The Prophet on ‘tadbir’ and ‘tadabbur’

By Dr MOHD ZAIDI ISMAIL
IKIM

Government officers particularly should aspire and strive to reflect on their work or “governance” in respect of their actions and behaviour.

We have had four occasions before to expound the meaning of tadbir as the proper Arabic term for any act or process that may generally be referred to as administration, management, or governance (see IKIM Views of Oct 28 and Dec 23, 2008, and May 5 and May 26, 2009).

It has been made very clear in all of our foregoing discussions that tadbir, as well as its cognate term tadabbur, signifies, among other things, the mental act of probing into the consequence(s) of an affair so that a praiseworthy result may be worked out and thus obtained.

We have also mentioned earlier that tadbir is an extension and the embodiment of the freedom of choice in Islam, referred to as ikhtiyar (“ikhtiar” in romanised Malay), and ought to be based solely on what is good (khayr).

A man went to meet the Prophet Mohamed for a lasting piece of advice. The Prophet said to him, “If you happen to want something, reflect (tadabbar) then upon its consequence (‘aqibatahu); if its outcome is good (khayr), perform it. Otherwise, stop doing it” – as narrated by ‘Ubadah ibn al-Samit.

Such is the essential meaning of tadbir which renders ethics and morality inherent.

It is indeed expected of a person truly possessed of reason to base his acts on a close examination into the possible outcomes of his actions, carefully discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong, true and false, and then wholeheartedly choosing the good while avoiding the bad.

The act of trying to attain praiseworthy results by abstaining from what is blameworthy truly constitutes the practical side of tadbir which, as cited before, also means “the act of putting matters into effect in accordance with the knowledge of what will follow in the end.”

In addition, one’s act of abstaining from that which is prohibited and that which is evil is part and parcel of piety.

If a man perseveres in correct behaviour by abstaining from that which is forbidden, such a tendency will eventually be natural to him such that it becomes his habit or character – his second, or acquired, nature, as the scholars of ethics would say.

This, in truth, goes to the making of good character which commands respect and is what nobility really is.

In Sunan ibn Majah, an established collection of the Prophetic Traditions, the Prophet was reported to have declared:

“There is no equivalent of reason (‘aql) as purposive reflection (al-tadbir), no piety (wara‘) as abstinence (al-kaff), and no nobility (hasaba) like good character (husn al-khuluq).”

That he combines all those three elements – reason, piety and nobility – in a single saying is already good grounds for us to hold that purposive reflection, abstinence, and good character are mutually related, and each functions to shed more light on the others.

In fact, al-Ghazzali, the most eminent Muslim scholar of the 11th-12th century, in a special book dedicated to explicating knowledge and intellect in his famous Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din, considered human intelligence which has arrived at such a mental station, as being couched in the aforementioned Prophetic Tradition, to be one which has attained intellectual maturity.

It is therefore imperative that all those involved in the act or process of tadbir, particularly government officers referred to in Malay as pegawai tadbir or anggota pentadbiran, aspire and strive to reflect on the term essentially in their actions and behaviour.

Otherwise, they are simply not fit to be called pegawai tadbir.