still on the matters of concern
Fard-kifayah, community-wide collective obligations, must not be neglected and should also be matters of great concern to us. An instance is to work for the betterment of the community. Everyone with their own profession and expertise has a role to contribute towards the development and betterment of the community.
Other matters of concern to Muslims are enjoining what is good and discouraging the evil, selfaccountability and to practice Ihsan in all that we do.
In the Quran: (Allah) Who created death and life that He may try you, which of you is best in deeds; and He is the All-Mighty, the Oft-Forgiving. [Surah Al-Mulk (67): ayat 2]
As related in Hadith 17 in this collection:
“Verily, Allah has prescribed excellence (Ihsan) in all things. Thus, if you kill, kill well; and if you slaughter, slaughter well. Let each one of you sharpen his blade and let him spare suffering to the animal he slaughters.”
[Recorded by Imam Muslim]
Another matter of concern to all Muslims, but is recently lacking among us, is to think about the affairs of oneself, the community and the whole Muslim community (ummah). We need to think of how to further improve our (the Muslims) circumstances and not just be content with the current situation. This applies in all that we do, whether we are worshippers, teachers, professionals or preachers. We should only be slaves of Allah and not of others. Hence, we should not be enslaved by current ways or routines of doing things. We need to think creatively to improve the situation, in ways and means not contradicting the sharia’h. In this context, modern tools like ‘idea generation’ and ‘problem solving’ can be of great benefit to us.
We also need to be concerned about the greater confrontations of our community. In this era of technology and communication revolution, many of us, the Muslims are being enslaved intellectually. We need to cogitate about our future generation because we will be responsible before Allah. We need to apply and disseminate our knowledge and not just concerned with building ‘reservoirs’ of knowledge. We need to design and fashion our future and not just stand passively and let others design and impose upon us their preconceived scenarios.
Conclusion
Matters of concern to the Muslims embodies the affairs of oneself, the community and the whole Muslim community (ummah). We need to create awareness among each other in confronting the issues and challenges of the ummah. For instance, this can be done through dialogues and talks. Those in authority have a greater responsibility in performing this task.We should be aware not to waste our time and effort in matters that are of no relevance or concern to us. We should keep ourselves busy only with matters of benefit and relevance to us and to the ummah.
We should not mistaken unity for uniformity, for unity does not necessarily mean uniformity. We can also agree to disagree in a way that is unifying us yet lack of uniformity can still exist.