The perception of Public Relations

In an organization, public relations are considered to be vital, especially when the organization interacted with the society often. Public relations determine the positive image of an organization to the society in broad-spectrum due to its key role as a front-liner when communicating with the society which determines how the organization interacts with the society. In other word, public relations are responsible in building a relationship between the organizations with the society, especially in communicating.

 Therefore, in public relations, it is very important to be able to manage a good communication. Public relations everyday’s activities is to implement two ways traffic communications between an institution with the society to creates an understanding and supports to achieved designated objectives, policy, production activities and many more for the institution’s advancement or to merely creates a positive image. In addition, public relations’ activities are directly related in shaping public opinions and altered the society’s point of view. Based on this consideration, Muslims are manifesting the mission of al ‘amru wa nahyul munkar. It simultaneously be the foundation for public relations to function as it should, to demonstrate the power of opinion in shaping public opinion or what we referred as dakwah.

 The ethics of Public Relation: Conception and reality by western public relations’ academics defines ethics in accordance to the western philosophy. For instance, Hazel Barnes (1971) defines ethics as an element of philosophy which determines good and appropriate behavior. A similar definition is given by Ewing (1965), Fletcher (1968) and Mabbott (1969). In Islam, the phrase used for ethic is akhlak. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam (1979), the study of Islamic akhlak has reached its level of maturity in the eleventh century. The word akhlak comes from the word “khuluk” which can be found in the holy Al Qur’an: and verily, you (O Muhammad SAW) are on an exalted standard of character (QS 68:4). Expert of Islamic Akhlak, Ibn Sadr Al-Din al-Shirwani (1962) describes the study of akhlak as “study which illuminate the characteristics of goodness and methods to achieve it, as well as the badness characteristics and methods to prevents you from doing those badness.” The same definition has also been given by Imam Al-Ghazali, the function of ethics is to provide public relations’ practitioner several principles or defined measurements to determine what are goodness and badness, as well as categorizing responsible and irresponsible behaviors. To some extent, there are hardly differences between the western definition of ethics and the Islamic ethics (akhlak), because the two clarify the boundaries between good and bad, right and wrong. However, if it carefully studied even further, there are distinct differences between the two points of view. The difference is that the west is based on man’s thoughts or philosophers, while Islamic ethics are based upon the holy Al Qur’an and Rasullah SAW’s Hadists. Moreover, Western ethics emphasizing on the philosopher’s point of view towards good and bad from the differences of one man to another, whereas Islamic ethics is based on faith and taqwa towards Allah SWT.