The Productive Muslim: Where Faith Meets Productivity Download Pdf
Cirineo Pellito
Before reading this book I had heard people say success in deen is linked to success in dunya. However, The Productive Muslim explained this principle to me in clear, convincing detail. Faris shows us that productivity is not an end in itself, but a means to the highest success: Jannah.
In the 8th century, just after the final revelation of Islam, the Islamic Golden Age began. Muslims expanded the frontiers of knowledge and achievement at a speed almost never matched at any other point in the history of civilisation. Whole new fields of mathematics were created, revolutionary science was discovered, and society saw advancement in almost every field.
The driver of these enormous successes was not wealth, time, or luck. Europe had these for centuries and had gotten nowhere. The secret of their success was Islam, or more precisely the Sunnah, which showed the early Muslims the path to their extraordinary success.
Thanks to the hard work of the author Mohammed Faris, you can unlock this success as well, InshAllah. After much research, Faris has detailed the essence of Islamic productivity in his book The Productive Muslim. Designed to be both highly readable and filled with practical tips, this book mixes Islamic teaching with impactful self-help advice.
Throughout the book, Faris sticks to the very highest standards of sources: the Quran, authentic Hadiths, Sunnah, and the lives of notable Muslims. These exemplary sources are explained in a clear tone and are consistently linked to practical advice for our daily lives.
The author realised that some of the most cutting-edge productivity theories were recorded in Hadiths over a thousand years ago. He set about learning more about Islamic productivity, with the aim to create a productive Ummah. The project was an enormous success, and Mohammed quit his job at a leading Islamic bank to focus on productivity science. Nowadays he runs professional coaching sessions and his blog continues to grow in followers.
In summary, The Productive Muslim is a truly original book aimed at giving practical advice based on the most excellent of Islamic sources. I feel it will greatly benefit Muslims of all backgrounds, especially young adults, in showing them how their faith sets them up for success in this world and the hereafter.
Ever wondered if Islam teaches productivity? What's the link between Faith and Productivity? Is there one book that helps us learn the practical steps to lead a productive lifestyle - both from a faith perspective as well as scientific perspective? Learn more about the new Productive Muslim Book --> Visit ProductiveMuslimBook.com.Read less
Ever wondered if there's a practical way to lead a productive lifestyle that combines the best of Islamic tradition and modern psychology and science? In "The ProductiveMuslim" Mohammed Faris, the founder of ProductiveMuslim.com, provides this practical framework that helps urban global Muslims lead a productive lifestyle Spiritually, Physically, and Socially.
This book is a practical guide for the global urban Muslim facing modern challenges that hinder them from reaching their full potential. My hope is that this book will inspire Muslims globally to lead a productive lifestyle (spiritually, physically, and socially).
Mohammed Faris leverages the power of faith & cutting edge productivity research to help companies and professionals operate at peak performance. He has delivered talks and trainings at numerous events and seminars across the world including UK, US, Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as well as featured on international media.
It's always a little frustrating to be "the speaker" when I am in such elegant and informed company. It's clear I have much to gain from listening to you. We have in the room a number of guests who are ambassadors and diplomats to the United States from countries as diverse as Algeria to Zambia -- literally A to Z. It's a tribute to our International Visitors Council that you would take the time out of your crowded schedules to be here. Thank you.
Our Foreign Service National employees are here as well. The government, as I have quickly learned, is a blizzard of initials and acronyms -- and the exchange community is no exception. But I have also learned that some sets of initials are more equal and important than others. One of those is FSN, for Foreign Service National. And having now "been to the field," I know firsthand how vital our FSNs are. I have to admit that when things go exceptionally well there's usually an FSN team making it happen.
And, of course, here today are our esteemed partners in your role as the National Council for International Visitors (NCIV). You will be glad to know that in my earliest briefing days I tried to invent -- or reinvent you. Coming from the private sector, I was very aware of the power that rests in private individuals when harnessed to effect positive change.
"We need to activate private partnerships," I stated firmly. I was gently told . . . this idea is 40 years old and consists of 80,000 volunteers working through 97 councils in 44 states. Exactly what I had in mind.
I may have had a slow start, but I am now your greatest advocate. To Congress, I talk about this amazing sum, which is larger than the parts -- the International Visitors Program -- making clear how you multiply the investment they make in exchanges. It's the best buy they'll ever see.
When I take the show on the road, I talk about you. I mentioned you at the Fortune event for the "50 Most Powerful Women in Business," and to other audiences as unaware as I was of your work -- like ANA and the Business Roundtable. It is important to get the word out.
I'll confess to another kind of naivet. These visits are such complex transactions -- tailoring subjects and interests to participants, elaborate travel, packed agendas, and harnessing the towns, the people, the events. So naturally I asked, "What do you do when something goes wrong?" My experts looked blank. Nothing goes wrong. It's an amazingly efficient machine.
Now if you happen to know of a small thing or two that has gone wrong, kindly do not enlighten me. I need to stay right where I am. But I also asked, "How do you quantify results?" Well, we do have a really blockbuster answer to that one. Before 9/11 we weren't planning to organize a worldwide coalition to defeat an enemy hidden and terrible, fragmented and fanatic.
But, in fact, we needed to move quickly, to reach accord on who this enemy, these terrorists, were and how they should be answered. Can you imagine how much faster and more productive these crucial conversations were because fully 50% of the coalition members had been in U.S. exchanges at some point in their development?
Even in Afghanistan -- hardly a country with a functioning U.S. exchange program before last September -- Hamid Karzai, Chairman of the Interim Afghan Administration, is a former International Visitor. I know Secretary Powell referred to Chairman Karzai in his remarks this morning.
And the most prominent woman in the Afghan Government, Simar Sanar, Vice Chairman and Minister of Women's Affairs, traveled to the United States under the International Visitor program in 1989. I met Simar when we started inviting Muslim Americans to counsel with us in October. The first thing she said to me was how important her visit and work here as an International Visitor some 13 years ago was to her.
More than 1,500 exchange visitors have become cabinet-level ministers. So you can't quarrel with those results, but are we doing as good a job as we might in telling our story? How can we defend budgets and excite support if our results are usually long-term, and it is not simple to prove the causal relationship? As we studied individual stories of visitors here, I think it is fair to say we found they are often transforming.
That's a big word, but the only fair summary: Lives change, attitudes evolve, biases fall away. Clearly, real American people in real American towns are simply our best storytellers. But how to track the fruits of one person's transformation? Well, sometimes, often, we can't even track that person after 2 or 3 years. We don't have what any decent local car dealer would have -- a data bank of all their alumni. Why? So we can locate them and engage in further dialogue and create a kind of active membership. You'll be glad to know that the alumni data bank is in our recent budget request.
We want to stay in touch, to continue the relationship, if possible, to help support their interest in being emissaries for the values of freedom and opportunity that we share. We'll cross-pollinate our ideas with those from other countries and share successes and proposals with web sites and newsletters. After all, your programs gave them a whole new way of seeing or working. Let's reinforce that. Just this kind of scrutiny led us to adopt a standard I call "magnification."
We will ask each of our three bureaus -- Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), Public Affairs (PA), and International Information Programs (IIP) -- what happens beyond the visit, the speech, and the article on the web? How do we magnify this event or product or exchange for an audience larger than the initial one?
I'll give an example that really inspires me. We're missing Pat Harrison today, the Assistant Secretary of Educational and Cultural Affairs -- she's just where she should be -- in the field: Britain, Turkey, Morocco. But she's the heroine of this story. We wanted -- needed -- to show the pictures, to illustrate the feelings of our devastation and our resolve to rebuild the World Trade Center. Beyond magnification, illustration is another one of our communication standards. As time has passed since last September, we found that we needed to give people a visceral reminder of the devastation and death in New York. We needed to depict -- not in words, but in pictures -- the loss, the pain, but also the strength and resolve of New Yorkers, of Americans, of the world community to recover and rebuild on the site of the World Trade Center.
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