The Prophet\nMuhammad (peace be upon him) said, \u201cOne day of justice by a just ruler (or\nleader) is better than the continual worship of sixty years.\u201d The Prophet also declared\nthat \u201cthe man most beloved and closest to God is the just leader, and the man\nwho is most hateful and contemptible in the sight of God is the unjust leader.\u201d\nHaving considered all relevant religious texts, al-Imam al-Ghazali concluded\nthat \u201cthere is no act of religious worship greater to God than just\ngovernance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Saidina Abu\nBakar as-Siddiq was appointed as the First Caliph upon the demise of the\nProphet Muhammad (peace be upon him), he delivered a powerful speech reflecting\nseveral critical principles of governance, accountability and justice. He said:\n\u201cO people, I have been elected as your leader, although I am not the best among\nyou. If I am in the right, then help me. And if I am in the wrong, then set me\nright. Truthfulness means fulfilling the trust; while disregard for truth is tantamount\nto treachery. The weak among you is deemed strong by me, until I return to them\nwhat is rightfully theirs. And the strong among you is deemed weak by me, until\nI take from them what is rightfully due to someone else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to an\narticle published in October 2008, in the prestigious journal Science<\/em>,\nwritten by Dr Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist from University of British\nColumbia, Canada, \u201creligious people behave better and act more ethically than\natheists, because their belief in God assumes the presence of a supernatural,\nall-knowing and all-powerful force that monitors their behaviour.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking at the\nempirical evidence or \u201chard scientific evidence\u201d that anthropologists,\npsychologists, economists and other researchers have gathered for 30 years,\nexperiments show religious people behave more kindly and generously (or more\n\u201cpro-social\u201d) even towards strangers, who are genetically unrelated people,\nwhen they have been freshly reminded of God in a subtle and subconscious way.\nIn addition, various psychology experiment of which some were conducted by Dr\nNorenzayan himself, have shown that belief in God leads to honesty by reducing\ncheating and selfish behaviour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Faith and\nreligion are reinforced by mechanisms like policing, social surveillance and\ncourts of justice. Without religion, enforcement power destroys sense of justice\nand brings about injustice. Without justice, power misuses religion to its own\nbenefits. Without enforcement power, religion and justice are not sufficient to\nform a good society and governance. Sa\u2018id an-Nursi remarks, that \u201cprinciples of\nwisdom have no effect upon ordinary people unless they are combined with the\nstate\u2019s laws. Similarly, laws of truth have no effect upon ordinary people\nunless they are combined with enforcement power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good governance cultivates\nconformity to constitution, rule of law and syari\u2018ah law. God requires us to \u201cobey\nthose who are in authority from among yourselves [whether duly elected or duly\nappointed authority]\u201d (the Qur\u2019an, surah an-Nisa\u2019, 4:59). To be successful,\nthere must be compliance with aims and objectives of organisation. Good\ngovernance promotes discipline through internal rules and regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Governance\ncontributes to commitment of excellence in the service or product offered to customers\nand clients\u2014to be caring and hospitable in service to customers; to be efficient\nin processing and production; to be conscious of moral values in work ethics. One\nof the powerful tools is to promulgate and publish Clients Charter, which is compliant\nwith Consumer Protection Act and takes responsibility to disclose material facts\non goods and services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as how\nclients and customers are important to an organisation, so is the management of\nhuman resources and capital. Governance is also about managing the relationships\namong staff members. Of relevance is Employees\nor Workers Charter, compliant with Labour Law as well as Industrial Relations\nAct. Organization must strive to realise employees\u2019 satisfaction and nurture a\nsense of belonging. Common-sense management dictates business enterprise to\nprovide good working conditions and pay decent wage to command respect, loyalty\nand productivity. To have strategies and track record which are consistent with\nemployee centric-thinking is the only way to be successful over the long term. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Governance\nthinking in the last decade has shifted to acknowledge organisation\u2019s\nresponsibilities to the environment. This requires compliance with laws and\nregulations related to environmental quality, in order to control pollution of\nair, water and natural resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Prophet\nMuhammad (may peace be upon him) says, \u201cFaith has seventy-odd branches, the\nhighest of which is to acknowledge that there is no god but Allah, and the\nlowest of which is to remove something harmful from a way.\u201d (narrated by\nBukhari and Muslim)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Governance also relates\nto community and social responsibility. Organisations must uphold public well-being,\nand observe transparency to avoid misinformation. Companies should enact competition\npolicies, and comply with competition laws. Otherwise, public services and consumer\nwelfare will have no protection against the issues of cartels, monopoly and\nanti-competitive prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, \u201cOne day of justice by a just ruler (or leader) is better than the continual worship of sixty years.\u201d The Prophet also declared that \u201cthe man most beloved and closest to God is the just leader, and the man who is most hateful and contemptible in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"_wpzoom_pinterest_image_url":"","_wpzoom_pinterest_hidden_image":"0","_wpzoom_pinterest_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-225","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}