While it is a given that many people today suffer from immediate concerns such as poverty, unemployment, psychological illness, and the pandemic, I wish to humbly submit that it is imperative for our policy-makers, decision-makers and possessors of command in general to not lose sight of the bigger picture in the civilisational context.
What we are referring to is not merely in the context of achieving Sustainable Development Goals, but more in the sense of how our distinguished scholar, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas has been cautioning us for decades—the disintegration of adab (right action): the root cause of the rise of extremism of various sorts. Its rise leads to injustice in all spheres of life, in the form of psychological instability, materialistic culture, greed and various forms of vices—all of which are intertwined with ecological degradation and do not inherently promote happiness, the ultimate goal for any vision of prosperity.
By disintegration of adab, we mean by it the loss of the right understanding of realities (including ontological or spiritual realities), leading to erroneous or harmful actions—it is not simply a matter of etiquette as how Muslims often restrict its meaning today.
In reality, adab is the basis of civilisation that creates the condition of justice and happiness, hence why the Malays refer to the term ‘civilisation’ as per-adab-an. The absence of adab results in the reign of animalistic tendencies or disorder in a people; such tendencies cannot be termed ‘civilisational’, especially from the point of view of Islam.
To make matters worse, the pervasive, dualistic mental outlook of many consultants, specialists and professionals causes issues concerning ecology, psychology, economy, and culture to be seen as independent domains; thus, its solutions or prescriptions are often siloed or particularized, independent of each other.
This is why the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, for instance, are seen as separate goals to be achieved independently by different ministries, groups, or stakeholders.
Whereas in the more universal, integrative, holistic intellectual traditions and civilisations such as Islam, the external (zahir) and internal (batin) conditions of the world are seen as inter-connected. Thus, when Muslims of the past designed cities or buildings, its entire ecosystem, including the spiritual reality of man and the universe, are considered—this is adab towards the environment.
In other words, when Muslims had a more universal (kulli) outlook, more intellectual clarity of their big picture, or of their vision of reality and truth (or worldview of Islam)—as can still be seen in the remnants of the Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid periods—they considered socio-economic justice, ecological justice, and psychological justice to go hand-in-hand and cohere with natural or ontological justice established by God, and thus adab was able to be manifested in a more comprehensive way.
The Muslims of the past who had built prosperous civilisations were also more integrative thinkers, to use a modern parlance. In the words of Roger L. Martin in his Harvard Business Review piece (June 2007 Issue): “Integrative thinkers don’t break down a problem into independent pieces and work on them separately or in a certain order. They see the entire architecture of the problem—how the various parts of it fit together, how one decision will affect another.”
Already in the global arena, we can find that influential individuals such as Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft), Yuval Harari (best-selling author), Steven Pinker (professor of cognitive science at Harvard University), Klaus Schwab (founder of the World Economic Forum) and their networks trying to shift the trajectory of our civilisation through subtle persuasions.
If we are not careful, Muslims will be captivated by their discourse without realizing that the philosophical assumptions implicit in them contradicts or dismisses the vision of existence that Islam projects.
Yuval Harari, for example, once said: “The most interesting place in the world from a religious perspective is not the Middle East, but Silicon Valley. It was there that new 21st century religions were created. What I mean is Data Religion, which promises human beings happiness, peace, prosperity and even eternal life.”
We also ought to be more critical of the thinking approach of the likes of Bill Gates, for example, when he stated in his piece in MIT Technology Review, (February 2019) that the big questions of existence (such as: How do we make people happier? How do we build meaningful relationships? How do we help everyone is living a satisfying life?) can be postponed after we have successfully overcome diseases and dealt with climate change.
Not all voices from the West are fragmented or narrow in their vision. We can learn more from the likes of Charles Eisenstein, who advances a more integrative approach towards the civilisational crisis humankind is facing. In his latest book, Climate: A New Story, Eisenstein argues that we do not appreciate enough the underlying detachment from the natural world as the real source of the problem. Thus, reducing carbon emissions is too limited a focus—one cannot simply discuss atmospheric carbon without thinking about the entire ecosystem.
What we have seen in most countries, including so-called developed countries, is a fragmented approach towards progress and development: no longer an effective and viable approach in the systemic and unprecedented challenges facing us today, especially in light of a global pandemic.
It is understandable that politicians, policy-makers and decision-makers in various sectors are incapable of considering big-picture matters like these, let alone questions pertaining to the state and future of a civilization, which is not captured in today’s data-oriented policy-making.
Thus, it behooves the politicians, policy-makers, decision-makers, and possessors of command in general to work closer with universal, integrative thinkers: scholars of civilisational importance or the keepers of trusts on civilisational affairs, that is, those who have profound grasp of the civilisational predicament we are facing.
What these thinkers and scholars can offer to the more practical affairs is a more integrative thinking approach and solution to the systemic problems and crises confronting us.
It is thus a moral obligation for governments to invest more in them to facilitate their research and educational projects, including the training of future generations of integrative thinkers in various fields and sectors. Failure to do so compromises our collective well-being and prosperity.
As far as Malaysia is concerned, if a fair amount of investments are channeled towards the aforementioned talents, I am sure it will contribute towards: (i) a more impactful investment in education reform and capacity-building of talents; (ii) the upholding of the Federal Constitutional position of Islam in a more substantial way; (iii) a strategic investment for a resilient Malaysia in the current scenario and post-COVID world; and (iv) the safeguarding of national stability and security from extremist tendencies within the population.