Dear Dr.Malik Badri
Can you please explain the meaning of :( the power of mind is capable of healing a body from a particular disease)?And what is the Islamic point of view on that?
Thank you for any answer you provide
Answer
Dear daughter Mithala:
Allah created man from clay that developed into a body and a soul that is composed of the intangible spiritual aspects of his existence. Western secular science and medicine have unfortunately denied the existence of the soul. They at times refer to it as mind and other times they call it psyche. The extremists among them will even deny the existence of a mind and any sort of behavior that a person performs is viewed from the materialistic point of view i.e. the brain and its biochemical activity.
Fortunately, there is now a new generation of scientists who were able discover and show the interaction between the human mind, the spiritual dimension in man and that of his body. The evidence is too strong and convincing to try to deny it. For example, a women who is very anxious to have a baby may suddenly develop all of the symptoms and signs of pregnancy. Her period will stop, her breasts will enlarge, and her abdomen will increase in size showing the exact development of pregnancy. Even doctors are fooled by this false pregnancy. We can say that the mind has influenced the body in a dramatic manner.
From the Islamic point of view, this interaction between the soul and the body has been very clearly delineated by our early Muslim physicians such as Al-Balkhi, Ibn Sina, and Zakariya Al-Razi. They gained this knowledge from their Islamic studies of the Ayat of the holy Quran and the Ahadith of the Prophet(pbuh)that talk about the nature of man as having a body and soul and the interaction between these two components of man.
Also we should not forget the influence of Dua' and prayer as a spiritual force that can be directed towards influencing ones body or the body of another beloved person for whom we are making Dua. Allah says in the Quran that he will answer the call of those who humbly beg him when they are experiencing urgency or emergency.
Name
Samah
-
Profession
Question
Can you discuss the major differances in the cognitive approach to psychology and that of the Fruedian school of psychoanylysis? Which approach is more accurate in the understanding of human behavior and which approach is closer to how muslim scholars dealt with psycholgical diseases?
Answer
Dear Sis. Sameh:
You must be a good student of psychology who has noticed that certain theories and practices are more un-Islamic then other approaches. To understand the differences between the cognitive and the Freudian approaches to human behavior one would need to get into the differences between these perspectives with respect to their conceptions of the nature of man. When Freud developed his psycho-analytic school as theory for human behavior and a method of psycho-therapy he was greatly influenced by the anti religious secular movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As Christianity was demoted and the human soul was thrown over board a new kind of secular philosophy was very much needed to fill the vacuum created by the demotion of religion. From this point of view psychoanalysis was actually a philosophy and to some extremists a new religion. Young doctors who graduate as psychoanalysis’s will have to be psychoanalyzed themselves. This is a way of brainwashing them into a new worldview of a Freudian nature.
Since religion teaches that humans have souls and that they are responsible for what ever they do before God and that there is a here-after in which their actions will be judged, then they must have freedom of choice to either act in a good way or in an evil way. Freud demolished this conception and denied the existence of God, the soul, the here-after and human free will. In preaching his new secular conception of man he had to invent a new power which motivates humans to act in their environment. This new "god" is the unconscious. If man is motivated in what ever he does by unconscious forces then he does not have the freedom to choose. Since Freud postulated that the unconscious is propelled by sexual and aggressive impulses, the whole conception of sinful behavior and evil that religion teaches became challenged. One of the reasons why Freud was hailed by the western world at the time was because he gave Western societies a good justification for their emancipation from rigidity of Catholicism.
However, psychoanalysis has deprived man from his rational conscious motivation. The Western world of psychology had to wait for the cognitive revolution to get back its concept of mind the important role of its consciousness. This is so, because the other rival schools which dominated western psychology (behaviorism) has also played down the importance of our conscious motivations and our mind in decision making and emotions. Though they disagreed with Freud they considered the environment as the sole creator and only player in the development of human personality and action. They came with a strong paradigm of making psychology scientific by limiting their studies to stimuli and responses (S-R psychology) without caring to study the internal conscious processes in humans that make a person decide what response is produced with respect to the stimuli he received.
By freeing man from the tyranny of Freudian unconscious and behavioral scientism, Cognitive psychology became to bring us back the age-old conception of the supremacy of human conscious thinking in developing our mental and emotional reactions. This cognitive approach was the one followed by early Muslim physicians and psychologists in treating patients of various emotional disorders. They believed firmly that it is not the things directly cause us to be emotional but it is the way we look at things which causes us to react emotionally. So they considered human conscious thinking as the originator of emotional responses. Their therapy was directed toward changing the thought of the person and hence his/her emotions will automatically follow from those thoughts. Cognitive psychology clearly is more Islamically oriented then other approaches in psychology. That is so because our beliefs are the one that can influence or thoughts and emotions. So if a therapists is treating a Muslim, he/she will have to orient his/her therapy according to the religious beliefs of his patient whether the therapists believes in Islam or not.
In my own clinical practice over the last thirty years, I have always found that using this Islamically oriented cognitive therapy effective to bring about dramatic improvement in patients who failed to respond to psychiatric treatment with drugs or to psychoanalytic oriented therapy. In fact, many of my patients who had been psychoanalyzed deteriorated after psychoanalytic therapy or they were made to remember very painful incidence which increased their anxiety and feelings of worthlessness. It would have been better for them not to remember that unconscious material. The paradigm popularized by Freud that no real improvement will happen and still unconscious material is made conscious is not correct in all cases.
I hope my daughter that you will be able to become a good cognitive therapists in your western country where Muslim patients are struggling to find Muslim therapists to understand their spiritual and unique psychological agonies.
Name
Mona
- United States
Profession
Question
Al-Salamu alikom;
I would like you please to give us an explanation of what the Isrealis claim to Palastine, and what are the beliefs of the Jews in Big Israel, and what are the similarities in those beliefs and the Christian conservative beleifs?
Thank you
Answer
Dear Sister Mona:
wa alikum asslamu
This forum is for Islamic counseling and not a political dialogue; please submit your question this Monday may 13 where the live dialogue will be concerning the Palestinian issue.
Name
Abu Talha
- United Kingdom
Profession
Student
Question
Assalam alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa baraktuhu
Dear Shaikh
I wanted to ask you about the correct way of curing the problem of lack of self confidence. My childhood was not a stable one and my father spent most of the time shouting at the family and telling us all how useless we were.
I still carry the hurt with me. But alhamdulillah i have a god opinion of Allah Azawajal and that helps me throgh but i feel i am usless compared to others.
I dont have much common sense and am very forgetfull. I am very unorganised and find it difficult to maintain regularity in things.
I try my best to worship Allah Azawajl and alhamdullilah frequent the mosque and am active in dawah but i see the people being much more capable than me.
My nafs are very strong and i try to defeat them but find it very difficult especially food. If i ate to much i feel depressed and feel ashamed. I was to be in contro; of my nafs and my life but it very difficult.
I get sad sometimes and dowm about my inablity and i want to be the best for Allah and to help my family. By my lack of confidence holds me back from pushing the boundries that other people do with full vigar and confidence. I feel slow and unintelligent and feel i have little to offer Allah. I am not really good at anything and i am worried about marrying and not being a good husband to my wife and passing on my bad traits to my children. I want to be upright inshAllah and be a role modle from my children but i feel inadequate. WQhat steps cani take to try and build my confidence and be someone Allah will be proud of.
Forgive me if my question is long nd jazakhAllah Kheran Shaikh. Wa ahsan Allahu ilaik.
Your brother
Abu Talha
Answer
Dear Abu Talha:
asslamu alikum
Due to a lack of time, your question could not be answered in this session. But if you join us in next Friday’s session with Dr. Malik Badri, your question will be submitted for you, where by you can come and see your answer shortly after the session begins.
