By Awwabin Zainuddin
GOMBAK, 23 October 2016: In conjunction with Stuff Fest 3.0 that was held for a week by Student Facilitating Front (STUFF), a forum about students versus business was held at Convest Hill recently (7 October).
The invited guests were Ustaz Nazir from the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM) and Heliza Helmi, a local celebrity and entrepreneur. The forum was to guide the students to balance between their study and business. It was also intended to highlight good business values in Islam.
As the first panel, Ustaz Nazri was asked about how our Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) attitude in doing business transaction. He said that doing business is not just about getting monetary profit.
According to him, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) had trained in business since he was young by his uncle and the reasons for this early training was to allow him to get to know people’s attitude in doing business, to have a prompt exposure in business atmosphere, and to have a good communication with the people.
Ustaz Nazri also added that during the time the prophet was doing business he embraced his Islamic attitude for the people and very unlikely to fond shouting at people in the market.
Subsequently, Heliza Helmi was invited to share with the students on her experience as a young entrepreneur. Her achievement in her hijab business allowed her to inspire people to join her for success.
Heliza stated that for her the most important thing to do in business is “to know your intention and that the intention must not benefit only you but other people as well”. She quoted the hadis by the prophet which said,”The best people are those who bring most benefit to the rest of humankind.”
She also featured two must-have attitudes in doing business, which are “to always give charity and always treat people nicely even though we have been treated differently”.
During the second session of the forum, Ustaz Nazri gave his views on the question raised which was “Is it relevant for students to do business?”
He commenced by reciting surah Jumaat, verse 9, which is about Allah’s order to abandon the business when it’s time to perform Friday prayer.
He implied that students should regard business as an extra lesson in life instead of just a place to seek profit because, he said, in Islam, studying has a higher value than finding money.
“Besides taking care of our business ethics, we also have to take care of our reliance on God. We must not pay less attention to our reliance to Allah.”
Ustaz Nazri reminded students to not to forget that “in business we are not only selling goods but we also sell our identity to the people, so always be prepared to face the people physically and spiritually”.
Before the forum ended, Heliza once again was asked to share tips on how to manage their account effectively. She dished out that always allocate your money into several saving portions and each portion must have its own priority and its own reason to use.
Furthermore, Heliza said that each person must have a great will power to restrain oneself from using the save money. “Bear with me the hardship of not using the saving portion now or you’re gonna regret the hardship by not having the saving portion later,” she added.
The forum ended at 6.00 p.m. with closing performance by the winners of Inter Mahallah Cultural Week (IMCW). Stuff Fest is an annual event conducted by Student Facilitating Front since 2014, offering a lot of interesting activities and programmes.***