#FieldNotes013: Hiatus & the Pitfalls of Leadership

Some observations on inner work and community organising

“Do not ask for authority. If it is given to you at your request, you will be held fully responsible for it. If it is given to you without your request, you will be helped by Allah in it.” - Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

Thomas Moran. The Chasm of the Colorado. 1874

I’d like to begin this piece by apologizing for the hiatus. Among other things, the last couple of months have been a time of introspection for me. I was blessed to travel to my wife’s ancestral lands of Java, while observing the holy month of Ramadan. Hiatus is a fitting word, especially in the context of immense pressure to perform and deliver. Etymologically, a hiatus is an opening, a gaping mouth, and a chasm. It literally means a break in continuity. Often, as community organisers, we forget the need for a break in continuity, a time for introspection. The hiatus allows us to break from patterns of heedlessness as we traverse our life’s landscape. Often, we expect that the journey solely comprises peaks and valleys. The hiatus makes us realize that sometimes we just need to stop.

I’m beginning to recognize that community organisations have a determined lifespan. They tend to rise and fall, just like any other natural ecosystem. However, I've noticed that this cycle is getting increasingly shorter and shorter. Whereas traditional institutions may last generations, modern institutions have a tendency to decay much faster than before. Over the years, I’ve seen community leadership unable to build and sustain institutions beyond their own lifespan. Maybe this is a symptom of the modern condition and of social isolation, as Robert Putnam argues in Bowling Alone. Or perhaps, there is a deeper psycho-spiritual reason for this pattern. I'd argue that community leadership often lacks the spiritual inner work required to build and sustain the very organisations they are trying to lead.

Without inner work, the very ambition that drives community building is tarnished by the diseases of the heart, discussed by the great Sufi masters. For many leaders, the drive to build is fueled by the ego and its conniving tactics: ostentation, arrogance, lust, envy, treachery, and covetousness, and other afflictions that plague the heart. Without proper education, usually in the lifelong company of a spiritual master who has done this very inner work, community organisations will mirror the inner struggles of their leadership. From families and neighbourhoods to towns and states, the most successful organisations are built from the ground up, together with servant-leaders.

Amidst the bustle of community organising and institution building, leaders tend to look outwardly, identifying crisis after crisis. A hiatus helps one take that time to look within, and to come to terms with one’s spiritual struggles. To that end, I’m sharing a story from the Great Shaykh Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, who, before entering the grand city of Baghdad and establishing centres of learning and spiritual exercise, lived his own profound hiatus.

“During my stay in the deserts outside Baghdad, all that appears beautiful but is temporal and of this world came to seduce me. Allah protected me from their harm. The Devil, appearing in different forms and shapes, kept coming to me, tempting me, bothering me, and fighting me. Allah rendered me victorious over him. My ego visited me daily in my own form and shape, begging me to be its friend. When I would refuse, it would attack me. Allah rendered me victorious in my continuous fight against it. In time I was able to make it my prisoner and I kept it with me all those years, forcing it to stay in the ruins of the desert. A whole year I ate the grasses and roots I could find and did not drink any water. Another year I drank water but didn’t eat a morsel of food. Another year I neither ate, nor drank, nor slept. All this time I lived in the ruins of the ancient kings of Persia in Karkh. I walked barefoot over the desert thorns and didn’t feel a thing. Whenever I saw a cliff, I climbed it; I didn’t give a minute’s rest or comfort to my ego, to the low desires of my flesh.

At the end of seven years I heard a voice at night: ‘O Abd al-Qadir, you are now permitted to enter Baghdad’.

I came to Baghdad and spent a few days there. Soon I could not stand the sedition, mischief, and intrigue that dominated the city. To save myself from the harm of this degenerate city and to save my faith, I left. All I took with me was my Qur’an. As I came to the gate of the city, on my way to seclusion in the desert, I heard a voice. ‘Where are you going?’ it said, ‘Return. You must serve the people.’

‘What do I care about the people?’ I protested. ‘I have my faith to save!’

‘Return, and never fear for your faith,’ the voice continued, ‘Nothing will ever harm you.’ I could not see the one who spoke.”

May God have mercy upon him.