Comprehensive Leadership Personality: A Reflection from the Qur’anic Perspective

Abstract

The Qur’an is for the mankind (Qur’an, 2: 185), and also about the mankind (Qur’an, 21: 10). It simply denotes that the Last Book of Allah revealed to the Last Prophet (SAAS) deals with all that mankind is in need of from any angle, devotional, familial, social, political, military, economic, cultural, educational, intellectual, or moral. In the Qur’anic descriptions of man there are both appreciation of what is laudable and condemnation of what is reprehensible. The Qur’an seeks to establish an environment of social justice (Qur’an, 57: 25), the precursor of peace so that mankind might flourish with the desired form of both moral and material development. Social justice calls for the emergence of comprehensive leadership personality. The Qur’an highlights the nature of leadership personality from the angle of what it should not be (negative features) and what it should be (positively desirable traits). The Qur’an outlines in a crystal clear manner these two categories of characteristics through direct advices, by retelling stories of the previous Prophets and their people, by making comments on events such as in the battlefields, by condemning certain doings of individuals and groups, by admiring the excellent acts, and by declaring what is rewarding and what is disappointing in human life. The most salient features of leadership personality as admired in the Qur’an are sincerity, integrity, honesty, universality, generosity, piety, and justice; and the most unwanted traits of leadership personality as condemned in the Qur’an are insincerity, hypocrisy, hard-heartedness, impiety, sinfulness, dishonesty, and injustice. The methodology applied in this paper is analytical. The present paper focuses on the behavioral pattern of the most successful leadership based on the Qur’anic guidelines, reaching the conclusion that only the comprehensive leadership personality can deliver the good.