Light Traveller & Tough Intellectual Questions
The time has come for me to travel again....but not that far this time. Destination will be Bangkok. The duration of stay will only be less than 40 hours.
This evening, there will be a soft launching of my new company in the city of Bangkok in partnerhsip with some shareholders from Thailand. The focus will be on corporate advisory, fund raising and M&A on potential deals in South East Asia.
Just now at KLIA 2, I managed to allocate some time for an interview by Dr Rafisah, a lecturer at USM and post doctoral candidate at Canberra University, Australia. Her research topic was on SRI sukuk.
Amongst others, I advised her to be critical and vertical on everything she writes or plan to write or submit as a thesis. She mentioned and quoted from other writers and thinkers that while Shariah screening of the stocks is of negative screening, the SRI or ESG screrning is a positive one.
That statement triggered my Shariah mind alarm. I asked her a few tough questions (to purposely challenge her mindset); "On what basis we can accept the nomenclature of negative vis-a-vis positive screening? Who invented this distinction for the first time and what was the intellectual foundation behind this distinction? Are you saying Shariah screening methodilology is not positive enough even when we eliminate weaponary or tobacco or pornography in addition to riba and liquor-based industries? Until when are we going to adopt the terms created by others instead of creating our own terms in our own backyard that resonate well with our culture and tradition?".
This line of question, though sounds critical and harsh, is the key towards critical thinking and unlocking the real theory of knowledge. The university professors and lecturers, as well as students should be exposed to this robust intellectual orientation, I would respectfully submit.
We send our children to universities (and colleges, as well as schools) to learn to think first and then to acquire the knowledge. You may disagree if you like.
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