By Suzalie Mohamad
Knowledge alone is insufficient to build a sound and balanced personality; good habits and deeds are crucial.
It has been narrated by many scholars of Islam that if parents have any inheritance, there is no greater inheritance than Adab.
Al-Walid ibn Numayr said that he heard his father say “righteousness is (a gift) from Allah, but Adab (right conduct) is from parents.”
Adab plays an important role in society. The actions of members in society are considered immoral or bad if they lack manners. Indeed, having good manners and doing few good deeds are better by far than doing many good deeds and having no or little manners.
Adab is central to the teachings of Islam. Due to the great importance of Adab in everyday life, Imam Bukhari separated the discussion on Adab in a special book entitled al-Adab al-Mufrad.
If one were to survey the books of Hadith, one would discover that each have chapters on Adab. The narrators of Hadith have reserved special elaboration for Adab in their books. For instance;
> The Muwatta` of Imam Malik: The book of good behaviour;
> The Sahih of al-Bukhari: The book of manners;
> The Sahih of Muslim: The book of duties, ties of kinship and manners;
> The Sunan of Abu Dawud: The book of manners;
> The Sunan of al-Tirmidhi: The book of manners, and the book of duties and ties of kinship; and,
> The Sunan of Ibn Majah: A chapter on manners.
Adab can be taught. We learn by example. Therefore, it is crucial that we encourage good habits and deeds – although bad habits are perhaps the easier to acquire.
Knowledge alone is insufficient to build a sound and balanced personality. Of what use is knowledge to us without exemplifying those mannerisms and etiquette that really define us as Muslims?
A Muslim scholar mentioned that “knowledge without Adab is like fire without wood, and Adab without knowledge is like a spirit without a body.”
Suffice to say that Adab is acquired naturally. It is not really taught or learnt, but is naturally developed. Children learn Adab from their parents, students from their teachers, the less experienced from the experienced.
One may have knowledge but lacks Adab; and one may have Adab but lacks knowledge; however without Adab, one cannot know which knowledge takes more priority.
Today, it is painfully obvious that material gain – regardless of how it is acquired – has taken priority over virtue. The spiritual development of humanity has fallen far behind its intellectual growth.
It would seem that looking back through history, our greatest search for knowledge has been for that of destruction, and our greatest discoveries are the result of an all-encompassing drive for power.
The destruction and violence of war is obvious. At the touch of a button millions of people die, whole cities are destroyed, and poisons remain to defile our earth for generations to come.
If we need to struggle and fight among ourselves, I wonder if it is possible to return to a less sophisticated time when the battlefield was filled only with the screams of soldiers killing soldiers?
War is only a word to much of a modern society. Removed by technology, many have never seen the pain in the eyes of a starving child chewing at his or her dead mother`s breast. All these are the result of a loss of Adab.
Far worse is that in our daily lives there is an insidious violencethat is just as surely affecting our consciousness and destroying our world.
Let us take, for example, modern lifestyle. Sanitation departments and waste disposal systems are overburdened with waste that cannot be disposed of.
In addition, the requirements for hospital beds and mental institutions are increasing at an alarming rate as our minds succumb to the pressures of insecurity and the stress of modern life.
Greed, intolerance, irresponsibility and the quest for personal wealth and comfort seem to be the rule of thumb today. Humanity has become a global parasite, robbing the earth of its richness and rewarding it with poisons. We have created an economic dead end due to our selfishness.
Why is it difficult to control our egos? You cannot touch the ego, you cannot see it. It has no concrete form. Some say one cannot control the ego because the ego is an illusion. But one`s actions are manifestations of that ego. We can observe our actions and behaviour, and we can control our actions.
We must set an example through our actions. We must not allow ourselves to be controlled and consumed by power struggles and political conflicts which expose us to fear, selfishness and following things blindly.
If one is staunchly selfish, one cannot be free. If one embraces perceived righteousness, such as fanaticism, zealousness, and extremism, then one cannot extend one`s hand to another in friendship.
I remember reading the advice of a martial arts master to his students. The master said: “You must learn the freedom of having no desires.
“If you grab water or air, the essence will escape. If you want to drink, you must cup your hands lightly. If you want to breathe, you must first open you mouth to exhaust the old air.
“If I give you gold and you grab it as tightly as you can, fearing its escape, you cannot touch the diamond that I offer.”
Lying, hypocrisy, oppression, selfishness, and other vices are all detrimental to human happiness and perfection. In fact, casting all virtues aside contributes to the social disasters and untold misery in society.
A society without Adab will perish. For this reason, previous great civilisations were destroyed because they were bankrupt of Adab.
Thus, it is imperative that those with no Adab are given a serious lesson lest they destroy those virtues that Allah has bestowed upon us. These people, if not handled in a proper manner, will destroy civilisation.
There is a Malay poem which refers to this condition: “Seandainya terdapat seribu orang yang membina yang disusuli dengan seorang meruntuh, itu sudah cukup untuk meruntuhkannya. Bagaimana pula jika hanya terdapat seorang yang membina tetapi terdapat seribu orang yang meruntuhkannya?”
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Suzalie Mohamad, Fellow, Centre of Syariah, Law and Political Science, Ikim.
