The Islamic path to inner health
Irshad outlines an approach to coping in difficult times.
Bismillah ir Rahman ir Rahim
- (To the righteous soul Will be said:) ‘0 thou soul, In (complete) rest And satisfaction!
- ‘Come back thou To thy Lord, –Well pleased (thyself) And well-pleasing Unto Him!
- ‘Enter thou, then Among the Devotees!
- ‘Yea, enter thou My Heaven!’ Surah LXXXIX Fair (Translation Allama Yusuf Ali)
This most stirring passage of the Holy Qur’an defines the Muslim conception of the hard-earned successful life. The exploit consists not in the amassing of wealth or power or prestige but, in the words of the distinguished translator, in ‘the achievement of a perfected personality’. It is the sacred duty of every Muslim, therefore, to contribute, alongside the greater or lesser works of everyday creation, an inner being which is structured in an enriching way. What then are the components of such a structure?
The Islamic point of view is that the central building block of a happily-ordered personality is the faculty of gratitude. This means that the core of a person’s active spirit should be animated at all times by an expression of grateful appreciation. This is not the equivalent of a silly, blind optimism (as caricatured by Voltaire in ‘Candide’), but rather a sober agreement to dwell, despite everything, on that which is positive and life-enhancing, and to act resolutely on the basis of this inner, guiding light.
The emphasis is to be placed not so much on the incidents of life, which can be good or bad (sometimes even extremely so) but on the potentialities inherent in the gift of life itself. Thus the Muslim prayer, five times in every 24-hour period, is designed to serve as an affirmation at each occasion of the sublime value of the life-moment: nothing less than the canvas of day/night upon which human beings have the opportunity to work, endowed as they are with subtle, far-reaching powers of mind and body, in the setting of the luminous garden of nature that is the earth!
What could be more worthy of giving thanks? And what better way to do so than to struggle to bring about by one’s deeds a good personal life in a healthy society?
The Muslim reasoning is that people who are capable of so crass an act of ingratitude as not to recognize and acknowledge, by the content of their actions, such a transfer of ‘divine potentiality’ are committing so basic an error that, as in an unsound opening in chess, this cannot help but lead to further cascading errors in their make-up. By contrast, once one has incorporated a spirit of active gratitude in the heart, one sees the world and all one’s actions in it from an infinitely higher, inspiring, healing perspective. One becomes aware of the continuous miracle of all that actually is — much more powerful than the concept of a miracle as an exception to a rule. Certainly, the findings of twentieth century science (if not those of the nineteenth century) tend to bolster such an inversion of view.
Islam is much maligned in the west for historical and political reasons. While the media latch on to isolated, controversial practices, most people remain ignorant of the main essence of Islam and the beliefs of a sizeable section of Britain’s ethnic minority community. Certain care providers are beginning to respond to the spiritual needs of their local community — for example, in the Tower Hamlets area of east London, St Clements Hospital has employed an imam (Muslim religious leader). Below and on pages 14 and 15 are three perspectives on coping, changing and helping in the face of adversity.
Muslims believe that this kind of firm grasp of the metaphysical basis of existence definitely has practical consequences. Many otherwise damaging attitudes are warded off. For example, a Muslim is expected never to give himself or herself over to corrosive self-pity, no matter how grim the circumstances (as in Surah XXI, verses 83-84, and notes 2739-40 discussing the tribulations of Job). Clearly, the human condition is prone to depression and anxiety. Islam teaches us that to begin to cope, one must shift one’s focus away from feeling victimized and instead appreciate the ways in which one has been favoured. One should never fall into the trap of despair, which is after all the most acute form of fatalism. Rather, by contemplating the bounties of God: the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink, the eyes we see with, we must cultivate an awareness of all the good which is powerfully immanent in every instant of time.
It is held accordingly in Islam that an essential factor in the health of a human being is maintaining a hopeful outlook, based on the knowledge that help from God is never more than a hairsbreadth away.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon his soul) was known for the invincible good cheer with which he always bore himself, even at times of great physical and emotional adversity. Muslims are expected to emulate the Prophet in this dimension of his being, a much harder task than merely growing a beard in outward mimicry.
Starting with this core of calm, clear-sighted positiveness, other basic attitudes seem to fall into place. In the Islamic perception, relations with other human beings are always to be conducted in a spirit of well-wishing, not ill-wishing. Even conflicts need to be mediated by a fundamentally loving cast of thought; this is what the prophet Jesus meant by his aphorism ‘Love thine enemy’ — he didn’t say ‘Love thy friend’ which would have been redundant. (See Surah XXVIII, verse 55, and note 3387 for an example of how one confronts an adversary without hatred.)
Much of the above discussion has been implicitly concerned with how a Muslim is expected to keep his or her balance while coping with difficult times and problematic situations. But the Muslim personality needs also to be armed against the perils of good fortune, said to be the greatest of all trials. A long, unbroken spell of worldly success and comfort can bring in its wake the curse of an arrogant and smug outlook on life. Nothing could be more inimical to the Muslim ideal of a pleasing personality.
The proper approach for a Muslim is to observe with respect the tension that exists between one’s fate and one’s efforts, in the knowledge that all of a person’s skills and hard work represent a necessary but by no means a sufficient condition for success. The Muslim willingly accepts in a spirit of creative humility that human power, though great, is limited, and can only thrive in the matrix of interaction with God.
At the end of a life, the time comes to submit what one has made of the gift of divine potentiality. If, along with the fruits of one’s labours, one can also put forward a personality fashioned by the working of the faculty of gratitude, it is promised that one will have good cause to be ‘well-pleased’ and ‘well-pleasing’ to God.
- Notes in the text refer to this translation. The Qur’an (or Koran, is the sacred book of Islam, the words of which were revealed by God to the prophet Mohammed.
Overcoming abuse: an Islamic approach
Aliya Haeri, a Muslim psychologist, explains how a holistic approach to recovery from trauma is compatible with the Islamic concept of self and change. Here, she uses the example of child sexual abuse.
Child sexual abuse in Muslim society is not new; it is, and always has been, the unspoken taboo in all societies everywhere, occurring whenever the natural centre of the human being or of society no longer holds.
I use a counselling process for the recovery of abuse which is based on a model of the self according to the Qur’an, Islam and Sufism. This model is rooted in unity (tawhid in Arabic) or the Oneness of Reality. According to this model, a person is inseparable in body and spirit, mind and emotions. A person is born whole and complete, and must not be looked upon simply as a cluster of behavioural patterns, or a set of symptoms of one imbalance or other, or as a victim of abuse.
All imbalances/excesses are a symptom of the lower self; one must aspire to one’s higher self if one is to avoid succumbing to the base negative tendencies. Everything in life is created in pairs of opposites. There cannot be a higher nature without a lower nature, just as there cannot be ease without dis-ease. This, simply speaking, is a law of nature. We cannot change the rule; we can only change our role. We can assume the role of our higher nature; otherwise, we will always be abused by the lower. It is by awakening to one’s higher self that one avoids abuse. One can choose to live a life of quality.
In counselling cases of sexual abuse, I guide the client through a recovery process of five steps.
Step 1: Affirming the client’s innocence
It is important to remember that the child is always innocent and never responsible for such acts. The responsible person is always the adult offender. Quite naturally, the child may have mixed feelings and may need to be reminded often of her innocence. Those who are closest to us often act as a kind of mirror. We see ourselves largely according to how others see us and treat us. If the child is supported and nurtured, she is then able to accept herself as a worthwhile human being. It is this core sense of her own self-worth and self-esteem that is at the heart of her journey towards wholeness.
In Muslim communities, the taboo of sexual abuse can be so deep-rooted that the child is faced with outright denial or rejection by her family, or a blind eye is turned. A priority must be to overcome this stigma in society, by educating the public and introducing prevention strategies to encourage greater openness and support within all sectors of society.
Step 2: Release by re-living the experience
A necessary step which the client now takes in her recovery is to re-live and remember the incident of abuse. A great Muslim sage, Ali ibn Abi Taleb, said: ‘Wherein lies the illness, there also lies the cure.’ By this, we are told that the cure is in the illness itself. By allowing the abuse to surface, one has already begun to let go of it. A client may know without a doubt that she had undergone an earlier abuse, yet so deeply buried is the memory of it that she may not be able to remember. Very often, such memories may arise quite spontaneously, particularly when receiving some form of body treatment, such as massage or reflexology.
Step 3: Healing the whole person
It is not enough to counsel the client through the trauma alone, but also to treat her at the same time on the levels of the body, emotions, mind, soul and spirit, as a unified whole being.
All existence is in constant flux and change; everything is continually creating and re-creating itself. This process of constant renewal is described in the Qur’an where it says that ‘At every instant, reality is on a new affair.’ (55:29)* A person may see her body as abused; the reality, however, is that her body today is completely new, and not the one she had when the abuse occurred. The client may ask, ‘If this is so, why then do I still feel the effects of the abuse today? Why is