Identifying Roles and Protecting Rights

Abstract

In a system of governance where Islam is the principal ideational driving force, and where Islam simultaneously and consciously acknowledged by the partakers of that organisational scheme as a spiritual system, then the roles played by the partakers of that system are, or should be, in realisation that their social, economic and political roles are in reality spiritual functions within a temporal context. From this perspective, seemingly mundane everyday organisational activities are now visualised as acts of worship, and thus meets the promise of humankind as being created solely for the worship of Allah, so long as the organisational activity is geared towards achieving the Maqāṣid of the Sharī’ah. This paper will delve into the role of public service in an Islamic system of governance, emphasis the essential qualities that public servants need to have according to the Islamic value system. The paper concludes with a call for internalisation process of Islamic values upon a prior three-level set of criteria as the fundamental conditions that every civil servant should ideally have.