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There is a growing malady these days…Muslims from different sects do not welcome people from other schools of thought to pray in the mosques, controlled by them. One way to overcome this malady is imparting training programmes on “Emotional Intelligence” to Muslim religious leaders and scholars.
“One should not associate in any way with the people who do not belong to our sect. It is better to be employed with non- believers than Muslims who do not belong to our school of thought, we should not marry in their family or even have food with them”.
To the horror of this writer, these words pour out from the mouth of an imam, of one of the Masjids in Kurla, Mumbai, triggering a query: what is the Muslim community upto? Following the path of Jews and Christians in boycotting their own brothers?”
In Surah Baqarah, Allah says, “The Jews said that the Christians follow nothing (i.e. are not on the right religion); and the Christians said that the Jews follow nothing (i.e. are not on the right religion), though they both recite the Scripture. Like unto their word, said (the pagans) who know not. Allah will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection about that wherein they have been differing.” (Verse-113).
Further, Muslims from different sects do not welcome people from other schools of thought to pray in the mosque, controlled by them. In certain districts of Maharashtra, there are notice boards outside the mosque, warning people belonging to particular school of thoughts not to pray in their mosque. In fact, during Ramadan this year, in Mumbai, two groups belonging to different schools of thoughts fought a bitter battle inside the mosque over a minor difference on certain theological issues. Both groups prevented each other from entering the mosque.
In Surah Baqarah, Allah says, “And who is more unjust than he who forbids that, in places for the worship of Allah, Allah’s name should be celebrated?-whose zeal is (in fact) to ruin them? It was not fitting that such should themselves enter them except in fear. For them, there is nothing but disgrace in this world, and in the world to come, an exceeding torment”. (Verse-114).
The clashes between different groups of Muslims belonging to different schools of thought is an universal phenom-enon in our country. The Imam of the mosque can play a crucial role in educating the masses and teaching them the original Islam based on the Quran and Sunnah.
Unfortunately, for most Friday sermons and also other discourses, the source is not the Quran and Hadith, but the writings of their respective religious gurus or founders. Whenever the source of information happens to be an individual idealogy, reliable or genuine, it cannot come anywhere close to the Quran and Hadith. If the community has to avoid the pitfalls of Jews and Christians, we must exclusively start focusing on the Quran and Hadith.
If anyone has any doubt about the Quran being the guidance for one and all, Allah says in Surah Al-Baqarah, “This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear Allah”.
In many cases, the Imams of most of the mosques are not very competent to manage the clashes between different schools of thoughts. This shows that our madrasas and religious schools focus more on theology, and less on emotional and social intelligence, which forms the base of Prophet Muhammad’s (Pbuh) teaching.
The community should seriously think about initiating training programmes in emotional and social intelligence based on Prophet Muhammad’s guidelines for our imams and students of madrasas. In today’s complex world, only graduating in theology is not sufficient to manage the religious, social and cultural affairs of the community.
One of the foundation skills for Emotional Intelligence is the skill of empathy. Empathy is commonly defined as one’s ability to recognise, perceive and directly, experientially feel the emotion of another. As the states of mind, beliefs and desires of others are inter-twined with their emotions, one with empathy for another may often be able to more effectively understand another’s modes of thought and mood. Empathy is often characterised as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes”, or experiencing the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself, a sort of emotional resonance.
Islam has put great emphasis on empathy. It starts with self-awareness. Understanding your own emotions is essential to understanding the feelings of others. It is crucial to effective communi-cation and to lead others. Lack of empathy is a primary cause of inter-personal difficulties leading to poor performance, social tension, and clashes between various schools of thought.
Empathy as a competency skill is poorly understood by our religious leadership. Many imams of the mosque, lack a propensity for developing empathy because they assume it is “not important when it comes to Islam.” Some very intelligent religious leaders are walking around blindly using only their powers of reasoning and wondering why everyone cannot see things their way.
The primary cause of social tension, because of the difference in opinion with respect to interpretation, involves deficits in emotional competence, and in particular, these three primary ones: *Difficulty in handling change. *Not being able to understand others’ view point * Poor inter-personal relations.
Without an adequate understanding of the other’s point of view, imams of the mosques lack sufficient flexibility for change, cannot initiate any social reform and cannot relate well with the very people who offer prayers behind them.
Research continues to mount evidence of the effectiveness of EI training programs, Emotional intelligence, or “EI,” is the ability to recognise your own feelings and those of others, and the ability to motivate yourself and others, as well as to manage your own emotions and those of others.
Essentially, there are four competencies:
1. Understanding yourself or self-awareness
2. Managing yourself, or self management
3. Understanding others or social awareness
4. Managing others or social skills
The last two are very important for imams of the masjid and those who study in Madrasas. Perhaps it would be better to simplify the concept. Emotional intelligence increases when people commit themselves to building practical compete-ncies in the context of every day situations. Nothing can be more powerful than developing empathy skills during everyday interactions on the job. There is not a single institution in India to coach imams of the mosque in these skills. This is one area which needs urgent attention of the community leadership.
(The writer can be reached at mhl@rediffmail.com)
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