Understanding Istifadah (Utilizing Time and Chance) for Personality Development in Islamic Education

Introduction

During the last decade, the number of behaviour challenges could be viewed into the certain phenomena of student involvement in the criminal task as reported by the local authority (Afriyanti and Siti, 2015; Arifin, 2015; Khalisotussurur and Ramidi, 2015). Moreover, it is reported that there is such crisis in character with a rampant occurrence of phenomena. Such indicators include violence, vandalism and adolescent mischief, dishonesty, disrespect and cruelty to peers. These incidents point out a worrying condition with declining of characters of students. The decline of the students’ morality encourages the researchers to examine the problem through the perspective of character education.

With respect to the problems of character values facing the community in general, and among the students in particular, it is necessary to make a ‘foundational concept’ as an effort to perform character education. On this regard, both general and character education are necessary as the ultimate component in the effort to instil noble characters and values (Attaran, 2015; Halstead, 2014; Tan, Naidu & Jamil, 2018). This acts as a significant attempt to equip students not only with the qualities of knowledge in the sense of cognitive aspects, but also to reflecting how mental and spiritual aspects become a basic element to develop them in order to be generations with noble character. Through implementing character education, some ways, one of which is how students should do, in terms of managing time and maximizing time for virtues inquiry, become a significant effort to instil ethical foundations for the students.

However, it is unfortunate, not many studies have been taken to particular address the point of how the students should do in the ‘specifically shared ways’ in the context of utilizing time and chance, known as concept of istifādah as a part of ethical foundation for the students. This chapter attempts to examine istifādah as moral education through taking the first stage in satisfying this gap through critical exploration. Moreover, the essentials of moral education referring to the istifādah context with a comprehensive approach is potentially explored in utilizing time and chance to enhance the quality for students interaction. The integrative morality to be implemented in the educational process refers to most encourage transforming individual qualities with spiritual and intellectual skills. The main discussion of this chapter refers to the theoretical conception of al-Zarnūjī’s Taʻlīm al-Mutaʻallim, which has the wider influential basis with its crucial guidelines in giving insights into teaching and learning practice in the context of Islamic education (Hafidzah, 2014; Huda and Kartanegara, 2015a; Mansor et al., 2015). Moreover, the distinctive point of this conceptual framework is indicated into the following. Those are the alternative practice amongst the teaching of morality amidst the pesantren (Islamic boarding), its unique model of teaching and learning appropriately advanced as the basic foundation of how to do in respect to the learning and teaching process