There is a pressing need for us Surti Sunni Vohras to develop work with our young men and women to get them closer to their religion and become aware and familiar with their social, economic and political surroundings. Whilst Madaris, Dar-ul-Ulooms, Imams of masajid, and the Tabligh Jamaat do a lot of work towards educating our people and get them to practice their religion which must be appreciated by all Muslims their role remains confined to those they teach, those they serve as imams and thosewho participate in Tabligh work. Whilst the Madaris, Dar-ul-Ulooms, Imams of masajid and the Tabligh Jamaat provide their respective services to both young as well as old we feel there are those who are distanced from the educating and awareness raising processes going on in their surroundings. We feel, there is a great need to bring such persons, both males as well as females closer to the expectations of our religion, closer to expectations of our endogamous group, closer to the social, economic and political happenings around us and help our people become aware of the good as well as bad happening around all of us.
We feel there is need to take steps to initiate learning opportunities for our young persons to help them differentiate as Muslims between what they ought to do and what they should avoid. The concerns we have are not new. Nearly everyone from our endogamous group have similar concerns about our young persons. Having concerns and lamenting about these concerns is good but our lamenting will not help our young persons nor allow us to get rid of our concerns. What is needed, we feel is an educating/training programme to allow our young persons to understand better their religion and the workings of the world. We feel most of our young persons, do not get opportunities or exposure to an environment where they can learn and try to understand the importance of their religion and the need to keep to it in the face of worldly attractions and the challenges brought about by the social and economic changes taking place around them.
We Surti Sunni Vohras have spent and continue to spend large sums of money on building and running madaris, dar-ul-ulooms, primary and secondary education providing schools and a technical education providing college and hostels to provide accommodation for our students. We feel as an endogamous group we have failed and continue to fail to reap the benefits of the money we as an endogamous group have spent and continue to spend to help educate our young persons. We all know our progress in acquiring secular education has been poor and continues to be poor. The same is true for our dar-ul ulooms. The number of Vohras seeking religious education has over recent years decreased substantially.
We hope, and our readers will agree that whilst we as an endogamous group must continue to spend money to help educate our young persons, we also need to think about taking positive steps towards getting our young persons to attend informal education/awareness providing sessions. These sessions could if properly planned and run provide our young persons to learn to use both the religious as well as the secular they have acquired to live as practising Muslims. To help our young persons, there is need we feel to initiate some form of awareness raising/education providing work among our young people. We feel, and our readers will agree that whilst our dar-ul-ulooms try hard to educate our young men and women most of these only use their education when they teach others in dar-ul-ulooms or in village based madaris. Their work remains confined to those they are employed to teach. Dar-ul-uloom teachers concentrate their efforts on passing on their education to the students they teach and only deliver bayaans when invited to do so. The work of imams of masajid is to lead the daily prayers. Besides this they deliver a short bayan on Fridays. Once again, their contact remains confined to those who attend the daily and Jumua prayers at the masajid.
We all know from our experiences as well from what we hear from others that many of our young men and women are engaged in activities which go against the expectations of our religious beliefs and many live their lives divorced from their endogamous group and from their social, economic and political surroundings. Many among our Vohras feel that more bayaans by our learned persons will help our people to move closer to our religion. We feel simply getting more young men and women to attend bayaans will not help them. They will, if encouraged to do so, attend bayaans but will not take away much from what they hear and use the information to try and correct themselves or put into practice what is brought to their notice. What is needed we feel, is more intensive work and more one-to-one work with our young persons. This will, the ALMIGHTY ALLAH willing we feel will help our young people to understand better the expectations of our religion as well as learn about economic, social and political issues and learn to use these as Muslims.
Our indifference towards making efforts to assist our people will simply make more of our young persons fall victims to corrupting ideas and practices. We feel there is no need for us to spell out in detail what our young persons are falling for as most of our readers will be aware of these. What is needed is help from the ALMIGHTY ALLAH and well thought out methods to approach our young persons and get them to move closer to our religion with better understanding of all the outside forces which distract and influence them.
We feel we Vohras need to make efforts to educate and train a group of our people to engage in doing the sort of work that will help our young persons to leave those un-Islamic and anti-social habits they have fallen for and/ or become victims of. We feel we need both young men as well as women with religious education but also with some levels of secular education attainments and with good general knowledge and very good communication skills with a sincere feeling and a lot of empathy towards helping our young men and women to move away from their antireligious and anti -social activities and move towards the expectations of our religion.
We all know that among our Vohras there are no institutions or welfare/social work doing bodies that could help pilot this type of work with our young persons. In the absence of such bodies that could be identified for the proposed work we feel some of our dar-ul-ulooms could take it upon themselves to provide a base and help train staff who could go out to our Vohra villages, establish working relationships with both the older and younger villagers, try and identify the problems they have, and engage in work to help our young persons to move away from the anti-religious and anti-social behaviours and practices they may have fallen for and encourage those they work with to hold onto the expectations of our beautiful religion.
We feel our Vohra Education Society could find the resources for employing the Outreach Workers as the proposed work is educational work and will help our young Vohras, both males as well as females to learn, use their learning and with the help of the ALMIGHTY ALLAH use their abilities as Muslims and as Muslim citizens of our country. (10 August 2018 )
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People and organizations must behave ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic and environmental issues.
George Bernard Shaw said, “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be throughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.” Socially Responsible Company Winston Churchill said: “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) states: “ In the wake of increasing globalization, we have become increasingly conscious not only of what we buy, but also how the goods and services we buy have been produced. Environmentally harmful production, child labour, dangerous working environments and other inhumane conditions are examples of issues being brought into the open. All companies and organizations aiming at long-term profitability and credibility are starting to realize that they must act in accordance with norms of right and wrong.” Socially responsible individuals are demanding companies and organizations to become more socially responsible.
Corporate Social Responsibility :
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is accountability of the Business Corporations to the society in general. The Management cannot use the resources, including human and natural, in any way it likes and has the responsibility to deliver goods at reasonable price and good quay. The businesses should understand that the consumer, who is a member of the society community, is the primary reason why businesses thrive. It is the consumer or the member of the society who buys the products and makes the businesses to grow and get bigger and bigger.
Businessmen build mansions and empires but the poor consumer consume the goods but still lives a pretty life and is drowned in various social, economical and environmental issues, sometimes caused by the business or industry itself. The businesses have to look at their consumers, who are members of the society, beyond just lurring them to buy their products and goods. They have to become more responsible to realize, understand, address and resolve what adverse effects the businesses are themselves causting to the consumer, a member of the society. You can’t expect to just sell a leather jacket manufactured by you when you don’t care about the wastes you pour into the neighborhood.
In addition, businesses being supported by the community are expected to provide other welfare measures aimed at community at large. Discharging corporate social responsibilities help to build a symbiotic relation between the business corporations and the community.
Individual Social Responsibility :
The Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation (WCIF), Bulgaria, describes ISR in its position statement on Social Responsibility as, “The Individual Social Responsibility (ISR) includes the engagement of each person towards the community where he lives, which can be expressed as an interest towards what’s happenening in the community, as well as in the active participation in the solving of some of the local problems.
Under community we understand the village, the small town of the residential complex in the big city, where lives every one of us. Each community lives its own life that undergoes a process of development all the time. And everyone of us could take part in that development in different ways, for example by taking part in cleaning of the street one which he lives, by taking part in organization of an event, connected with the history of the town or the village or by rendering social services to children without parents or elderly people. The individual social responsibility also could be expressed in making donations for significant causes - social, cultural or ecological.
Civic Virtue and the Rise and Fall of Empires :
Every great civilization of which we have record in history that came and went, failed from within.Edward Gibbon, historian, in his seminal work The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, outlines this process in great detail: internal weakness precipitates external vulnerability and collapse inevitably follows. Gibbon argued that the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions because of the gradual loss of civic virtues of its citizens. Thuming tgh the pages of history, it is easy to see a similar pattern unfold in any great civilization, up to our present era. Basic civic virtue lies at the center of any great nation. Virue doesn’t appear automatically. It must be cultivated or drawn forth from the individual. Families, Schools, religious Civic Virtue and the Rise and Fall of Empires : school, civic group all have opportunity to strengthen the fundamental sense of virtue in their members.
Islam has very specific rules and guidelines concerning social and economic life. Notions of corporate social responsibility is in many ways consistent with an Islamic view of society.
The value of social responsibility, either individually or collectively, has been
recognized throughout history, and more structured programs for endowments and zakat were introduced by Islam in the 7th century. Major organizations throughout the world now realize that corporate social responsibility(CSR) is an important part of a company’s operation, because of its positive impact on society, which in turn impact positively on staff members and the general public. The business community needs to be aware of the responsibility it has towards the society. CSR does not mean just taking part in charitable activities and events but it means holding the responsibility to devlop
the society by envisioning future for socioeconomic justice and be conscious about their responsibility for the welfare of society around them. The business community is highly qualified to set a plan for social change, and integrate their development goals with the country’s at large, as well as engage with the other organizations on collaborative projects. CSR in the world view of Islam requires both individuals and organizations to be guided in the development of a moral self that distinguishes between right and wrong and never loses sight of its responsibilities towards Allah and mankind. Islam as a societies where it is practiced and constitutes a ‘complete way of life’for the followers with specific implications for economic life and hence the role that responsible business can play in the development of a community/ society/ economy based upon the principles of social justice and equity rather than efficiency or profit generation.
The Prophet Muhammad (May Allah’s Blessing and Peace be upon Him),the
Messenger of Allah, is considered the best example of virtue in human form.
Saying of Prophet Muhammad : What action are most excellent? To gladden the heart of a human being, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowfull, and to remove the wrongs of the injured. brother, whether he be successful or not, God will forgive his sins. One Hadith states that Abu Hurairah related: The Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) said : “ Whosoever removes a wordly grief from a believer, Allah will remove from him one of the grieves on the Day of Judgment. Whosoever alleviates(the) lot of a destitute person, Allah will alleviate his lot in this world and the next. Allah will aid a servant(of His)so long as the servant aids his brother.” |
