Prevalence and Underlying Structure of Students’ Sejahtera Living vis-à-vis Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah

Abstract

This study explored the prevalence of sejahtera living—an idea rooted in the belief that Islam is a way of life and aligned to Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah —among students at an Islamic university in Malaysia, and tested the extent to which the students’ responses to the questionnaire items on the concept constituted meaningful and interpretable facets of sejahtera living. A total of 596 students voluntarily participated in the study, with the sample being split into two random halves. The first subsample (n1 = 298) was used to identify the underlying facets of sejahtera living, while the other half (n2 = 298) served as the sample for a cross-validation procedure. The respondents filled out an online questionnaire containing 50 items that measured the prevalence of sejahtera living. Descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis were used to address the two research objectives. Results showed that students’ reports of experiencing sejahtera living varied across items. The exploratory factor analyses, with principal axis factoring and the Promax rotation procedure, extracted five strong and reliable factors that explain the inter-correlations among items. The five-factor solution was supported by the results of a parallel analysis. As expected, the underlying facets of sejahtera living were factors associated with the preservations of faith (al-dīn), life (al-nafs), intellect (al-‘aql), property (al[1]māl) and progeny (al-nasl). The findings contribute to our current limited understanding about Muslim students’ sejahtera living, which would lead up to policy formulation and intervention.

“Servant Leadership” Vs “Leadership Competency” – towards “Sejahtera” University Working Environment

“…"Sejahtera" itself is one of the important elements in the life of every person to maintain harmony and amiable relationship among each other. Additionally, with the presence of "kesejahteraan" at work, employees will be more effective in performing their daily responsibilities, hence contributing to the success of the organisations (Nordin et al, 2022). Therefore, it is very important for university leaders to ensure there is an element of "sejahtera" exists within the university working environment.…”

“…H1 is supported plausibly because servant leadership is referring to leaders who always put others before themselves and perform their responsibilities mainly because of God. Therefore, they always remember that they are responsible for leading and moving hand-inhand with their employees for the sake of the organisations' successes and everyone's wellbeing (Nordin et al, 2022). Servant leaders are also leaders that always know their roots where they are the servant to their God thus, they must not behave arrogantly, abuse or misuse their power, lack integrity, being selfish but always act bravely to stand for their employees' rights even though the decision might jeopardise their own position.…”

Validation of a Sejahtera Living Index Using the Rasch Model

“…The results of testing a third order MSPQoL questionnaire supported the reliability of the data and the validity of the construct in terms of its convergent and discriminant validity. In addition, Nordin et al (2022) examined the psychometric properties of a locally developed sejahtera living questionnaire. Using the conventional classical test theory, these validation studies effectively established the adequacy of the maqāṣid al-sharī'ah instrument.…”