Al-Risala (English), Nov-Dec 2000

capacity to inspire the team spirit in others. Particularly in highly competitive situations, it is essential to be able to encourage other competent people to make a significant contribution to one’s own performance. But no one sails through life without bumping into obstacles and suffering a variety of setbacks. This is when one must beware of lapsing into passivity. Then one has to take oneself firmly in hand and decide to look upon such things not as great gulfs from which one will never emerge, but simply as hurdles which have to be surmounted if one is to finish the race. One’s initial feeling of disappointment should quickly transform itself into a great determination to try harder, to alter one’s approach, to seek different and better ways of achieving one’s goal, and to channel one’s energies more effectively towards their ultimate target. □ Patience and Dawah T he moral character of the dayee must be marked by patience. It takes patience to wait for the right opportunities for dawah work to arise, and it also takes patience for the right sets of conditions to be created. Those who are unwilling to remain patient in the face of ignorance, obduracy and unpleasantness can never fulfill the true calling of the dayee. Sir James Jeans, the renowned English scientist, once stated in the foreword to a book he had written on physics and philosophy in 1941, that the scientific study of the universe had led us to the point where it seemed to suggest that “the door may be unlocked, only if we could find the handle.” (p.16) This notion was put into words by this English scientist