats food remains). The waste does not happen in the end, it happens in the beginning when we exceed our needs. If we exceed our needs, say buy four brea ds or a plasma TV to listen to music, then this is waste for us.

• Does a company need to give Zekat? I believe it is a duty for individuals not for companies, however I would still question those big corporations with huge savings belonging to no individual.

• How should we treat employees in wages? It has to be the correct reward for the performance and it will be good Islamicly for the employees to have some kind of ownership in the company.

• How important is the organizational culture? A Muslim can not just get into a company sit on a table where people are drinking alcohol or where there are engagement with opposite sex in some specific manners.

• Choice between worship and work. I do not feel a need to clarify this.

personal (self related) issues

• How important are the “self” stuff, or is it correct to improve these? Firstly, I should mention here that a Muslim cannot be selfish. Self-reliancy (I can do it) and self-confidence are also very important to mention here. Well, there is no point for saying I can not do this, if we are able to. Thus, we have to work on how can I make it better, not can I do it. For this we have to know ourselves, but only for the purpose of identifying and accepting our weaknesses. If we have a weakness in something, we may not do it. If we have the duty to do it, we have to try to do it and improve (not confidence but the ability or skill). We also need to know what we are capable of. This is just to guide us if we face a choice. Remember, there are things to be done and we have to do them no matter what. So there is no need to fear that we may not be able to do it. Now, for the self-reliancy, it is incorrect to rely on self because there is Allah holding the will above everything. If he wishes we will succeed. For the other self related issues such as esteem, integrity or efficacy, these are good feelings but they should not need any improvement. Because a Muslim must have these characteristics already. Another issue is being self-centered. We do not see the world self centered (taking self as a reference and relating everything to self). A Muslim does not compare himself with others. Actually the only thing that is to be observed in others is if they are doing any wrong and if it has to be corrected (this is not to say that during communication you will see their point of view). We don't think about how others see us. We don't do something for someone, but for Him only. We go to war not to show off to people, we have full Tawakkul to Allah and it is who we remember / think of. We see everyone as equal, except the degree of Taqwa.

• Does human have a capacity to fully utilize? Yes we have a capacity and we have to try to utilize it. If Allah gives us orange make orange juice. If He gives us lemon make lemonade..

• How far do we need to know our selves? What happens if we have cognitive dissonance? Is there a specific way of mastering in our character type? Is asking who am I wrong? I should say that for various reasons human are different from each other. That correct. We need to know only what is explained in Al-Quran, and what has the prophet looked into. From this I can say that we need to know our Nafs, Ruh and our abilities and weaknesses. We must not engage in any character categorization, mastery, dissonance, going too deeply on our structure and personality. We need balance our weaknesses and strengths and follow Islam; that means if it tells you to give out money and belongings (i.e. looks like being generous) we have to find the balance between being generous and being wasteful. We should not be trying to be something, or someone, we should only do what is told. May be for work reasons we may say that I am good at this and this can guide us to perform better.

• Do we need personal development? Yes, everyone needs to develop themselves, but this has to lead Islamic characteristics and it is better it used Islamic methods. Then there is the question what is the Islamic methodology of self development? Actually it is all about self development, and it effects all areas of this life too. So I cannot get into detail in this.

• I don't feel positive about this, I feel too much energy from him.. a Muslim is more positive then negative. Depending on the situation life is and the stuff inside are not hell. For example, we have a great hope that no one else can gain easily. We interpret differently the things that happen to us..

• Is role modeling good, As a learning tool? or how about nicknames / assigning characters?. Role modeling is only good for learning purposes only. It is the way we learn the religion actually. It is a very powerful tactic for learning and widely used. We can take the characteristics, mimics, body language, the way of thinking and so on when required and suitable. It is very important to realize that we are authentic and cannot be someone else. The limit here is there are some things we need to learn change in ourselves. Examples of role models in our society may be Mafia, Al-Pacino, Hz Muhammad, our next-door neighbor, a soccer player, the soldiers etc.

• Can people reinforce behavior? It is the human nature. Some things (people, objects etc) can be used by Allah to reinforce behavior. We may also do it, but it all comes down to the purpose.

• Is external or internal locus of control better? The reality is it should be external. However, from self point of view, it has to be internal. Because this is not an Islamic argument it seems complex. But the all controller is Allah, including our actions. However we are free to choose. It is our decisions which make up what happens. It is predefined though what we will do.. I wont go into these in detail here.

• How tolerant we should be to uncertainty? A Muslim accepts uncertainty, and should be tolerant to it.

• Being linear or lateral thinker, exaggerator or understator and such things does not matter much Islamicly. For the learning and problem solving styles (planner, analyzer, developer and creator), it may be a good idea to identify them for matching purposes (for example in a team work). Categorizations like doer, reflector, decider, connector or for communication openness, inclusion, control; these are all acceptable categorizations. But the purpose again is important here.

• It is said a good manager has the following characteristics: Ambitious, broadminded, cheerful, capable, clean, courageous, forgiving and helpful, honest, imaginative, intellectual, logical, obedient, polite, responsible, self controlled. Is it true a Muslim manager has these too? Yes, plus every single Muslim has to have these characteristics. Only independence might be open to discussion here.

methodological / cognitive issues

• Is the goal setting theory really useful / correct? I can not imagine someone without any aim. It is the human nature and Allah actually wants us to aim for some stuff. We usually are guided by the prayers, the things we want from Allah. These are our goals. And all the rules for goal setting theory seems correct too; the foundation of it (when challenging etc goals set / followed the performance increases), goals has to be measurable, challenging, time frame and so on.

• From this, is it good to make plans? Shall we have long / short term outlook? Live today and be dynamic? Some things needs to be organized, and sometimes these are better to be planned. Some times it is good to be rational, the results are foreseen, there are certain options / inputs and so on. Some times it is good to be irrational / unplanned. But in general, it is good to plan (not planning what will happen but what I will do), have a short outlook (we should not actually plan for future but that is to say having a to do list), being more flexible and less rational. Dynamic planning applies quite suitably in here.

• Is there a one universal true logic? How about fuzzy logic and being rational? Again we need to find the balance in the “n” graph. There are times when it is required to stop and think. And times when we need to be quick and act without much thinking (i.e. we always need to think only the results). Although it seems impossible to be rational, some things require to be as rational as we can. Examples are religious rules. Also, there are some things that all correct logic must end up with. Correct logic is the logic of someone who is not effected by Nafs, or Satan, and whose heart, eyes, ears are not sealed. In other words who can observe and understand freely. And there are certain things where there may be multiple true logic,good logic can end up with good A and another good logic can come up with good B.

• Following rules, universalism or particularism? Generally, it is not good to compare Islam with any “ism”s, and there is no need for any such definitions. However, for my purposes, I can say that Islam is closer to particulrism. For the following rules side; if there has to be rules they have to be followed even it was not opposing but put forward by human. But I don't think it is a good way to have many rules and rules for everything. It is not possible, not logical and it is not the divine way. There has to be major rules and the decision really depends on the situation / person etc.

interpersonal issues

• When we face with a challenge, how true is withdrawal? We have mission of commanding the good and Nahy from the bad. We should not withdraw but to challenge and put effort. This is true for fear of life, when someone bothers us, when we face with Zulm..

• How about competition and being competitive? It is only acceptable and useful to compete in Taqwa only. for the other issues we may be competitive, but we should not try to compete with someone, see others as competitors. Some people are created or given later superior to others in some matters. For development purposes, we may compete with ourselves, trying to be better than yesterday.

• How about communication (submissive, assertive, concern, empathy, prototyping, shifts, ethos, pathos, logos). There are times we need to use communication tactics / methods even though we are not being sincere. Depending on our aim / situation / person; we may be submissive or assertive, we may use emotions to influence, use body language to convey our message and provide the audience to get the message.

• How about building networks? Politics and coalition? These are some times useful. It again depends on our purpose. Yes we need the network, it is important who we know. But we should not suck up to someone and keep the relationship just to secure our position. Or when we are required to behave in certain way by Allah, we should not try to do politics.

marketing / presentation issues

• Do we need marketing? Do we need to sell ourselves? Do we need a good image? How about being pushy? Yes we need marketing, and if we see ourselves as products then we can sell as well. However, when are we to see ourselves as products? How about the bounding rules such as delusion, hiding the truth, and so on. We are bound by some rules, then we have a different understanding of marketing and seeing self as a product. We should not ask for a role for example, it must be assigned. But we need to show clearly ourselves to others. This is selling self? Second issue here is that we do not need any image making, but we need a good presentation. That is, we need to present something as is and even hide the negatives if negatives won't cause any misleading. For the appearance, Allah has given us accessories, good looking, appealing, beautiful. We will of course use them. But we will not love them much, they will not have any importance what so ever. Third issue is being pushy in marketing, and I think that is wrong.

performance issues

Performance management:

• Performance equals to skills, abilities, attitudes, satisfaction, desire and commitment in management science. In addition to that, performance is largely related to our intentions, Allah's will, who we are together with and so on.

• The theory, grouping people by type X and Y. in theory Y labor will not perform unless closely supervised and coerced. That's wrong too, Islam more likely to follow theory Y.

• What kind of rewards can be offered? Social, power, recognition, security, esteem, monetary, feedback, feeling of win and accomplishment? We cannot use these as a base of our rewards, except task based and monetary rewards. I will examine these in more detail below. Briefly, the ones having negative effects on people's Nafs are wrong. For the feedback for example, it has to be directed to the task only and it has to be more of an appreciation / correction which will be constructive; not praise.

• How about motivation theories? Do we need to wait for motivation or we need to force ourselves some times? Generally, the theories which are not task based are wrong. It is very good and effective to work motivated but the source of that motivation matters. People have to put effort in increasing motivation, but if it is a matter of survival then the first stage of Mashlow's hierarchy of needs applies (i.e. physiological). For the non-task based theories; rewards (what we should be expecting from work) may be achievement, power, affiliation, esteem and actualization. For example, expectancy theory is a partly task based theory. It is correct to link performance with effort but the attractive reward – performance linkage is doubtful. The rewards can be only the ones mentioned above. For the needs theory it may be safety and physiological needs and so on. For the task based theories, the best one is five factors theory. The goal-setting theory and hygene factors theory are also acceptable. Some other things we might follow as managers are removing obstacles, equity theory and providing resources. In summary, Islam sees motivation as (and must be) control of Nafs.

• What's success? Do we need to follow ascription or accomplishment? What's failure in Islam? When do we fail and when do we succeed? It is hereafter that matters, and failure for this world is nothing to us. The second issue is quite similar to macro issues point 3. We are ascription based, accomplishment is dependant on our other deeds and Allah alone.

Power:

• How about persuasion, changing minds? Well, changing minds and persuasion for Allah's path, commands and so on are acceptable. What is not acceptable is the people who receive the information is not conscious of that. Another point may be that we do not need to impose and use our own ideas to persuade someone. The choice is free.

• How about being pushy to grasp power? Is there a need for charisma and what if we need it for leading? Influence is very important requirement for Islam. However our influence should be from our Taqwa, manners, being a proper Muslim. I will call this natural power. I do not think it is likely, but if ever natural power becomes insufficient, we need to stop and think. Do I need to do this, why am I doing this? If our natural power is not enough, then we can go into being pushy and using some tactics. This may include charisma as well (if there is such a thing and if we have any). Another example is money. Economic power has a lot of influence, and we need to acquire it.

• After all these, empowering seems acceptable. You can refer to above point and the ones about motivation.

stress related issues

• Lets have a look at the causes of stress and try to identify if a Muslim can be stressed at all. Situational stressors (yes maybe), job related stressors (too much responsibility, role ambiguity, conflicts, very high demands, insufficient skills and resources – yes). The ones that are wrong are: life related stressors (gender, health, personality, locus esteem), time stressors (see Tawakkul), anticipatory stressors (imagine failure, too much importance, remembering past difficulties, panic, anxiety ) and encounter stressors (shouldn't be present in an Islamic setting).

• Now lets have a look at the methods to deal with stress. They are: repression, goal setting, time management, saying no, using social support, having powerful thoughts, gaining control, gaining skills and exercising. Resiliency tactics are: family-work balance, social involvement, spiritual well-being, physical well-being, cultural factors, intellectual factors, to diet, and having internal control. Relaxation tactics are: psychological / NLP or such therapies, meditation, exercising and sporting. Now, if we have a read through all these again we will see that a Muslim will be automatically carry out all. Examples are prayers, Zikr, remembrance, acceptance of temporality.

so what?

I call this from many to one. You must be confused by now. Simple; there is only one truth in this life, one creator, one path, one question and one answer. Read Al-Quran.

Some details for the summary:

• Aim is Allah, central attention is Allah. Rest is tools we use.

• We need to know our Nafs, make best out of it.

• There are balances and limits in this world for us to be in and these are dependant on some factors. We need to increase knowledge for this.

• We need to internalize the Knowledge (one knowledge) to use it, to process it from root to leaves.

• Live for Him, die to self. We were nothing and all we have (ex. money, humor) is given. We should not aim for being something, otherwise we will be nothing. It does not matter what we are for people, but what we are for Him.

• Try to see what are you not pleased with, what is not important for you and what can't you accept.

• Be satisfactory, be rational but be dynamic, be inwards and be outwards :), think and act / stop and think, make lemonade when you have lemon, keep it real and believe in unreal :).

• Do not withdraw, control your fears, observe them and think. Be involved, ambitious and powerful. Use your will correctly and put forth your effort. The reward will be given anyway (does it really matter? :).

• Find your identity, know your Nafs, make your love and job connected to Islam.

• It all comes down to this: be a (proper) Muslim :)