Dignitaries and guests at the opening ceremony at Multaqa (Education City Student Center).
Doha, Qatar: The importance of human-centered, values-driven leadership that is focused on improving lives and societies has been emphasized to young people from across Qatar, as Qatar Foundation’s inaugural QIYADA conference came to a close.
The two-day event at Education City – organized by Qatar Foundation’s (QF) Higher Education division and sponsored by QIIB – has brought together leading scholars, thinkers, influencers, and role models from around the world to engage and support the nation’s youth in becoming leaders and drivers of positive social change, while strengthening their Islamic identity.
Over 1,000 students from Qatar’s schools and universities attended the conference, joining discussions exploring solutions to the challenges of the modern world that have their grounding in faith and knowledge.
On the second day of the QIYADA conference, H E Sheikha Dr. Hessa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson and Founder of the Wellbeing and Career Development Training Center in Doha, and an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at Qatar University, presented a model of leadership from the perspective of wellbeing, based on five fundamental pillars that shape the character of Muslim leaders: spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical, and social wellbeing.
“Today, leadership is the subject of our discussion, and we mean effective leadership: leadership rooted in the will to serve people and the community,” she said. “True leaders uplift others not through force or dominance, but with humanity, vision, and compassion.
“The word ‘leadership’ may suggest control or the ability to rule the affairs of others. But true leadership is not a privilege of the powerful; rather, it is a shared individual and collective responsibility to make positive contributions to the wellbeing of society and to develop humans everywhere.
“In Islam, and the teachings of Allah, leadership has a wider and a deeper significance, and a sense of being guided by what is right and following the path of truth and righteousness.”
H E Sheikha Dr. Hessa called on the young people attending the QIYADA conference to “be nothing but good and give nothing but good”, emphasizing the importance of combining knowledge and action: “Knowledge calls for action, so either you respond to it, or it departs from you.”
Dr. Mutlaq Aljasser, preacher and scholar at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs of Kuwait, spoke of how, in the modern world, materialism has assumed dominance over moral values, saying: “Before we speak of leadership and renaissance, we must first know: what are we leading toward? And in which direction are we heading?
In the conference’s closing session, Sheikh Salem Alahbabi, Director of Ibn Al-Zubair Scientific Center, spoke about three fundamental pillars that shape identity and to which young people should return: religion, language, and history.
