Muhammad Bachrul Ilmi from Indonesia

Without winter, there can be no spring
Without mistakes, there can be no learning
Without doubts, there can be no faith
Without fears, there can be no courage.
My mistakes, my doubts and my fears are my path
to wisdom, faith and courage
(Anonymous)

Niccolo Machiavelli in his book The Prince said that leadership was everything about how to possess power and how to defend power as long as possible. This concept is called ‘will to power’. A leader could do anything that might assist him in gaining power. There was no distinction between good and bad. Everything looked similar in the name of gaining power.

Supported by this concept, Karl Marx’s Fake Conscious theory and Antonio Gramsci’s Hegemony theory supported ‘The Prince’ theory. Marx said that fake conscious means when a person influenced other people’s minds but the people did not realize that they were being influenced. Moreover, Gramsci said that hegemony meant putting ideas into people’s minds. In fact the people never felt that it was somebody else’s idea but felt it was their own idea.

I grew up with these concepts for years in my university. Before I entered the university, I thought being a student meant that I got into a just educational world. In fact, I discovered something more. Student political world was tempting because politics was the only interesting topic. Then, I joined the club. In three years I had moved from the position of student leader in my department to that of student leader in my campus.

To me, being a leader meant dominating others but not making them feel they were dominated by my ideas. This condition shaped my mentality to be very selfish and greedy. It remained so for four years until I met the first Action for Life team in Indonesia. That gave me a different perspective on life.

At first I thought the ideas of MRA-IofC were unrealistic. How can these ideas change billions of people in the world through changing oneself initiated by listening and sharing? My logic resisted these ideas. I went on strike many times from 1998 until 2001 urging the government and the parliament to take revolutionary steps to take Indonesia into a better horizon but it did not work. So, how can the personal change be more effective than the system initiated by students’ protests?

But, from time to time, I began to change my subjective opinion about IC ideas after I tried listening to my inner-voice. Encouraged by some IofC friends in Australia, I dealt with my family problem successfully. Another change that happened was my view of a leader. I began to look at others as they were and got into a journey of understanding others.

One recent experience touched me deeply. One person in the family of IofC Indonesia felt that both of us were drifting apart as friends. She felt I was not the same friend she knew. She gave me a call and cried, feeling that she had made a mistake and asked for my forgiveness. After listening to her, I realized I was wrong. Being a leader of IofC Indonesia, I only dealt with some organizational stuff, but I never cared for what my friends felt about our relationship. I told her that the rift must have been caused because we seldom had any listening and sharing time together. We only met for programs.

From this experience, I learnt that I would never have any chance to know what my friends felt toward me if I never listened and shared with them. Now, I believe that meeting people to listen and share is extremely important. Through listening we can learn how to be humble and unselfish but not many of us want to listen, but to be listened. Listening not only necessarily means listening to other people but also listening to the divine voice that guides us to the truth. I am convinced that the power of listening and sharing is the art of better leadership.

Muhammad Bachrul Ilmi
Final year student at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta, Indonesia