What strikes me most about the leadership I’ve witnessed is how deeply unassuming it is and was. It’s not leadership obsessed with being seen. It is leadership grounded in service, guided by mentors, rooted in values, and allergic to spectacle.
By AHMAD SOLOMON
In the space of just a few weeks, I found myself caught in a whirlwind of deeply moving events in an already troubling time in our global society – each powerful in its own right, yet together forming something larger, something weighty.
There was the launch of Echoes of Freedom, a book honouring the legacy of Imam Gassan Solomon, authored by Faseeg Manie. A reminder that the fight against apartheid was never about gaining power – it was about people, dignity, and social justice. Then came a lecture by Dr Omar Suleiman at the Cape Town International Convention Centre which I attended with my daughter. His words echoed across time and continents, calling us to moral clarity, spiritual strength, and courageous action in a world where silence has become complicity.
A few days later, I attended the funeral of Imam Gassan Moos – from the Shukrul Mubeen Masjid in Lansdowne, a community where I grew up – a man who served quietly, consistently, for over 40 years. His leadership shaped my thinking, my ethics, even the Afrikaans I speak today because of his sermons. He taught from the pulpit, not for applause, but to facilitate people becoming better.
And on Freedom Day, I was part of the team that co-facilitated a workshop led by Professor Aslam Fataar, based on his newly launched book Cultivating an Ethics of Beauty and Excellence in Planetary Times. We gathered with youth of all backgrounds – Muslim and non-Muslim, privileged and marginalised – and wrestled with what it means to live ethically, purposefully, and beautifully in a world fractured by inequality, digital distortion, and generational trauma.
All of it – these events, these conversations, the global headlines of war, hunger, and ecological collapse – left me with what I could only describe as cerebral indigestion. I mentioned it to Professor Fataar. He laughed gently and he encouraged me to write.
And so I do, because this isn’t just emotional overflow. This is the birth of deeper questions – questions that refuse to let me go.
Am I doing enough?
This is the question that has haunted me most. Not out of guilt, but out of responsibility. I work with youth. I help them navigate systems that were not built for them – often actively built against them. I try to create space where they can be seen, heard, and shaped with dignity.
But in the face of such overwhelming injustice – past and present – I wonder: Is it enough?
How do I do more? How do I advocate more courageously for the marginalised and voiceless? How do I uncover the urgency of this work, and help others feel it in their bones?
Because this is not theoretical. Young people are not blank canvases. They are not replaceable. They are not policy targets. They are living, breathing representations of tomorrow, informed entirely by what we choose to prioritise today.
And if we do not build a just, beautiful, and ethically grounded world for them, they will inherit only the debris of our neglect.
Young people are not canvases that can be replaced or discarded – they represent and become representations of tomorrow, informed by what we prioritise today.
The leadership we need
What strikes me most about the leadership I’ve witnessed – the late Imam Gassan Solomon, Dr Omar Suleiman, the late Imam Gassan Moos from Lansdowne, Professor Fataar – is how deeply unassuming it is and was. It’s not leadership obsessed with being seen. It is leadership grounded in service, guided by mentors, rooted in values, and allergic to spectacle.
This is the kind of leadership that says: ‘I am not the message – I am merely the postman.’
This is the kind of leadership that trusts in iḥsān – that everything we do must not only be right, but be done with beauty, compassion, and excellence.
Beauty as resistance
At the workshop, we spoke of adab al-iḥsān – an Islamic ethical framework that teaches us to respond to the world with presence, sincerity, and grace. That beauty is not about decoration; it is about transformation. That protest can be prayer. That a meme, a poem, a mural, a Friday khutbah, a soft-spoken act of care – each can be a form of resistance. Or even an article like this.
This ethic is what gives us a compass. In a world of surveillance, algorithmic distortion, environmental collapse, and colonial legacies still bleeding into the present, iḥsān reminds us that our actions, our words, even our silences, matter.
It reminds us that we are not here to perform perfection – but to live ethically, courageously, and with deep intentionality.
Freedom as becoming
This past Freedom Day, I didn’t feel like celebrating the past. I felt the weight of the present. And I saw, through the eyes of youth at the workshop, the desperate hunger for a future that isn’t scripted by someone else’s history.
If freedom is not redefined in every generation, it becomes a fossil. We must return to it – not as a commemoration, but as a becoming( an idea that surfaced at the youth workshop on this past Freedom Day, Sunday April 27).
Freedom is not behind us. It is in front of us. It is urgent! And it will be measured not by policy shifts, but by whether or not young people – especially the most excluded – are empowered to live full, dignified, and beautiful lives.
Our voices are covered by history, a history belonging to others.
A closing reminder
The Prophet ﷺ said: ‘God has prescribed iḥsān in all things.’
This is not a call to elitism. It is a call to radical responsibility.
- To speak with care.
- To build with compassion.
- To listen with intention.
- To protest with beauty.
- To teach with humility.
- To lead with grace.
I don’t have answers. I don’t think any of us do. But I have a direction. And that direction begins with holding the discomfort, walking with the questions, and continuing to ask – what more can I do?
Because as long as a single young person still feels disposable, our work is unfinished.
Ahmad Solomon is the owner of Forge SA, which champions youth development.
