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First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2010 by Kogan Page Limited
Reprinted 2010 (twice), 2011
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned addresses:
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John Adair, 2010
The right of John Adair to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 978 0 7494 6076 1
E-ISBN 978 0 7494 6116 4
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adair, John Eric, 1934-
The leadership of Muhammad / John Adair.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-7494-6076-1 -- ISBN 978-0-7494-6116-4 (ebook) 1. Leadership. 2. Muhammad, Prophet, d. 632 3. Bedouins--Jordan--Social life and customs. I. Title.
HD57.7.A34 2010
658.4092--dc22
2010002760
Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt Ltd
eBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
On a journey
the lord of a people is their servant.
Muhammad
Contents
As you are so will be the rulers that rule you.
ARAB PROVERB
T his book is a biographical inquiry into one aspect of the Prophet Muhammads life: his leadership. It is not a full biography of Muhammad. If you are not familiar with his story you will find a brief outline of it at the end of this book. Consequently I do no more than touch lightly upon aspects of Muhammads life that any biographer would regard as central, such as his roles as Messenger and Prophet.
Having just used the word role I should say up front that I regard it as the key concept for understanding leadership. A role is by origin a part taken by an actor in a play, but in our wider use it means a persons characteristic or expected function. There is a case for saying that it is the expectations of people that determine a particular role in a human group or society. Notice also a phrase introduced relatively recently into the English language, role model : a person who is regarded by others as an outstandingly good example of a particular role.
For Muslims, the first and original leader is God, and all are bound by their faith to obey Gods law. Thus any leader of any organization business, political or religious is also first and foremost a follower of God. This fact imposes limits on Islamic leaders, and defines their duties to the people they lead. In Islamic thought, model leaders were simultaneously both exalted and humble, capable of vision and inspiration, yet at the same time dedicated to the service of their people.
As you read these pages you will, I hope, be able to judge for yourself just how close Muhammad comes to this ideal. My argument in this book is that this ideal glimpsed more than once in the life of the Prophet Muhammad accords well with what we now know to be the universal truth about the nature and practice of leadership.
I believe that there is a universal or generic role of leader . Moreover, thanks to one lucky discovery (see ), I have come as close as anyone has yet been to defining what that universal or generic role actually is. When experimentally applied on a large scale to selection and training of leaders the theory has worked consistently, and it has done so for over half a century. That is why I now claim that it is true .
Just as this book is not a biography of Muhammad, neither is it a manual on leadership. My method of writing is to complete each chapter with a set of key points. A pearl is formed around a grain of sand. Think of each key point as a grain of sand that if you coat it in time with quiet reflections from your own experience and values will become for you a pearl, lustrous and iridescent. Then it will be your pearl of wisdom.
If I may add a personal note: at the age of 20 I was fortunate to serve for a year as adjutant of a Bedouin regiment in the Arab Legion, as the army of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was then known. Arab Legion was an apt name then, however, because the 900 Bedouin officers and soldiers of the Ninth Regiment came from all the tribes of greater Arabia. The Bedouin name I was given by a company commander from the Bani Howeitat tribe on joining the regiment in Jerusalem in 1954, and by which I was known, has remained with me ever since Sweillim. It is an affectionate form traditional among the Bani Howeitat of the Arabic name Salim, which means soundness or wholeness. You will, I hope, find my affection for my Bedouin companions of long ago reflected in these pages.
The Messenger of God is an excellent model for those of you who put your hope in God and the Last Day and remember Him often.
Q33:21
Truly, I am the most perfect Arab among you. My descent is from the Quraysh, and my tongue of the Bani Sad.
MUHAMMAD
E arly one morning in 570 CE a Bedouin man and his wife left the town of Mecca heading north-east to their camping grounds in the Najd, a great desert area in central Arabia to the north of the Nefud and the Rubal Khali regions that forms a plateau of about 1,500 metres (5,000 feet) high. Al-Harith ibn Abd al-Uzza of the Bani Sad, a section of the much larger Bani Hawazin tribe, rode on his camel, and his wife Halima bint Abdallah followed on a donkey carrying her baby son Abdallah and an eight-day-old baby of the Quraysh tribe from Mecca that she was bringing home to suckle Muhammad.
After a journey of nine days they reached the black tents of the Bani Sad in a wadi, a dry river valley dotted with solitary acacia trees and some sparse pasture for the flocks of sheep and goats. Once they were near the tent Halimas young daughters Unaysa and Judama (or Shayna, as she is called in other sources) the girl with the beauty spot rushed out with cries of excitement to greet the return of their parents and brother and to make the acquaintance of their new baby foster-brother. Judama, the older of the two, would later remember helping her mother in the days that followed by carrying the baby Muhammad around on her hip.
