Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Akhlaq is one’s inner state that is the source of behaviours he does without calculating its advantages and disadvantages. One with a good akhlaq will do goodness spontaneously without any hidden purpose, while one with a bad akhlaq will do badness without calculating the impacts for him and for the victims. No man suddenly becomes a wise man or a big criminal. A certain process is required to become a wise man or a big criminal.
The process may have form of life’s dynamism, circumstances that are amazing, disappointing or designed to form certain patterns of behaviours.

Therefore, theoretically, any man can be formed to be a good person as he also can be formed to be a bad person. Since akhlaq is an inner state, then object of an akhlaq education is one’s inner state. It doesn’t mean that we should negate outer or external states of any person, since there is interdependent correlation between inner states and outer states of a person. One who has a good heart (qalb) or good akhlaq also has well outer behaviours (good manners), but not all who has good manners is a person who has a good akhlaq.

Building discipline or habituating a pattern of well outer behaviours (good manners) may be parts of a process of building a good akhlaq in a person, but in other person those may make him a munafiq (here means one who pretends to be a good person). Also, habituating a pattern of bad behaviours to someone may make him a bad person, but in other person that may generate an extreme resistance against badness. Those circumstances may happen since everyone actually has a capital in form of different personality or capacity. There is a person having a dominant drive to do good things and on the contrary, there is also other person having a dominant drive to do bad things.