The most important factor for each nation’s success is ambitious and far-sighted leadership that can make reality happen. I attended a seminar done by the chamber of commerce and industry in Jeddah in October 2002 made for the presence of Malaysian Prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, and I followed the details of the lecture made about him in a day before in Riyadh.
The History of Dr. Mahathir Mohammad is filled with challenges that proved the toughness, wittiness, far-sighted views and nationalism that resulted for the Doctor to become the most successful Prime Minister to be ever known in Malaysia, but the young Malaysian country is now accompanied with this doctor’s name, where he was able to successfully jumpstart the country during the past 20 years, from a country with exports in rubber and tin to a country that exports electronic, electric and other industrial products that eventually constituted 80% of exports in general.
The doctor presented the Malaysian experience in front of Saudi’s and started his words by saying: “I do not known enough details about the Saudi Economy”, with that, I believe that Dr. Mahathir Mohammad put forward a presentation that reflects his leadership ambitions and his wide experience as a prime minister to a country that proved its credibility amongst nations of this earth.
From the suggestions that he presented: the importance of turning oil and petrol to other products such as electrical energy, by producing electrical energy instead of Oil and petrol you can create a sustainable income, as to the price variations in electricity will never be the same as the variations of price in Oil, and he continued explaining: “You can also transport oil to long distances and ship it to other parts of the world by using the advantage of low cost oil production prices where the kingdom is able to build electrical power stations all around the world, at least in the form of mutual projects in the countries the intend to build their electrical stations, the attraction in such projects is in providing those electrical power stations with sustainable oil supplies”.
I am not about to go into the details of all the doctors suggestions, it was already published in newspapers, and as in any other futuristic images, they are all subject to be argued and discussed, but what hurts the most is to see many reactions in saying that what Dr. Mahathir said is fiction and dreams, and many criticizers claimed they are more realistic, but the reality is, the worst thing a nation can reach for is the lack of ambitious souls in its leaders and thinkers, could we have ever set foot on the moon as men who never dreamed in fiction and have made dreams a reality while dominating life, is what’s accomplished by Malaysia under its Prime Minister, but a dream that started quarter of a century and became a reality and fact today.
Dr. Mahathir finished his words by saying: “everything I have said in those words can be accomplished on the condition that there is naturally, a management that was able to do the necessary requirements! The choice is yours and Islam does not stand against that, in reality, Islam imposes on us the necessity of doing all what I have mentioned earlier in the possibility of accomplishing it”.
The real wealth to any nation is not in what it has from natural blessings and resources, but in what God has made from wealth and richness in the minds and hearts of its people, their thinkers and leaders, and if we changed this wealth with poverty, this poverty cannot be replaced by the wealth of all the earth combined.
Al-Refaie says him his “Inspiration of the Pen” book in an article called “I said to myself and it said to me”: your life is not what you find in others, but what you find from within yourself, if you do not add value to life you are an excess to ir, if you do not make it better than what you have found it in before, only then you can find yourself, and in yourself are the first and last limits to life, and the lives of some people maybe a small shop, and life after death is a tucked in village, and other lives are of a big city, but the life of a great one is a whole continent, if they let go of life, they become life itself”.
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