The Moral Vision
Working Together
~ 30 ~
tends to lay the onus on other people. If I don’t
carry on, one thinks, there are plenty of others who
will continue in my place. Seeing that there is no
personal profit to be gained from the work in hand,
one tends to see it as a burden best laid on others’
shoulders. Only when one has come to think of the
common good as one’s own good, of the profit of
society as one’s own profit, will one become fully
committed to collective work. Such commitment
requires, above all, a deep sense of social
consciousness; it requires one to be oriented
towards the needs of the community, as anyone
would normally be oriented to cater for his own
needs.
A Muslim is required to possess just such a sense of
social consciousness, moving him to throw himself
heart and soul into collective Islamic work,
whenever such work is required of him. Then,
when he has involved himself in it, he will see it
through to the final stage. When he takes leave from
the authority under whose direction he is working,
he does not do so in order to desert the cause to
which he is committed; rather, he has some valid
reason for going away, and will return as soon as
