Introduction

The Best of Planners

The Islamic faith stresses a lot on planning. This is evident in a number of verses occurring throughout the Holy Scripture. God Almighty is said to be ‘The Best of Planners’ and the importance of planning is repeatedly emphasized both in the Qur’an and the Sayings of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). We will in this article attempt to analyse best business practices in the light of Islamic religious teachings.

Intelligence

Looking at it from a macro level, the Holy Scripture often brings our attention to observe the universe we live in, urging us to see if there are any flaws in it. The Unity of the Divinity is vividly brought out through interesting anecdotes and parables among other things. Likewise the story of Creation is narrated in very telling terms that test one’s intelligence.

Everything in Pairs

Take for example the verse from the Qur’an that states that God created all things in pairs (Surah Ya Sin Verse 36).  This revelation that the Creator has created everything in pairs is something only now we are beginning to realize. Protons and Electrons and Positive and Negative particles are good examples of pairs we never knew of until fairly recently but the most exciting discovery was the positive and negative bit (binary numbers) which led to the creation of the Computer, the Mobile Phone, Robotics plus numerous other related modern tools, nearly all software driven. Even today 8 bits represents 255 characters including the alphabet and numerals 0 thru 9 upon which everything else in the e-domain is dependent on.

Information is Divine

The Best of Planners narrative is also given expression at another level of creation where human embryology is described in the most scientific terms possible. So much so that Dr Keith Moore, a Global Leader in the field of Embryology upon discovering a Qur’anic verse stating that the embryo looks like a chewed up piece of leech-like clot found exactly this when he studied it in minute detail. When questioned he simply said “Well folks there were no microscopes in the 7th century, so I guess the only conclusion is its information is Divine”.

Larger Picture

Similarly we read of the idea of a Larger Plan pervading a good part of Qur’anic Scripture from the Creation of Male and Female and the Creator’s instilling love in the hearts of one for the other, to the Creation of Humans with different skin pigmentation and speaking diverse tongues which we are told are among the Signs of God so that we may recognize one another. The Divine Plan is seen expressed in this manner throughout scripture, tellingly telling us puny humans to look at the larger picture and not get bogged down in this detail or that. After all, planning always has a larger scheme to consider with bits and pieces made to fit the whole. This is in essence what planning is all about and it starts with the Divinity Himself.