When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face and I
Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face and I

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

1) You don’t need to know everything

I came from the music business. I knew nothing about planes. To all the entrepreneurs out there, you don’t need to know everything about what you want to do. It’s all about the idea, it’s about passion, it’s about implementing it.

2) Just do it!

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. You’ve got one life, so you can’t press the rewind button and say ‘I wished I had done that.’

So I recommend to all of you out there, just do it. Live your life to the utmost, be positive. If you fail, at least you have tried.

I have failed miserably at Formula One, but I have no regrets because I got to stand with the greats from Ferrari, McLaren, and others.

3) Passion is a key problem-solver

Dreams do come true. Don’t worry about failure. You have one life, make the most out of it. Nine times out of 10, if you have the passion, you will find a way to work through it.

4) Invest in marketing

If you have the greatest idea in the world, please, please, please put some money on marketing. This is because if you don’t put money on marketing, nobody is going to hear about your great idea.

There are so many great ideas that never took off because of a lack of marketing.

Marketing is not about the dollars, it is also about public relations (PR). In AirAsia, we had no money. So I ran around with a red cap on and said controversial things so that the press would always take a picture of me. That was our marketing in AirAsia’s early days.

We have been through so many issues, and marketing played a key role in overcoming them.

Remember SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome)? At that time, nobody wanted to fly; we all thought we are going to die.

Everyone cut their advertising, but I told my guys not to cut because this was the best time to build our brand. In fact, we tripled our advertising and everyone looked at me and said, “Are you on drugs?” I said, no, it is the best time because no one else is advertising.

When the first Bali bomb attack happened, everyone cancelled their flights. I said to the guys, we cannot let the Bali route die. We must continue to fly.

So we came up with ‘Love Bali’ campaign, giving away 10,000 free seats, and it worked. All 10,000 seats were snapped up in like under one minute. And all those who got those seats told all their friends about it on social media. Your best advertisement is your customers.

5) Leverage social media

When Malaysians get a good deal, they will tell the whole world about it. So the 10,000 people who went and had a good time in Bali, told 10,000 people that they had a good time. That was the early gestation of AirAsia’s social media.

We realised the power of social media very early on, so when Facebook and Twitter came up, we latched onto them. We were early adopters. We now have 32 million people on our various social media platforms, and 7 per cent of our business comes directly from social media.

The Bali campaign taught us that our best advertisements are our customers.

6) Don’t be scared of complaints

Complaints are actually free market research. Someone took the effort to write to you to tell you where things went wrong and how they should be improved. These are things that companies pay a lot of money for consultants to tell them that same thing.

So we treat every email preciously.

7) Focus on one image when it comes to branding

During the early days, there was the word ‘AirAsia’ and a logo of a bird in our branding.

If you look at the top brands in the world, there’s only one image that comes to your mind. When I say “Shell,” you think of the Shell logo. When I say “Coca-Cola,” you think of the word ‘Coke’ in italics, and when I say “Nike,” you think of the swoosh.

So, back to our earlier AirAsia brand, we said drop the bird – we felt it was facing the wrong way anyway – and we used ‘AirAsia’ as our logo. Just one image. Why spend double the money to promote two images?

We also dropped the blue and the green colours. I tried very hard not to go with red, because everyone thinks that I want to be Richard Branson [the Virgin Group founder and Fernandes’ former boss] ... but it was the best colour, so we picked red.

So yes, the colour does make a big difference!

8) Go on the ground

What I used to do – although I don’t do this anymore – was that once a month, I would carry bags, I would be a cabin crew [member], and also at the check-in counter.

I did this for two reasons. The first is that you can’t be an effective CEO (chief executive officer) unless you go on the ground to experience the real situation.

Here’s a true story. The baggage handling team told me that they needed belt loaders. I told them, “No, we can’t buy that as it’s too expensive.”

So one day when I was tasked to carry bags, they put me on one of the Indonesia flights. People who fly with us generally bring their house with them, but people who fly to Indonesia bring their neighbour’s house as well!

So there was a lot of bags. I broke my back in the process, and I told my team that they were right and I was wrong, and let’s buy the belt loaders.

If I didn’t do that [go on the ground] and just sat comfortably in the office, I would have made a wrong decision, damaged a lot of bags, and probably started a union.

The second reason [for going on the ground] is that I wanted to look for talent. I wasn’t looking for the talents from Oxford or Cambridge, I was looking for the Grade 3 SPM [O Levels equivalent] kind of guys who needed a second chance.

9) Never underestimate the potential of your staff

I broke all the rules in terms of hiring people. To me, as long as you have a dream, you can do anything.

There was an ex-cabin crew member – she came up to me one day and told me that her dream was to become a pilot. I told her to go for it.

Then she called me up one day and asked if she could take part in the Miss Thailand [beauty pageant], and I told her okay, as long as I get to use her photographs in our marketing materials.

She won the [Miss Universe Thailand] pageant and recently became a captain – so we are the only airline in the world with a Miss Thailand flying with us.

The moral of the story is that we have such a flat structure that she was able to tell me what her dreams were, and we were able to make a raw diamond into a diamond.

Another one of my boys, a baggage handler in Kuching, told me he wanted to become a pilot. I told him to go for it. He passed all the exams ... he had the top marks in the flying academy. Today, he is a captain.

We have many of such stories at AirAsia.

Your biggest assets, besides your ideas, are your people – because at the end of the day, it is the people who will deliver your ideas.

10) Data is king

We have a huge amount of data that we don’t know what to do with it, but everyone else wants our data ... so we figured it must be something very valuable and there must be an opportunity there.

We are investing in a few ventures. We plan to launch our own version of TripAdvisor, a travel dongle, a new YouTube-type of channel and more – data will be playing an essential role in these ventures. Data will be king. — 

On March 4-5, 2016, Zaytuna College hosted the Revisiting Al-Ghazali: Reason and Revelation Conference , which examined the work and contribution of one of the most influential scholars in Islamic history. Research papers and discussions revolved around a number of issues in Al-Ghazali’s works with an eye toward understanding and appreciating the unique approach present in his intellectual contribution and the reconciliation between reason and revelation.  In the contemporary period and among Muslims, Al-Ghazali is often approached in debates concerning Sufism but his influence and contribution in Islamic law and jurisprudence is as critical and more impactful at his time as it is in the present period . Critically, Al-Ghazali is maliciously blamed for a supposed antagonism toward reason and free inquiry in Islamic tradition , an idea that was debunked by a number of scholars at the conference.

A number of papers focused on Al-Ghazali’s critique of philosophy and the tension between reason and revelation.  Professor John Walbridge, author of the book, God and Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of Reason, discussed and systematically countered the charge that Al-Ghazali’s work was responsible for bringing an end to reason, rationality and science in the Muslim world.  Islam’s scientific high point came  almost 100-150 years after Al-Ghazali’s period, according to Professor Walbridge.  If anything those who wanted to construct and problematize later development in the Muslim world found a convenient target in Al-Ghazali considering his critique of the philosophers but not taking into account that it was their discounting the centrality of metaphysics, which he disagreed with them on and not reason or rationality.

As Orientalist and the students in the Muslim world began to construct a linear line to locate Muslim decline, Al-Ghazali’s rich contribution and centrality within the tradition was an easy target and he was  someone to hold responsible.  “Al-Ghazali genius” in President Hamza Yusuf’s view “is that he understood that the Formalists (Mutarassimun) were people who were trapped in the trappings of religion. Imam Al-Ghazali wanted to transcend those trappings and instead understand the meanings. The heart is the center of our tradition, and the heart is the center of the intellect; that is why Imam Al-Ghazali was deeply committed to reason.”

In the final roundtable among invited speakers, Professor Mustafa Abu Sway, Professor Marianne Farina, Professor Timothy Gianotti and Professor John Walbridge, a question was raised as to how best to approach Al-Ghazali’s work in our current period and, more importantly, the role of the intellectual in these difficult times. “Ask the students to write the Ihya’ ‘ulum Al-din (Revival of the Religious Sciences) for the current period” was Professor Mustafa Abu Sway’s pedagogical approach. In this way, the students think of the specific problems and needs of the contemporary period but  grounding their ideas in a Ghazalian’s approach  with knowledge being at the foundation.

The centrality of knowledge was the theme of Hamza Yusuf’s keynote address on the first day of the conference. “One of the great tragedies of modern civilization,” according to Hamza, “is the divorce of the heart from the intellect. Imam Al-Ghazali began his magnum opus, The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya ‘Ulum al-Din ), with “The Book of Knowledge” (Kitab al-‘Ilm), which is proof that Imam Al-Ghazali understood that knowledge is the foundation of this religion.”

It is important  to remember that Al-Ghazali’s arrival on the scene  was at a critical period in Muslim history where fragmentation and strife were afoot and contending intellectual and political trends were  at odds with each other. Al-Ghazali’s emergence came as chaotic conditions and prevalence of sectarian disputes made the need for a new intellectual voice at the Nizâmiyya Madrasa in Baghdad a foregone  conclusion.

The Nizamiyya of Baghdad was the preeminent educational institution of its time. Likewise, Baghdad was at the crossroads of intellectual, political, economic, social and religious currents impacting the world. The center of the classical period and Islamic high civilization was Baghdad, the city of peace as it was known. Baghdad and the Muslim world at the time were experiencing power struggles and fragmentation, which Nizam al-Mulk thought would be remedied through educational institutions and Al-Ghazali being an important building piece in it.

Around 1095, Al-Ghazali entered into a crisis phase that had him leave his teaching post, a step akin to a senior dean of a university, like Berkeley, at the height of his career opting to leave and undertake a journey of spiritual discovery. Sufi teachings and possibly the influence of his own brother Ahmed, who was versed in the spiritual path,  led Al-Ghazali to this sudden shift in lifestyle and a journey to Damascus and Jerusalem. The reasons for his departure, according to Frank Griffel, is that the “ethics and standards of a virtuous religious life while being in service of sultans, viziers, and caliphs weight  heavily on Al-Ghazali.”

We are given an indication as to the reason for departing Baghdad in one of the vows that Al-Ghazali took during his visit to the city of Al-Khalil, the location of Prophet Ibrahim’s grave, and to  “never to serve the political authorities or teach in state-sponsored schools.” Frank Griffel writes that Al-Ghazali “took the position that benefiting from the riches of the military and political elite implies complicity in their corrupt and oppressive rule and will jeopardize one’s prospect of redemption in the afterlife.”

The conference at Zaytuna College sought to revisit Al-Ghazali’s monumental contributions in order to engender deeper awareness of their sophistication and depth as well as to gain a renewed understanding of his works and his relevance to present context. Approaching Al-Ghazali’s scholarship in the framework of the prevailing conditions, debates, and challenges of his time can help contemporary readers navigate critical areas in his work that otherwise provoke narrow and unsympathetic readings. Indeed, Al-Ghazali’s critique of philosophy, and his reconciliation of Sufism and Orthodox Sunni Theology in classical period should inspire current scholars to find and renew their approaches that might resolve the contemporary and visible contradictions.