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It was during an ongoing debate some years ago among members of the Muslim Mental Health Group that we came to a general understanding that psychology/psychiatry only prolongs mental ill-health, not cures it! As a young practitioner starting out in the profession, I came to this conclusion quite soon when I saw the effect on a disfranchised people. To be disenfranchised over a long period of time due to institutionalized racism has been proven, by many in-depth studies in the US, to disempower a person. One begins to see oneself through the eyes of the racist institutions and "non-institutions," and loses control over one's life. The impact is so profound that it has a long-term negative effect on one's mental and physical health.
When leaders in Europe recently referred to Muslims as having a victim mentality, they were unknowingly confessing to the nature of racism (Islamophobia) in Europe. The nature of this beast is all-consuming, and the nature of many everyday racists (proactive or not) is that they sincerely do not realize the effect of their prejudicial beliefs.
Systematically killing the soul is the nature of racism. It is also the nature of secularism and materialism. Sciences developed within this frame of reference — a role which psychiatry and psychology play an intrinsic role, — are only able to address the materialistic nature of a person, and not the whole person. Psychiatry and psychology plays this role regardless of the honest intentions of the practitioner, because these ‘sciences’deny the importance of the soul, culture, spirit, and religion, unless the practitioner has other tools that can enrich these human sciences.
Materialism Gone Mad
There are those who argue for and/or against the idea of psychiatry as a science. As a science, it was to become one of the pillars of materialism, thus secularism, in the intellectual pursuit of "man becoming his own god." Psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung in the lifetime of the father of psychiatry Sigmund Freud commented,
As for Freud's therapy, it is at best but one of several possible methods and perhaps does not always offer in practice what one expects from it in theory.
As a materialistic science, psychiatry is to man what capitalism is to the soul: devoid of spirit, and is thus unable to recognize the human soul and spirit. When asked about psychology during an interactive online session at IslamOnline.net, the Muslim counselor and professor of psychology Dr. Malik Badri replied,
The pioneers of Western psychology have used their discipline to justify the secular and antireligious revolution that dethroned the church.
We, as Muslims, have had no problems between religion and science, and our conception of man is quite different from the conception of Western modernity, which uses man as an animal and is politically governed by a democracy that has no respect for the ethics based on traditional religion.
Accordingly, if psychology is to be used by Muslims, it must be based on an Islamic world view.
In another session, Dr. Badri replied:
Islamizing psychology is the only way to make psychology useful to a Muslim. That is so because Western psychology is firmly based on a materialistic world view and secular conception about the nature of humans. It is a psychology without a soul, developed to serve human beings who have denied the soul. Though psychology calls itself a science, it is in fact in many ways a philosophy or a religion that gives pseudoscientific justification for the way of life of modern Western society.
When an incident arises like Fort Hood, we react n various ways, but in general devoid of the influencing factors. The shootings of Major Malik Nadal Hassan (a psychiatrist) has been left to much speculation by the press. Imbedded in that speculation are Islamophobic (racist) overtones that outpace the school violence the US is renowned for. What we do know is that Hassan was a psychiatrist and a US Army officer at the second largest US military camp (with a focus on state-of-the-art training for Afghanistan and Iraq in the US), where he shot 41 soldiers and two civilians (13 mortalities).
What we do also know (because the mainstream media makes a meal of it) is that Hassan's religion is Islam. The labels ‘radicalism’, ‘fundamentalism’, and ‘terrorism’ naturally follows suit as the emotions of the media. The faculty of reason belongs to a person who thinks, however the mainstream media of today does not think in so doing, tar all Muslims with the same brush.
Hassan was scheduled to be stationed in Afghanistan on duty when Obama questioned (but has not stopped) the American war on Afghanistan. Hassan was not yet married at the age 39 (although it was on his mind), and we do not know if his relationship with psychiatry was in line with the Islamic world view, but if it was a strong relationship, the massacre would surely not have happened!
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A US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, Hassan was a quiet, practicing worshipper. He learned, studied, and gained his medical degree and qualification in psychiatry through the army. He gained a degree in biochemistry, and it was only in 2008 that he became a fellow in disaster and preventative psychiatry. However, it was as an intern in psychiatry that he had to undergo counseling and extra supervision because of the nature of his relationship with his patients. It is said that over a period of time it became apparent that he was disturbed about US troops in Afghanistan, and this may have been a result of counseling US soldiers, veterans of the US wars on terrorism on Afghanistan and Iraq.
It was his aunt Noel Hassan who furnished more information about him to the Washington Post, from which we learn that, like many Muslims, he was frequently being harassed to the point that he wanted to leave the army, which he had pursued for some years previous to the attack. There may have been warning signs, but the lack of coordination in providing mental health services by the military to the soldiers when the demand is high and the outcome is poor may form part of the hearings to take place on Capitol Hill.
Non-Muslim American soldier Jeremy Hinzman went AWOL and became a conscientious objector instead of allowing himself to be sent to Iraq. In an interactive interview with IslamOnline.net, he said why:
I am afraid of killing innocent people and people who are fighting to maintain control over their future rather than be exploited by a power that is around the world. If I were to be shot, my life would be over and I wouldn't know the difference.
He preferred to risk being executed and to forsake his family (he left the US) than to take the innocent lives of others. However, as a psychiatrist, Hassan would not take lives. As a psychiatrist, he might have simply had to counsel soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome stationed in Afghanistan, or maybe his expertise may have been used as one of the weapons of war. As an American psychiatrist he was part of a society where 26.2 per cent of the 18+ population has a mental illness. There has been much questioning about the mental health, and criminal records of some of the ‘soldiers’ recruited to fight in these wars. This plus the horrors of war is a Malakoff cocktail of its own!
Psychiatry as a Weapon of Torture
When one is familiar with how psychiatry can be used to turn normal healthy people into schizophrenics because they are the wrong color, one is not surprised to know that it can be used as a weapon of war. In Guantanamo Bay, psychiatry was employed to manipulate, heighten, and create phobias in detainees. Back in 2005, One a Behavioral Science Consultant informed the New York Times that "their [the medical team's] purpose was to help us break them."
The history of the development of psychiatry, particularly in the US and the UK, reveals that it was employed as an essential tool in social engineering, or eugenics, as it was known in the 19th century to the early 20th century. As for psychiatry as a tool of torture at Guantanamo, adolescent Muhammed Jawad wanted to hang himself. His records show that an army psychologist wanted to "devise a plan intentionally designed to cause emotional devastation and to break Mr. Jawad."
Psychiatry as a tool of the state serves to demonstrate what man is capable of doing to man. Without ethics, conscience, or regret, what is a budding psychiatrist meant to feel, to understand, and to officiate? Neither what Hassan did can be pardoned, nor can the environmental factors that led him to the mental state whereby all the hate, anger, violence that creates veterans who return home to tell horrific tales of their deeds, or the shattered minds left behind in the occupied territories around the world, or the professional who wakes up one day to discover the ugliness in what they have spent so many years qualifying for can actually shatter the mind, leave the body standing, and the soul in limbo!
Sources:
Badri, M. Live Marital Counseling Accessed 09 November 2009
Badri, M. Islamic Counseling Accessed 09 November 2009
Blackledge, B. Key Details Emerge About Fort Hood Shooting .Accessed 09 November 2009
Daniel, L. Army Declared Sole Suspect in Hood Shooting. American Forces Press Service Accessed 09 November 2009
Davies, A. “ Fort Hood: U.S. Army’s Largest, Mightiest Post . Accessed 09 November 2009
Global Security Fort Hood Accessed 09 November 2009
Hinzman, J. US Soldier, Consientious & Objector, and American Refugee Claimant Spc. Jeremy Hinzman. Islamonline.net Accessed 09 November 2009
James, F. Capitol Hill Hearings on Military Mental Health Accessed 09 November 2009
Jung, C. G. “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox”. Bolligen. New York. 1960
Keram, E. A. “ Will Medical Ethics Be a Casualty of the War on Terror? Accessed 09 November 2009
Knox, R. Psychologists Split Over Detainee Interrogations. Accessed 09 November 2009
NIMH The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America National Institute of Mental Health. Accessed 09 November 2009
The Examiner Major Malik Nadal Hassan: A Muslim First, and an American Second ?
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