AAIMS Public Lecture

Zoom Detail:

https://uws.zoom.us/j/81744026376?pwd=lc3kx1fSlzuEtP0zzlpfJYAMB7AanC.1
Meeting ID: 817 4402 6376
Password: 981377

Abstract

Leadership can mean many things and this presentation examines it in some depth. It locates leadership in the context of the crisis in the umma (community of believers) or the Muslim world. The Muslim world is facing a protected and complex crisis – a condition of social disharmony, cultural turmoil, economic disequilibrium and political instability – with deficiencies in its current leadership at best and an absence of leadership at worst. In this presentation I will propose that the principal solution to the umma’s crisis is effective leadership embodied in “altruistic leadership.” Drawing on the published materials on leadership in general, works produced on leadership from an Islamic perspective and extractions from the Qur’ān and ḥadīths (Prophetic Traditions), the presentation will discuss a model of altruistic leadership with four key chief features – trust, knowledge, communication/interaction, and diligence. Altruistic leadership with these key features, I will argue, is a universal leadership model applicable to any micro or macro socio-cultural, economic and political context with the capacity to address, alleviate and even eradicate a crisis. Altruistic leadership, I will suggest, is a model to emulate.

Bio

Jan A. Ali (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Islam and Modernity in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. He is the Convenor of Islamic Studies in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. Jan is also the Founding Convenor of the WSU Postgraduate Islamic Studies Network and was the Community and Research Analyst in the Religion and Society Research Centre at the Western Sydney University. Jan is a religious sociologist by training who specialises in Islam. His main sociological focus is the study of existential Islam. His published books are Islamic Revivalism and Social Transformation in the Modern World (Basel: MDPI, 2023), Organ Transplantation in Islam: Perspectives and Challenges (Basel: MDPI, 2022); A Sociological Study of Tabligh Jama’at: Working for Allah (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); Islam and Muslims in Australia: Settlement, Integration, Shariah, Education and Terrorism (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2020); Islam in the West: Perceptions and Reactions (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018, co-editor) and Islamic Revivalism Encounters the Modern World: A Study of the Tabligh Jama’at (Delhi: Sterling Publishers 2012).