ALTRUISTIC LEADERSHIP FOR THE UMMA IN CRISIS.

Leadership can mean many things and this article examines it in some depth. It locates leadership in the context of the crisis in the umma or Muslim world. The Muslim world is facing a protected and complex crisis - a condition of social disharmony, cultural turmoil, economic disequilibrium and political instability - with deficiencies in its current leadership at best and an absence of leadership at worst. The article posits that one of the principal solutions to the umma's crisis is effective leadership embodied in "altruistic leadership." Drawing on published materials on leadership in general, works produced on leadership from an Islamic perspective and extractions from the Qur'ān and ḥadīths, the article produces a model of altruistic leadership with four key chief features - trust, knowledge, communication/interaction, and diligence. Altruistic leadership with these key features, the paper postulates, is a universal leadership model applicable to any micro or macro socio-cultural, economic and political context with the capacity to address, alleviate and even eradicate a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]