Bismillaah (In The Name Of Allaah)
Dear Reader,
Help yourself to maintain your fasting and to gain better communication skills.
I believe that there are certain rules of conduct one should follow in a discussion or a debate if one wants to achieve anything and actually reach a conclusion or find common ground with the “opponent”, and I believe I will learn more about these rules as I grow and learn throughout the years. I’d like to write down the rules I’ve gathered so far, so I can always keep them in mind and remind myself of them.
1. Be calm. This doesn’t mean that you just behave in a calm manner, it means that you should actually feel calm. If you were to be aggravated and there’s a way for you to delay your response then you should delay your response until you are calm. Of course, this is difficult to do when one is in a live discussion, but can be done when one debates on the Internet.
2. Always try to find something you agree with in the other person’s argument. This person could be the foulest of people, and saying the vilest arguments against you, your family, your friends, your people, al-Islaam, Muhammad (May the peace & blessings of Allaah be upon him), Allaah, and still you should find something however remotely that you agree with. What this will achieve is that you will narrow down the points of discussion, instead of wasting your breath getting heated about things you actually agree with.
3. Be clear in your understanding of definitions. Many times you will find that you and your opponent differ in your understanding of certain terms, and this creates confusion, misunderstanding and a pointless debate.
4. Be polite no matter what. No sarcasm, cynicism or plain ridicule.
5. Find the core reason or principle that you are discussing and restrict your discussion to that. Do not waste your time with branched out issues, maybe sometimes you will get into a discussion about something that is actually an issue that comes from a root problem and you should find that root. Solving the problem at the root helps the other person see other branched-problems differently, whereas if you were to only solve a branched-problem there will always be other issues that will remain misunderstood.
6. Stick to the issue, do not get distracted. Example: See through the smoke. Sometimes a person will say a lot of things that lack any real information, it’s just drama. See through that and look for information to discuss, don’t get sidetracked by the smoke.
If you have any points to add or even discuss, feel free to drop a comment.
{Taken from (with slight editing from me) http://abdulrahmanarif.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/rules-of-conduct-in-debates/}
Thank You so much for your time. Please forward this blog to your relatives & friends and may Allah SWT reward you. This post has been brought to you by: TnT Islamic Books and SurvivorsAreUs.com
Sincerely & Gratefully
Halimah bint David
