Al Ain Publishing celebrated the launch of the book “A Journey with the Self.. Sufism and the Art of Institutional Leadership” by Dr. Moustapha Sarhank.
The book combines personal experience and academic vision drawn from practical experiences spanning four decades to present a unique model in institutional leadership.
The book was discussed by Dr. Ammar Ali Hassan, the prominent writer and thinker, who provided an analytical reading of the book and an extensive discussion of its intellectual and theoretical dimensions. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Fatima Al-Budi.
Dr. Sarhank's intention in this book is to share a new adaptation of the spiritual leadership theory addressed by Dr. Louis Fry, and later transposed to an Islamic Leadership construct by Dr. Eleftheria Egel.
The Sufi Corporate Leadership Model (SCLM) is founded on Sufism and takes Islam (surrendering), Iman (belief), and Ihsan (excellence) as cornerstones for its triangular structure. And at the epicenter of the model, Nafs (self) glues the triangular sides of the model to form a cohesive shape that is used within a corporate setting.
To speak about the three levels of Sufism and how the Nafs incorporates in the model’s fundamentals, Dr. Sarhank first starts by sharing his personal journey and how it was crucial in the way the SCLM was built. From an early age, Dr. Sarhank was exposed to spirituality.
But his life as a kid was not necessarily easy. Bullied from the age of five with scarce friends, it led him to build inner rage and resentment. That taken forward, his university years were a combination of a need to prove himself and work on his psychological scars while debating everything, even the mere fact he was a Muslim by birth.
Maturing and getting married at the age of twenty-one, after choosing Islam as a religion over multiple belief systems he studied, his early work years as an entrepreneur were characterized by multiple bankruptcies. With a wife, two children, and a ruthless market, he had to be reminded of his early days where he had to learn to survive the abuse he received from the kids around him.
Dr. Sarhank became a heartless business machine that stopped at nothing. He had to forgo his spiritual inclination that popped out occasionally while letting loose his carnal side.
One day, he started developing a throbbing and acid-burning pain in his right arm that days after left him paralyzed. And over the course of a few years later, his life the way it was led before the attack paused. Bringing the right arm back started with a statement by Dr. Sarhank's doctor: “do you believe?”. It was like a wake-up call. All of a sudden, he found himself back in time in one of old Cairo’s mosques when he was three years old sitting in the lap of his uncle’s nanny looking with great awe at a whirling and humming dervish with beads in the palm of his hands. This encrusted sight in his memory was the trigger of his spiritual journey towards the Divine.
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