As concepts, flattering, flattery, and hypocrisy could be misinterpreted. While flattering is ‘saying nice things about someone or something’, flattery is praise that is not sincere. Precisely, this paper explains the meaning differences among the Arabic term nifaq (نفاق) as well as the English terms namely: (flattering, flattery, and hypocrisy). This paper highlights these concepts from Al Qura’an and Sunnah perspectives as well as the English literature. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to make these terms clearly defined and conceptualized and enlightens mangers in the different organizations and companies about these concepts so that they are more aware of them. While giving flattering remarks to others could be acceptable, good, and should be encouraged in organizations, flattery and hypocrisy should be unacceptable and should be avoided. The objective of this conceptual paper is to highlight and pave the way for other research studies that can validate instruments for nifaq from Islamic perspective, that is to say, in Al Quran and Sunnah. Qualitative research design was used to obtain the data of this study. Content analysis was the qualitative research technique used in this study. The results of this study showed a difference in meaning between the concepts discussed in the study and therefore these terms were well defined and conceptualized. The results also showed that Arabic is richer compared to English when it comes to hypocrisy and other relevant concepts such as mudahanah (مداهنة), mujamalah (مجاملة), and mudarah (مداراة ), that is to say, there are more synonyms for some of these concepts in Arabic than in English.

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Journal

Chan, E. & Sengupta, J. 2010. Insincere Flattery Actually Works: A Dual Attitudes Perspective. Journal of Marketing Research. pp. 122-133.

Chan, E. & Sengupta, J. 2013. Observing Flattery: A Social Comparison Perspective. Journal of Consumer Research.

Elaine Chan & Jaideep Sengupta. 2010. Insincere Flattery Actually Works: A Dual Attitudes Perspectives. Journal of Marketing Research. Vol. 47. No. 1 (Feb 2010). pp. 122-133.

Yuval Eylon & David Heyd. 2008. Flattery, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.                  Vol. LXXVII No.3, November 2008.