Ep 232. - How Islamic Psychology Heals Your Mind and Soul with Dr Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre
Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre holds a MSc in Neuro-Cognitive Psychology & a PhD in Systemic Neuroscience (both from Ludwig-Maximilians Universität Munich, Germany) and a Diploma in Islamic Psychology (Cambridge Muslim College). She works as a counsellor in Islamic Psychology worldwide. She authored several books in poetry as well as essays on the relationship between Western thought and Islam
Here is her profile if you wish to find out more about her:
https://linktr.ee/francescabocca
Western psychology is limited by its focus on the material aspects of human existence. My guest today is Dr. Franchesca Bocca-Aldaqre, an Islamic psychologist and neuroscientist, who asserts that much of what preoccupies Western psychology—such as the emphasis on the egotistical self, the fixation on Freudian concepts of repressed childhood trauma, and the tendency toward over-medicalization—does not only undermine healing but can also be detrimental to individuals in the long run. Islamic psychology, according to her, is a field that has been overlooked, overshadowed by a modernity that fails to recognize human beings as holistic living souls. Dr. Franchesca offers a thoughtful critique of the maladies of capitalist life and also outlines a path towards a more balanced approach to living.
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Transcript - This is an AI generated transcript and may not reflect the actual conversation
Introduction
0:00
in the Islamic world is completely lost tradition of Islamic psychology living
0:05
in the west often times has the opposite effect of what Islamic psychology should have is this really a discipline that we should be concerned about islamic psychology has been
0:14
the glue keeping together the inward and the outward in the Islamic world taking care of the diet taking care of the temperature taking care of sounds of light
0:23
of vision and all these things are actually what western psychology is arriving to today
0:29
every painful experience in a way contributes to your psychology and needs to be addressed nowadays everybody says they have a trauma right no matter how much you curate your life
0:39
the train is still going to arrive late you've actually changed a little bit of my world view here western psychology is limited by its focus on the material aspects of human existence my guest
0:53
today is Dr francesca Boka Alakra an Islamic psychologist and neuroscientist who asserts
1:00
that much of what preoccupies western psychology such as the emphasis on the egotistical self the
1:07
fixation on Freudian concepts of repressed childhood trauma and the tendency towards
1:13
overmedicalization does not only undermine healing but also can be detrimental to individuals in the
1:20
long run islamic psychology according to Dr francesca is a field that has been overlooked
1:27
overshadowed by a modernity that fails to recognize human beings as holistic living souls
1:34
dr francesca offers a thoughtful critique of the maladies of capitalist life and also outlines a
1:40
path towards a more balanced approach to living dr francesca Boka Dakraalamlaykum and welcome to the
1:48
thinking Muslim walaykum salam so it's so lovely to have you with us and the subject we're going to
1:53
talk about today is Islamic psychology now I have to say that I come across a lot of Muslims and
2:00
they tend to hold very um extreme views about this subject there are some who dismiss it outright
2:05
and say that was very fattish it's quite western um why should we care about psychology you know
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it's sort of a stiff upper lip type of approach to uh to mental health and then there's another
2:19
side in the Muslim community who recognizes uh psychology and mental health issues but their
2:25
remedy is normally read Quran which alhamdulillah we we of course have to do but the remedy is it
Islamic approach to Psychology
2:31
stops there um is there really an approach to psychology in Islam is this really a discipline
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that we should be concerned about yes thank you so much for allowing me to define this field because
2:43
I think it's the best starting point in Islamic sciences there is a discipline called almal and
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this is often translated as Islamic psychology but there is a reason for doing that and one of
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the reasons is that it answers the same questions that western psychology answers to and these are
3:02
such as who are we how do we cure our mental and spiritual health but Elnav does not only
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stop there it answers even more questions such as what is the best way of struggling to become
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better people so Malv includes psychology and more and I claim that it's a good idea to call
3:23
it Islamic psychology so that people would know what are we talking about which problems are we
3:28
answering but it doesn't stop at al-Navs actually in the classical Islamic sciences there has been
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an integration of different disciplines forming alnaf and ask answering this question such as to
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understand whether a person is morally responsible to explain the terminology and more medicine
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ethics so it becomes also an interdisciplinary field right so you're placing um ilman nafs or
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Islamic psychology within the context of these very classical Islamic sciences uh but in Islamic
4:00
history was this subject taken seriously was it was it accepted in the same level as say the
4:05
study of in Islam yes indeed i claim that Islamic psychology has been the glue keeping together the
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inward and the outward in the Islamic world and the Islamic world has pioneered not only
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the psychological knowledge seen as a philosophy so who are we but also mental health care through
4:26
institutions that we know of for example the bimaristans in the classical Islamic world yeah in
4:31
the classic madasa curriculum for people studying medicine or similar sciences Islamic psychology
4:39
as well so the cure also was studied together and nowadays we tend to have forgotten a lot of the
4:47
terminology pertaining it for example we tend to say we shouldn't have anxiety really but when we
4:54
call it wasa it is there we remember that we have such a thing in Islam or we don't talk a lot about
4:59
having a hard time but the whole cup and busk constriction and expansion we know of it seems
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like again we have disconnected the interior and the exterior so Islamic psychology is there to put
5:10
this back together I suppose my my my my query is how how much is this beyond a a subject of
Holistic Islamic psychology
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uh a remedy through Islam right so through Quran through a an observation of some of the
5:27
really important ideas of Islam and how much did Islamic psychologists in the past move beyond that
5:34
and study this discipline in in a sort of more holistic sense so this was done I would say in two
5:40
fields yeah one which was more about pathology and this was usually taken care of in the Bimaristan
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and people would come in and like a mental health hospital they would reside in it and here it was
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not only about spirituality but the body was taken into account as well so this was done
5:57
through for example taking care of the diet taking care of the temperature taking care of sounds of
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light of vision and all these things are actually what western psychology is arriving to today for
6:08
example how we do trauma work in psychology today is through integrating the body as well but then
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there was the other half of Islamic psychology which was about improving people that nowadays
6:19
in the west we would call them already healthy but we will see there is not such a distinction really in classical Islamic psychology and this was called tasks so the purification of the se
6:29
and this was an ongoing work not only when needed but throughout one's life one has to work every
6:34
day on this aspect as well right okay so when we think about mental illness today you know
Mental Illness Today
6:40
often will come across um uh people who say that I've got um mental health issues or I've got a a
6:49
problem with X or Y and they they will usually label that condition uh from a from a sort of
6:55
Islamic psychology perspective what would be the approach to uh such such a person who who feels
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that they're struggling so I would make you an example specific example which is the one of trauma yeah because nowadays everybody says they have a trauma right so it's a very overused term
7:13
but we should recognize and this is not only in Islamic psychology this is in wider mental health even many western authors agree on this that not every painful experience is a PTSD so there is a
7:25
difference between pain and a disorder because we hear that a lot right every painful experience in
7:31
a way contributes to your psychology and needs to be addressed you're saying from an Islamic perspective there are that's just not a a logic that we draw yes in my understanding every painful
7:42
experience needs to be addressed and integrated in our self and it can be a painful experience of the
7:49
body that will have a psychological consequence too and it can be a deep grief and a sorrow and
7:55
that has a psychological impact too and this is not something I'm saying because I've been educated in the 21st century in psychology if we are look if we look back for example they
8:07
talk about these so these old sorrows old pain that can really drag down the the mind and the
8:14
body of a person and how to address those and this comes in response to a claim that is very
8:20
often made in the west that for example there was not an idea of trauma before World War II
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this is simply false and we have for example in Ruhani Arazzi talks about the sodomat and naps
8:33
so these very big shocks that the soul can have and that can have uh Iben Cena says even produce
8:40
hallucinations so this is very close to serious cases of PTSD and in Islamic psychology this is
8:46
wellknown understood cured and integrated as well so earlier on uh Dr franchesca you talked about
8:53
how uh in Islamic history this subject was taken quite seriously on a practical level can you give
8:58
examples of you know beyond maybe beyond maybe uh some fleeting examples of of how seriously
9:05
this was taken in in the Muslim community yes and I will I'll start from claiming that until about
9:13
a hundred years ago Yeah i would say that even the most rural countryside Sufi would know about
9:19
these things really yes yes and in some places it is still a common knowledge people would still
9:26
work on their naps and know what it is in Islamic psychology we work on many levels we work on the
9:32
navs and we have said we we translate al navs as Islamic psychology but navs is something else navs
9:39
is the ego the psyche the mind it depends what it is depending on the level in which you are
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right so this is one aspect then there is the heart the kalb and we all know the importance of salim the sound heart in Islam there is the the mind the way we think and everybody nowadays
9:57
goes crazy for cognitive behavioral therapy right and we already have that because the cure of the akal is was through straight thinking and then we have the interaction of all these things with the
10:07
spirit the our nature the fra all these things the cure of all these things is included in Islamic
10:13
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Execution of Islamic psychology
11:24
so an Islamic psychologist um earlier on I think you used the word holistic and Islamic psychologist will see and view the human being in this holistic way and deal with the human being
11:35
as a holistic whole um um give me instances maybe of institutes that were established you know if if
11:43
any in in the Muslim world in in our history where this discipline was was um was executed was was
11:50
you know was seen by by Muslims yes so concerning the clinical side of it the Bimaristan network was
11:58
perhaps the biggest uh net and this was all over from uh North Africa until central Asia were they
12:05
staterun institutions they were run through a caf so the idea was that it was done through
12:11
private donations and they would then finance themselves and this has a deep uh effect on then
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what we will see about the abandonment of Islamic psychology because the akaf was a key player in
12:24
mental health and spiritual health in the Muslim world and in this bimarist we had doctors but not
12:30
only we also had other figures some were called for example the hakee and this is very similar
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to a psychotherapist actually because it's someone that sometimes does use herbal remedies but oftent
12:41
times does talk therapy actually even doctors did used to do talk therapy nowadays we are
12:46
very used to doctors doing these 10 15 minutes visits in which they just adjust medication but
12:52
in the alkav system the doctor used to take time and so this would become a conversation
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has many methods to really engage with the mind and enoughs of the person for example measuring
13:04
their pulse at the wrist and figuring out things that we will call today triggers them right so
13:09
causes anxiety and to evaluate that so this is part of a whole system we do not see in Islam
13:16
psychotherapy as just the only road that we need to walk through but the care for the human being
13:22
passes through psychological concepts as well although integrated so you would argue that this
13:27
discipline is very much Islamic in its nature like tapir or like it will be viewed at at that level
13:35
by Muslim practitioners of Islamic psychology yes i will just make an example that maybe helps
13:41
people understanding better what we're talking about and that is when we talk about navs we
13:46
do generally categorize levels of the navs and we we we say that a person is in a certain level and
13:52
we have to help them getting unstuck or getting higher on that and the names of these levels are
13:58
derived from the Quran so for example the lowest level of the navs is called and we know this from
14:05
and then the second level is this is also from the Quran and then we have as well so this is a
14:14
discipline which is built on Quranic terminology and whose understanding is rooted on taps right
Strong Muslim?
14:21
there may be many of my viewers some non-Muslims but also Muslims who then would maybe summarize
14:26
from what you've said so far that a strong Muslim is a Muslim who has um resilience when it comes
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to mental health what I mean by a strong Muslim is someone who uh has command of their nuffs and
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uh is in constant communication with their creator Allah subhana wa ta'ala and prays and and keeps to
14:48
halal and haram is that necessarily the logic here that a strong Muslim is a Muslim that has
14:55
strong mental health i think in statistical numbers yes but this is not true on a case-to-
15:02
case scenario and I will explain this by talking about an analogy with the physical body in general
15:09
in Islam we tend to favor a lifestyle which is conducive of good health for the body but there
15:14
are some people whose constitution is weak so they are prone to disorders and who just get sick the
15:20
same would be true about mental health at the same time there are some key virtues that if we were
15:26
to apply those from the classical I think would improve mental health in more than 90% of cases
15:32
one of them is helm forbearance and this is the ability we call it resilience it's very similar
15:38
to that and it is so important that called it the crown of virtues it is not just one good aspect to
15:45
have and to to really have it imi said that one should realize deeply so these are things which
15:56
you can see they're so rooted in the Quran and Sunnah but their application is directly involved
16:01
to many things for example not having forbearance not being able to stand through the tests of life
16:07
yeah would make people weak and we know what Iben Khalun then says concerning politics and
16:12
sociology this would is a recipe for disaster and that is what we're seeing in another way I
16:18
think in the modern society right so forbearance um sar uh being resilient These are um really
16:26
important Islamic concepts i mean are these merely intellectual ideas that one needs to incorporate a
16:32
or is there a is there a deeper sense by which we incorporate and internalize forbearance within our
16:39
psyche yes so differently from a more cognitive behavioral approach which is nowadays very often
16:46
uh used in mental health even we as Muslims do that a lot in which you you just talk through things and by realizing by cognitively analyzing it a work of the we would say of the rational
16:56
mind then it becomes true in Islamic psychology we do not go this way we tend to favor behavior
17:04
over rationality what does it mean by walking the walk rather than talking the talk uh virtues are
17:11
acquired and he's also has basis in the hadith where the prophet wasallam advised us to put in
17:17
practice good behaviors even if they don't come very natural to us even if we have to do a bit of effort this is actually a better way and this will actually train us to then in real life be able to
17:28
stand the big blows I mean I remember a hadith um which I'm going to paraphrase which suggests that
Aql and Human behaviour
17:33
if you want sar you should have sar or you should seek sar so that's a similar idea right that you
17:40
practice it in order to establish the concept how valuable and important are concepts in this
17:45
whole design of a human being because of course there may be some who just who don't focus on and
17:51
understand I don't know the concept of tawakul or risk or sabur and they don't contemplate and
17:57
think think about these ideas and so it's not going to then ensue in their in their behavior
18:03
uh are we suggesting that there is an interplay between akal here and and human behavior yes
18:09
absolutely and I think that the wisdom of the Muslim psychologist is the one of understanding
18:14
this person where is their equilibrium every person will have a different one some people are very ugly days and nowadays people we are all in our brain so I would have to say my guess is
18:25
most people would be a but there are some people that are like kalby and they really feel not only
18:30
their emotions in the shallower sense but really feel things in their heart some people are more spiritual some people are more bodily and we know that we see that in in human beings all
18:39
the time so it is in the wisdom of the therapist not to approach everyone as if they were a copy of
18:44
each other but to respect their temperament and so find the solution which is right for them dr
Different Humans
18:50
franchesca I think you've you've actually changed a little bit of my world view here because I see the world from a rational perspective so even like these Islamic concepts for me I need to understand
19:00
them deeply and and read of course a hadith and and the Quranic ayat around it in order to consolidate it and then of course emulate the practices of the prophet wasallam and the sahaba
19:10
and how they viewed tawak or how they viewed risk or but you're basically suggesting here
19:16
that human beings are actually different in their makeup and there are some people who will evaluate
19:22
and understand these psychological uh conditions through different lens not just ankle lens and so
19:29
one needs to capture an Islamic psychologist would need to understand the entry point into improving
19:36
that enough have I got that right yes this is correct and this is actually the exact reason why we can't tell people just pray it away right we have to understand the person we have in front
19:46
and we all know this and if we are not having an insight on it from a theoretical side let's
19:51
think for example how do we feel anxiety some people feel anxiety in their head they go over thinking some people feel it in their body in their necks and in their shoulders so there is
20:00
this difference and we know of this difference yet when it comes to psychotherapy and this is also very much an issue that we took from the west of seeing psychotherapy as the thing where
20:10
you're just talking and doing this journaling and psychoanalysis where you're on the couch and talking about your dreams but we shouldn't be the stereotypes in someone else's story we
20:19
have our own method and our own approach and we love complexity in Muslim culture and in Muslim
20:25
psychotherapy as well yeah now earlier on you said that not all u mental conditions maybe the
Pathologisation
20:32
term wasn't mental conditions but not all things should be pathized to the degree that um we call
20:38
it a mental illness or a mental problem i just want to unpick that uh because of course as you
20:44
as you quite rightly said we all have challenges in our lives and we all go through uh points where
20:50
uh issues happen maybe it's ofs issues happen in our lives and we have to deal with those issues
20:56
um uh I I suppose my question here is that is there a danger and maybe maybe this is leads
21:02
yourself to the critique of western psychology is there a danger of over pathologizing normal human
21:09
behavior behavior when it comes to this subject of psychology yes absolutely and I think that this
21:15
pathization has actually made a huge damage to the mental health of people and this is actually
21:21
observed already in western psychology there are many psychotherapists and many psychiatrists that nowaday argue do not give people their diagnosis okay and this is why because when people receive
21:32
a diagnosis and they say okay I am ADHD I am a depressed person and this becomes their whole
21:38
personality we see that a lot nowadays we really live in the age where people identify with their mental health to such an extent that even their new behaviors are always reduced back to that
21:48
disorders and this is a mistake psychotherapists do too so actually it is better to go through
21:54
things as they are in the moment to not try to pathize and give names to conditions which might
22:00
actually just be transient and temporary of course there are pathologies which are given a names and
22:06
we as Muslims we pioneered this if we just look at Iben Cena Razi and so on there is a great
22:12
fantastic view of diagnosis and their divisions so we do not refuse that but what I'm saying is
22:19
that human beings are full of complexity and we shouldn't see them just as a disorder also having
22:25
a disorder in mental health does not preclude anything else what I mean is that sometimes we
22:31
give in on people that have bad mental health as if they cannot grow spiritually they cannot
22:36
do anything we see them as dysfunctional members of society it's a very bad word to use but it's is the truth but at the same way we wouldn't see a sick person in their physical abilities as not
22:47
able member of society in the same way we should do with mental health we should still stimulate people that are going through something mentally to seek spiritual growth to seek community to seek
22:56
family to seek things that make life complete right because uh when you mentioned earlier that um people have different frailties they have different ways by which uh they uh observe the
Resilience to Mental health
23:08
world around them and deal with uh human behavior right um is it then fair to say that someone who
23:15
may be brittle when it comes to mental health can actually become very resilient with the right
23:22
uh the right sort of thinking and the right remedy to their um to their condition yes of course there
23:28
are people that do not have a what we would define a good mental health but which are very
23:33
insightful and can live meaningful life with a and at the same time in Islamic psycho psychology we
23:40
do tell them that they're receiving a reward for the struggle that they're going through and this is so motivating for them we have people and we I think we all know of people that are very good at
23:50
our example atuk but had waswasa for example so waswasa being explain it to some of our viewers
23:58
so waswasa is part of anxiety problems but it's a very specific one in which the thoughts that are
24:04
disruptive are religious and there are thoughts like is my woo still valid where am I should I renew it should I make prayer again and they become obsessive in nature right okay that's an
24:13
interesting I had a friend who um had this problem when it comes to woodoo and so he would spend
24:19
maybe 5 10 15 minutes doing woodoo because he was not convinced that he had made woodoo correctly
24:24
and my only remedy and My apologies i think I probably dealt with it wrong was to approach
24:30
it in a rational sense by saying well here's the hadith and you know after four times you've done it so don't worry about it and you need to just overcome it uh is that how you address these
24:40
these waspasa issues with with uh with people that have these problems well usually we we tend to go
24:46
in Islamic psychology from the easiest remedy to the most complicated so of course first time that
24:52
someone has this type of thoughts we just try to address it through the fick okay or but then if this thought is persisting then usually it has to do with a core belief that people have for example
25:03
I am responsible for my thoughts or I am asked for perfection and so we should address this if
25:08
they still don't work then maybe it is something else and so we go step by step and we should never forget this incremental uh rationale right okay that's interesting so yeah what I'm getting here
25:20
is that uh the approach of an Islamic psychologist and your your uh from this tradition the approach
25:27
of the Islamic psychologist is to think deeply about the human being and uh and their holistic
25:33
self and then uh condition the response according to according to that i mean is this purely an an
25:42
Islamic thing in a way because of course there may be other eastern traditions for example Chinese tradition whatever or Indian tradition even that may have very similar approaches uh to to to human
25:54
beings i suppose my question is how Islamic is this discipline uh when when when thinking about
26:00
human psychology yeah I think that we could draw a parallel here to something that is very proper
26:07
of our tradition and it is um a type of hadith in which the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is asked the same question by different people and he gives different answers yeah and this is one of
26:17
our inspirations as Muslim psychologists so to try to exactly address the person what they need at
26:24
that time yes here here's here's maybe a different way of viewing that question um many early Muslims
26:31
when they uh engaged with the science of medicine uh they borrowed uh a lot of medical advancement
26:40
from different societies so maybe Chinese medicine or you know Persian medicine and they would
26:47
develop it of course and incorporate it within within the the Muslim context but in a sense
26:52
the these uh medicinal um achievements were there already and Islam and Muslims is built on that is
27:00
psychology or Islamic psychology within that type of scientific context or is there actually a very
27:06
indigenous Islamic side to uh to psychology yeah actually the aspect of borrowing from different
27:13
cultures is very important in understanding Islamic psychology because indeed there are some aspects which are borrowed from the Greek tradition of course the medicine and from the
27:22
Chinese and Indian traditions some of the tipis and nowadays we do borrow from example from the
27:27
west some techniques that we might find helpful in some cases but what I'm claiming here is that Islamic psychology is truly indigenous because its goal it is mainly Islamic and that is the
27:40
of cultivating a sound heart as defined in the Quran so this cannot be taken from any other
27:46
civilization because the relationship of the servantthood which is defined as the goal of
27:51
the person and which is the path to spiritual and mental health is indeed specific to Islam
27:57
so it can't be taken from somewhere else and this also differs from one term that sometimes people
28:02
use mistakenly which is psychology for Muslims sometimes people do care about mental health
28:08
of the Muslim minority from a western approach this is another thing so it's also very helpful
28:14
to define and restrict the field otherwise it's going to go into misunderstandings so
How informed are Muslims?
28:19
what I'm getting from you there is that um when we talk about Islamic psychology it's not just
28:24
um western psychology for Muslims uh there is an an an actual discipline here that one needs to
28:31
think deeply about uh and apply now how how prepared or informed are Muslims in dealing
28:39
with these psychological problems i mean for example I mean I I know nothing about Islamic psychology but I will get people who come to me with challenges they face in their life
28:46
and I I really don't know how to address their questions i suppose my my question here is that
28:53
um how equipped do you feel the Muslim community is can an imam for example address mental health
29:01
challenges that people face within our community yes I think that here we really need to do a lot
29:07
of work to be honest because there is some basic alphabetization that is missing i think what I'm
29:14
seeing in most communities in the west is a deep disconnect between the terminology that they use
29:19
in the western language to talk about mental health and crisis and the terminology from Arabic and in the Islamic world is completely lost tradition of Islamic psychology even when
29:32
talking the same language when speaking in Arabic the connection back to these classical sciences
29:37
is often times cut so this really needs to be renewed completely because issues such as again
29:44
anxiety depression trauma when we're talking about it we can mean things in the Islamic tradition
29:51
they're not just empty containers that we use in English or whichever language okay that's that's
29:57
so um in the Islamic world today because of course uh many of my non-Muslim viewers will probably say
30:03
"Okay great so let's let's uh look at the Islamic world and we should be able to find beacons of
30:09
Islamic psychology in the Islamic world." But you're you're here arguing that if anything
30:15
um Western psychology dominates the psychology field in in the Islamic world there's a disconnect
30:21
with our past like so many of our traditions I suppose there's a disconnect with our past is that you know are there any any good signs any good models of how you understand Islamic psychology
30:31
in the Muslim world or any practitioners we should know about yes of course there is a renaissance
30:37
let's say of uh Islamic psychology nowadays so one can find practitioners that do apply it but
30:43
I think that more attention has to be put as to the reasons why Islamic psychology was lost lost
30:50
because it was not just the loss of knowledge that is very easy to get back through books
30:55
through teachers but it's the loss of a whole system that was put in place to cultivate the
31:01
selves of people to cure them when they were ill and that is a catastrophic loss and I would put
31:07
it together with the political loss that Muslims have suffered since the fall of the caliphate the
31:12
fall of the mental health system and the cure of the nurse is similar to that in effects yeah I've
31:18
I've heard a um a conversation between you and uh alhamdulillah the great brother Paul Williams
31:25
uh where you talked about one particular person is it Malik Badi maybe I I've got the name right
31:30
or wrong um tell me a little bit about Malik Badi and his contribution to renewing or this
31:37
or this renaissance in in Islamic psychology yes so Malik Badimah was a Sudanese scholar that was
31:45
very active in the English speaking world that is why we know a lot about him in the English speaking Islamic psychology community and what he did is that back in the 70s he figured out
31:54
that Muslims were at a loss concerning mental health and he figured out that they were just
32:00
imitating the west having minimal effects with Muslim clients and also betraying their whole
32:06
paradigm and the danger was big especially who was seeing the danger in the psychoanalytic approach
32:12
and in the behavioral approach approaches which reduce human being to either nothingness and
32:17
just stimulus and response or to very dark forces and this of course is something that as Muslim we
32:24
cannot accept because we believe that all human beings have a good nature their fra is toward
32:29
absolute goodness and this can be betrayed by the environment by their experiences but this goodness
32:34
is there so he started from this very simple point and then through his He passed away not too
32:40
many years ago he really helped in highlighting some contributions from scholars alazali al less
32:49
well-known scholars but very important authors in classical Islamic psychology and his interest
32:54
was how they could provide clear-cut diagnosis already back before the year 1000 for example
33:02
issues such as schizophrenia or obsessions or uh neurosis and psychosis these were clearly there
33:08
so he his his effort was towards this aspect But we shouldn't forget there were many others
33:14
who revived Islamic psychology without speaking English and of course we shouldn't be too Anglo
33:19
uh concentrated and for example we have Omanati in in Egypt uh who wrote a lot about Quran and
33:27
Alnav's hadith and alnavs so even in the Arabic world there has been a lot of revival right okay
33:33
and uh in that answer you use the term fra uh the I suppose loosely translated as human nature
33:41
uh how important is this uh concept when it comes to uh the greater science of of or discipline of
33:48
man loves this is fundamental right first of all because it is telling you something that Islamic
33:53
psychology is not just an approach for Muslims but it's an approach for human beings right and
33:59
this I believe is some is a mission that our community has towards being therapeutic for the
34:04
whole world and we have forgotten it so the idea of the fetra that everyone has this good nature
34:11
inside them and that through Malnavs through work on their navs to this internal struggle they can
34:16
rediscover it they can polish it they can bring it to light this is an amazingly positive message to
34:22
send to humanity so this is the first aspect and the second aspect is that we know some practical
34:28
tips that we will bring people close to do who they really are for example part of the fetra is
34:34
related to bodily hygiene this is not something disconnected to psychology the psyche is so uh
34:42
influenced by the body and we know for example that in some mental disorders such as depression hygiene is one of the things in which people struggle the most so knowing that we have to help
34:51
them through that route as well gives us a great advantage in treating them a lot of what we've
Overmedicalisation?
34:57
said so far implicitly um provides a critique of the western discipline of of psychology um so I
35:05
want to go into that i want to understand you know where how deep that critique is and where the overlaps are between Islamic psychology and western psychology but let's just go back
35:14
to to history i mean typically I've got a friend he's a psychiatrist and you know he he would say
35:19
that he would you know certainly have uh major problems he's Muslim major problems with the way
35:25
his discipline works and in particular he talks about the overmedicalization of mental health
35:32
uh what is the role of medicine when it comes to Islamic psychology and do you believe that do you believe that western psycho psychiatry psychology uh overmedicalizes basic human conditions or soft
35:45
human conditions yes yes I do believe so and I think that the criticism that Islamic psychology
35:51
would do to this approach as from many aspect one of them is a scientific criticism and it is
35:58
the fact that many of these medications that are prescribed are meant for acute temporary use and
36:04
there are scientific studies that show us their effectiveness and their harmfulness relative in
36:10
about one year five years course but we all well know that these are prescribed sometimes for 20
36:16
years or 30 years so from an Islamic perspective we should avoid harm we do not know these things
36:23
are harming people we do not know the effect so this from a side of responsibility we should avoid
36:29
that as much as possible secondarily medication is not the only response so we cannot help anyone
36:36
no matter what their condition is through only the channel of medication it always has to come
36:42
together with other approaches and that is why the Bimaristan model was successful because it
36:47
took people out of the context for a while and they had good food good air the the place of the
36:55
Blaristan sometimes was even chosen because of the quality of the air in it of the water in it and so
37:01
all these aspects make mental health care going it through medication means just suppressing the
37:08
symptom but this is not a merciful care this is just making the person productive again to join
37:14
a rat race which is fundamentally flawed and this is not only a criticism to western psychology or
37:22
psychiatry but to the western living system I would say right okay so uh Bimaran like
Function of Bimaristan
37:30
um how does how would it function so someone has a a mental breakdown and again I'm not even sure I'm
37:36
using the right term here but has a mental or a challenge mentally and practitioners realize okay
37:42
this person needs to be taken out of their context and they're um they have to be improved and and
37:50
helped um just like walk me through typically I don't know in the 13th century 14th century
37:56
you know a Muslim uh or a non-Muslim has has this mental ailment what would they expect from uh from
38:04
this bimaristan yes I I was just recently in the Nuri Bimaristan in Damascus and uh which is now a
38:11
museum of Arabic science and they do explain in it quite a bit and this is one of them it was one of
38:16
the most important bimaristans so in it typically the person would come in and first they would see
38:22
a place and let's talk also about the influence of architecture and art right to mental health this
38:28
is something we have forgotten really so if you have ever been in a mental health institution here
38:33
in the west they're not pleasant but just as a I went to see my friend in his workplace and it was
38:39
a very demoralizing place um so you're saying that even sort of the aesthetics of of the building
38:45
and the internals will be fought through yes of course of course and the the nur but many others
38:51
are like that is a beautiful building it is eerie it is spacious there are images of peacocks and
38:58
beautiful animals all around there is calligraphy there are mirrors there is uh marble and it's full
39:04
of plants as well there is the connection of the human being with plants and with the birds that nest inside these plants and there is a fountain and the rooms are airy and spacious and not all
39:15
connected to each other so if a person is mentally unwell you you don't want to hear their screaming in in your room so these things are given an attention and then a doctor would come to see
39:24
you and this doctor would definitely take a look at your diet and prescribe you certain types of
39:30
food of others would take a look at your clothes evening even and the color of clothes even was
39:36
thought of the color of the walls of the room was tailored for the type of sickness that the
39:42
person was going through and then would prescribe something it could be of course medication and
39:47
there is a whole science of simple medication and compound medication in Islamic uh medicine so just
39:53
one herb one one remedy at a time or more than one and there are reasons for that and then of course
39:59
you will be given a program as well this means that your day is not spent idle like nowadays
40:05
in psychiatric hospitals where the only person you see is the nurse slamming your door at 5:00
40:10
a.m and traumatizing you every morning but it is a gentle routine which is with the rhythm of the sun
40:16
and the prayer and the reading of the Quran and the animals and the air even the call to prayer we
40:22
know right in Muslim lands the tone of the call to prayer change depending on the time of the day and
40:28
its effect on the Muslim psyche so everything had to work together we're so we're at the stage of
Western psychology
40:35
this interview where we're talking about sort of criticisms of of uh western psychology um but but
40:45
earlier on there was a implicit criticism of just western living standards and again we we don't
40:50
want to overgeneralize here and and of course you know um life is different in many cities
40:56
around around the western world but generally speaking I think it's fair to say that we live in
41:02
a neoliberal society and um consumption and wealth generation is probably the most important priority
41:11
for most people men and women in these societies how damaging to our mental health is neoliberalism
41:18
i I don't like usually to speak in black and white terms but in this case I think it's appropriate to say that living in the west often times has the opposite effect of what Islamic psychology
41:29
should have and I would like to to motivate this a little bit more the first is the fact that the
41:35
nerves is told take whatever you can be greedy take more you need more and this is exactly the
41:41
lowest stage of the navs and we usually work in a model that has seven stages of the nav so there's
41:47
a lot of room to improve we're stuck in the first and the lowest which is naps al the the navs that
41:53
wants that orders that wants more more and more and the proof of it is that people when they have
41:59
this enlightenment model in the west the best they can do is criticize themsel which is the second
42:05
stage of the nerves naval the self-criticizing navs which is destructive and brings to guilt
42:11
the navsaw is supposed to be a short step and then you move on to the higher stages but in the west
42:16
wall swallow in in selfcriticism oh never this is one of the main problem that Muslims have nowadays
42:22
guilt is not ours we do not live in guilt we repent and then we move on we reorient our heart
42:28
towards Allah and then we move on and going back to to the issues of the western model on mental uh
42:35
healthcare is another disaster complete disaster is the constant distraction the technically it's
42:42
really what is the enemy of growth of the navs and which means uh scrolling and being constantly
42:49
entertained and there's music everywhere and this is not from a position of I I emphasize this is
42:54
from a position of care like I don't advise even non-Muslims to do these things and So sometimes
43:01
I claim it is correct to be sick it is good if people are feel anxiety and feel meaningless and
43:07
feel horrible in this it's fine it's good so what is the the solution then because it's it's a big
43:14
problem and in the Islamic tradition we do have a solution for this it is called zoo so aestheticism
43:20
what does it mean if the rat race is something you do not want join and if the system is broken get out of the system and there are different ways to do that and one is to want less and this is
43:32
not to sound like Buddhist this is something that comes from our tradition yes desire less consume
43:38
less eat less sleep less even sometimes can be therapeutical too and you will desire less and
43:44
you will be then a bit disconnected from this and you will find the clarity because if you do not spend all your time on social media you have time to think if you do not spend all your time
43:52
in entertainment and work and commute you will be able to gain the spiritual and mental strength to
43:59
really see the life as it is and this is required this the first step for any change i think that
44:04
that's really really fascinating i mean I I spent some time in in Muslim world in in Istanbul and of
44:11
course Istanbul is as westernized as as so many of the Muslim cities but the very basic idea of
44:17
um of of organizing your routine around the adan had a fundamental effect I think on me
44:23
you know as and and I could feel that I was slowing down in in a positive sense and I was
44:28
more contemplative where in the west you don't get really much time to think about yourself
44:34
and to think about sort of greater issues um what is it about the Islamic lifestyle that
44:41
promotes this harmony I suppose with the with the psyche yes and one key aspect here is of course
44:48
the relationship with the transcendent of course this is by itself would be something that saves the mental and spiritual health of anybody but it's a relationship with Allah subhana wa tala
44:56
yes yes but this relationship also comes through secondary relationships such as our relationship
45:02
with the world the sun nature the seasons it is absolute craziness that in the west we wake up
45:09
at 6 a.m and sometimes it's dark sometimes it's light it's hot it's what are we doing why why are we doing that to ourselves and sometimes we are so entertained and we are so into the rat race
45:19
that we do not realize we're doing something crazy but when we move out or we we see how life could
45:25
be take respecting our body respecting the world around the season the time of the day the natural
45:32
humors that the body has and the temperament has in reaction to light to to temperature to to basic
45:38
things then we realize that also other fundamental things such as the consuming of food the fact
45:44
that in the Muslim world we generally are not encouraged to eat three four five times a day but like one or two and that's enough and we discover that so many things are enough that it really our
45:55
body feels secure our enoughs feel secure because we have enough and then finally the the spirit
46:01
inside us can talk and and talk of the ro the most beautiful talk that we can have so it's not our
46:07
voice of the nav saying I want more I'm not okay and these are the lower stages of course but you
46:12
can't arrive to the higher ones before working the lower ones so you have to go through a lot of pain the voice of the r the voice of the fra is a beautiful voice and if we want to have it
46:22
to shine through we need to work on the navs by exiting many of the comforts that we're given for
46:28
granted yeah but of course you know practical life requires us not to i mean I I met a lot of people
46:33
in Istanbul who did escape the rat race and now living in in a semi-sufi state in Istanul but we
46:39
can't all do that right we have responsibilities and we have to you know earn and we have families
46:45
and so all of this uh remains a concern for us right so how in that context in the context of
46:52
of extreme capitalism let's say uh can we um uh balance our lives and have this misan that that
47:01
a lot A lot of people talk about yes I think uh a key word for that would be presence I have many
47:09
clients that tell me look I really want to improve my relationship with Allah subhana wa tala but I
47:14
cannot take four hours more to pray in a day and I tell them you're not asked that specifically
47:20
you're asked to be present with what you're doing and improving starting on that so even if you live
47:26
in the west and even if there is no adan like I live in Italy there's no adan at all we don't have a mosque most places still you have the choice you have the opportunity to being present and
47:37
classical scholars like Al Ghazali he already wrote thousand years ago about the importance
47:42
of muiba meaning waiting your intentions your actions your words being present and aware of
47:49
what you're doing selfisipline is a key ally to make use even of the worst circumstance in which
47:55
you might be do not desire to move away and run away and a parallel life because this is fantasy
48:01
said this is a sickness of the heart you have to run away from fantasizing you have to be where you are when you are just now to be the son of the instant okay it's it's really something that you
Imam Ghazali
48:13
mentioned Gazali there because of course so many people I speak to who want to escape life and want
48:20
to live in this sort of spiritual nana let's say and I'm I'm not dismissing that i think if you
48:26
can do it it's it's fantastic will cite Gazali as as someone who had this I don't know what we
48:31
would call it a a midlife crisis or a crisis of of spirituality some even say where he did leave
48:38
uh his his teaching career and uh he he went into the wilderness for a number of years
48:44
uh and and spent time thinking and rethinking some of his his uh his perspectives I mean you know but
48:51
you're you've used Gazali in the sense of saying that's actually a problematic way of in so how
48:57
how do we uh how do we square that circle when we when we think about Razali i think that there are
49:03
many ways to look at Razali and one is look at his life and one is look at his works okay these
49:08
are not exactly the same why looking into his life it is the example of a very famous teacher an of
49:16
a specific time period who had a very strong spiritual experience not all of us would go through that yeah but he wrote the revival of the religious sciences for people like us or a bit
49:28
better than us maybe but that would need to find an answer of how to practice Islam in the real
49:34
world not in his life so we do not need again to make a dream of someone else's experiences or to
49:41
have this utopia muslims nowadays tend to live in a lot of utopias of a different time a different
49:47
place and then many times they do end up radically changing their life and still being in this state
49:53
of anxiety so if we look instead of the works of Imam Razali we do see one of the earliest manual
49:59
of Islamic psychology where what he's telling us is be aware of yourself every day there is this
50:05
murataba cycle the attention towards oneself every day should go through it and it is about effort it
50:12
is about intention it is about evaluation so there is no mystical escape to that and Allah of course
50:18
can give specific experiences to people but we shouldn't be based on the specific experience of
50:24
someone else to find the path for the majority so yeah uh young people uh and maybe what I'm
Young People
50:29
going to say is a is a generalization uh I used to teach uh young people young adults and um I
50:37
found over the last 10 years that certain terms terms related to mental health became quite common
50:42
place in my interactions with them so trauma as we mentioned before becomes a very common
50:48
uh language um uh sometimes even a reason why they can't hand in an essay for example because they're
50:55
re-evaluating sort of childhood trauma for example or triggering uh is is another term that that that
51:01
is often used um um I I suppose without belittling what could actually be some very uh serious
51:10
uh uh context about person um uh just like talk me through um uh whether you feel these
51:19
uh these pathologies let's say are overused now in in in western societies and and whether
51:26
uh western psychology uh as we've I think you've intimated before uh uh addresses those sorts of
51:33
conditions in the wrong way if that makes sense yes I do believe that by using this terminology
51:39
we are doing a great mistake and we're not helping people at all because what we're telling them is
51:46
paraphrasing if you're triggered by something is you do not have the capability to face it you do
51:51
not have the internal resources to deal with it so please either shut down or run away so forever now
51:57
you can't be in a situation where that condition is in your presence because you'll be triggered
52:03
that's the only thing and the ironic thing is that the actual psychotherapy the cognitive behavioral therapy of issues like phobias is through exposure so what are we doing here sometimes I feel that
52:15
western psychology really is missing a framework with which it is working because on one side it
52:21
is very evidence-based so it tells people well you need to work on it it it's it's going to be
52:26
hard to to expose someone to their phobia is a horrible work to do in psychotherapy but at the same time telling them please do run away from it do put your boundaries another overused term
52:37
right yeah tell me about boundaries I hear this a lot yeah what what is what's that idea and why
52:42
is that a problem yeah so the idea of boundaries is that people can hurt us at any time so people
52:47
that like hurt us more than once or that hurt us systematically or that hurt us uh in in a terrible way we need to erect a wall uh around them and this makes sense in some aspect but
52:58
on the other hand the idea of putting boundaries before anything else and especially how boundary
53:04
work is done in western psychology it often times means going no contact with people like family or
53:10
close friends this is problematic because we know that things are going to come at a cost in Islamic
53:16
psychology so there are people in our life which will be there making good but then eventually also
53:23
producing some pain and sometimes it is worth it and sometimes we do not have a a possibility
53:29
to judge whether it's worth it or not we're just there and acceptance in that is going to be a key
53:35
of course I'm not saying whether there is abuse to just skip with the abuser yeah but boundaries
53:41
is another of these work that then causes people to be isolated which causes the loss of community
53:47
the loss of family ed which destroys mental health so sometimes with this very protective terminology
53:54
we're actually making people more isolated more vulnerable and less believing that they
53:59
can manage life so this is a disservice to them i remember coming across a hadith which which had a
Community living
54:04
profound effect on me it was about um a Muslim living within a community and a it's and again
54:11
I'm paraphrasing here but a a better Muslim or someone is of a better level if they live with
54:18
people and and deal with their harm than if they live alone and avoid their harm i suppose that's
54:24
what you're saying here that you know if you live in communities you are going to have to live with people who've got their foibless they've got their own uh ways of dealing with things and one needs
54:32
to find a way to live with those people rather than to isolate is that what we're saying here yes
54:37
part of it is this that that we're saying I'm also saying something else and that's we have forgotten
54:43
virtues for the price of comfort so virtues give it give us Yeah so nowadays basically the west is
54:50
telling you what matters the most is that you feel good you feel at ease with yourself the self yeah
54:56
but the point of life is that you're not going to there's going to be difficulty no matter how much
55:01
you curate your life the train is still going to arrive late and the wife is still going to
55:06
disappoint whatever things are going to happen so why not also from a rational point of view build
55:12
the resources to then be able to face these things with this hma this forbearance saying okay my navs
55:19
might be telling me I don't want this but my my heart tells me I can do this and this is good
55:25
I'm fine imagine this people if they can imagine it of course even non-Muslims would love to have
55:31
this for their life and in in the west there have been philosophies in the past for example stoicism
55:36
right it claimed you really have to bear with life and even acceptance and commitment therapy based
55:42
on Buddhism and you have to accept life as it is so we're saying something along these lines but
55:48
adding on it the reward on it and the fact that through service through hidma the human being can
55:55
realize its purpose and it is such a great feeling that even on mental health on spiritual health is
56:01
going to pay back these things and more so um I came across a situation recently of uh some
56:08
members of my family who stopped talking to one another which Islamically is quite problematic because they're very it's a close family because of what was said in in in some sort of context
56:17
right and you know I found that the the excuse was that um I need space and I can't you know
56:26
face this type of of um maybe the word trauma was used but this type of of um abuse or whatever and
56:33
it was was words it was words and an argument um um Islamically I I would imagine uh that type of
Isolation
56:42
approach to isolate yourself from other members of the family is problematic is that is that a fair I
56:49
don't know how would you how would you respond to because you see this a lot family breakdown it's not it's not on the big issues it's on you know uh behaviors and language that people Yeah yeah in
57:01
Islamic psychology we tend of course to agree with the fick of it so the fick of it is that you have three days after an argument and then you got to have to start again and Islamic psychology there
57:11
is a wisdom in it that the more you go without having done something the harder it gets even
57:17
if it doesn't make sense intuitively but if you haven't spoken to your father for two years yes
57:22
with which courage are you going to message them now but if it's 2 days 3 days yeah then it's easy
57:28
but on the other hand there is there are also some other aspects in which the cutting off is actually
57:34
an expression of the navs many times rather than a protection of the individual what do I mean
57:39
sometimes we do not want to have anyone someone in our life because they remind us that we are
57:45
not all powerful and this is not a good sign from the naps that's good so we do not want someone in
57:51
life not because they harm us more than they do good to us or because they're intrinsically evil
57:56
but because they want things done their way and we don't we want things done our way because we want
58:02
it and this is the lowest level of the navs so I also encourage people to do the navs work because
58:08
after having done it these things are not going to be a big issue anymore you're you're going to be
58:13
detached from such you know small and dayto-day issues you're going to be really able to bear
58:19
with them and to be with sakina with serenity uh through these circumstances of life without
58:26
bypassing it just saying pray more read Quran more but it is the enough's work that needs to be done so in a way you're saying that you know for the sake of yourself you should be and you should
How to improve your Nafs
58:35
uh you know within within reason you should be around people who question you even if it's unjustly in a way I know katab used to have this sort of philosophy that he used to like it when
58:47
people questioned him and and you know made him rethink his you know ego and and his perspectives
58:53
i remember actually the most cutting thing my brother said to me was I thought you were a thinking Muslim and um you know I found that you know that really there's nothing he says
59:02
that but once in an argument he said that to me and for a while I was like perturbed by that but
59:07
I think it was it was probably quite a good thing for me to hear uh it was a silly argument but it
59:13
was a good thing for me to hear so that's you know that's interesting that's you know I think you're con sort of explaining conceptualizing this human condition to allow you know we we should we should
59:24
be in context that sometimes are uncomfortable yeah and I will take again from Al Ghazali here yeah because at a certain point he says well if you want to improve in your naps if you want to
59:34
improve as a person what can you do well you could find a sheh but it's very hard to find a sheh in our time so imagine now so at a certain point he says well you could listen to what your enemies
59:43
are saying because some of the things they're going to tell about you they're going to be right so eventually the point is okay you're offended but who are you to be offended eventually we
59:54
are nothing and in the moment in which really we realize we are nothing that is the door to
1:00:00
liberation really from these uh nuffs and these vices and when we're talking about virtues and
1:00:08
you were asking me before these are good traits of behavior but good traits of behavior come from
1:00:13
realizing one's own place that not everyone is going to respect us and treat us well and make
1:00:19
us the center of the world because we aren't and that's just the reality but nowadays you know this extreme self age in which we're living everything is like an Instagram feed and we are the
1:00:30
protagonists of reality and this creates such an inflated sense of the navs that if it wasn't for
1:00:36
their naps we wouldn't know who we are and that is a disaster uh fascinating um you said there find
1:00:42
a sheh so that that seems to be you know quite in vogue at the moment you know people need how important is it especially for young Muslims to have a mentor to have someone who helps them walk
Mentors?
1:00:54
through and talk through some of their um more sort of problematic conditions yeah I think that's
1:00:59
very important but sometimes its importance is a bit overstated i would say sometimes especially in
1:01:04
the west where there is this idea I cannot achieve anything if there isn't a sheh or it's like a
1:01:11
level of the video game to be unlocked if you have the she is like your superior and we shouldn't
1:01:16
fall in this type of of problems of nightmares eventually because this is also the door of
1:01:23
spiritual abuse because if you need to have a sheh at every cost what are you going to tolerate from them and there are some some some sheh even that are putting into question the nature of what a
1:01:36
sheh should do nowadays is it just a good old ta is it going to be something different is it
1:01:41
going to be open lectures and we are seeing shuk exploring many different alleys and this is their
1:01:46
job to do i don't know what's what's going to work eventually but I think of course if one wants to really grow they need to find someone to help them because the path alone is is really dangerous but
1:01:59
it doesn't have to be a certified quote unquote sheh right it can be one's husband it can be
1:02:05
your relative your friend the imam at the mosque someone teaching you a good word it can even be a YouTube channel as long as there is growth it's fine and then Allah can put in front of you what
1:02:15
you need in that moment so do not become obsessed with some fantasy again this is really fantasizing
1:02:21
is one of the key problems in the ummah nowadays so we need to accept how reality is and one of my
1:02:29
teachers of Islamic psychology Dr rothman says that Islamic psychology is be with what is and
1:02:34
be with Allah so it's not obsessing fantasizing it's just this is who you are now how how are we
1:02:41
going to improve this great um I read something of yours or maybe heard something where you said that
1:02:47
Islamic psychology is not born to cure disorders and I found that a little bit odd um explain that
1:02:55
to me not not we're not here to cure disorders yeah this is a criticism actually that comes from
1:03:02
seeing how western psychology is a set and this is not a criticism we're only doing as Muslims there
1:03:07
is some internal criticism in western psychology too and this is the positive psychology movement that said but why does western psychology look at the human beings starting from sickness yeah so
1:03:18
and there is the stereotype right that we are all mentally sick but we only realize it when we go to the therapist and this I think is fundamentally flawed in Islamic psychology this discipline is
1:03:28
not born to cure diseases and let leave people on their own islamic psychology is supposed to be the
1:03:35
daily work you do on yourself until you're alive so of course there is going to be moments in which
1:03:42
there is an emergency but then there are going to be moments in which you're just growing and it is
1:03:47
the quiet everyday work that you do going through and improving your naps improving your kalb so
1:03:53
this is not that is born out of emergencies this is what is born also Islamic medicine is the same
1:03:59
so there is a lot of guidelines on health on food on lifestyle it is the same way we are going to
1:04:06
keep an equilibrium and to promote it not only be there when things are horrible and then throw
1:04:12
back ah right okay so in a in a way we all have to integrate some of these techniques into our lives
1:04:18
and and work on our nerves so that when we do come across challenging situations we're able to deal
1:04:24
with that inshallah in a better way that's sort of the better way the more comprehensive way of living as a Muslim yes and we have treasures from the past there is many of these classical books
1:04:35
that perhaps are the first step that anyone can really look at the work of anything on classical
1:04:43
suluk or tesia is going to cover a lot of the territory that we need to do in the daily life of
1:04:49
course for emergencies this is left to specialists but for the dayto-day work this is something that
1:04:55
we need to do and when people really discover this knowledge the knowledge of the navs they
1:05:00
will stop feeling that Islam is something outward and then there is their life their dramas their
1:05:06
mental health everything else is a parallel life they will start feeling integrated they will really start feeling the connection between the inside and the outside I think Dr franchesca
Value of companionship
1:05:16
um a while back there was a book I came across bowling alone and and this sort of phenomenon of
1:05:23
uh young people in particular living isolated lives long periods of time where they don't have
1:05:29
companionship and friendships or at least those friendships are not um involved friendships a lot
1:05:34
of it is online and a lot of it is is punctuated by long periods of isolation and we've got the
1:05:40
sort of phenomenon of solo traveling that you know it's better that you travel alone um just
1:05:47
talk me through the value of community and the value of companionship when it comes to the mind
1:05:54
yes this is fundamental and actually if we think even in the Quran there is a reminder that even
1:06:00
animals are created in communities yet nowadays we think we can live alone and this is really foreign
1:06:05
to our nature from an Islamic perspective we have many unities we're part of and there is the family
1:06:12
and then there is marriage and this creates a wider family and then there is community there is the mosque there are a lot of opportunities for people to become part of groups but many of
1:06:22
these opportunities have been destroyed for example classically a person would also be part of a corporation their colleagues would be an actual functional uh unit and this sometimes
1:06:33
would be also in the form of a tech or zawia so a spiritual unity and as these unities have been
1:06:40
destroyed they haven't been replaced by anything and of course we talk about issues such as the
1:06:45
epidemics of loneliness especially in the UK this is this is a great problem and we see it in states and in places where families are nuclear they are smaller and people tend to move out earlier when
1:06:57
they start studying or working and effect the horrible effects of mental health are well well
1:07:02
documented so from an Islamic standpoint point the key idea here is to cultivate meaningful
1:07:09
relationships we say these a lot in the west but what do we mean from an Islamic perspective well
1:07:14
this means that relationships should never be uh based around so useless talk what are they based
1:07:23
around they're based around service so that can be one love that can be another and companionship so
1:07:30
if we take good purposes and again this brings back to the nav's work because if we're doing
1:07:36
our navs work and we're interrogating ourself why are we cultivating this relationship today
1:07:42
then we need to give an answer and we need to see if that answer is compatible with these purposes but many times we just live randomly even in the Muslim community so even if we have relationships
1:07:54
we just have them because they're there sometimes even we get married because we have to get married
1:07:59
have children because we have to get children and then we become overwhelmed but enough's work can actually prevent all these things from happening because it guides a person through the stages of
1:08:09
life with presence and meaning right okay and and you know capitalist society tends to perpetuate
1:08:16
this isolation in individualism i mean of course there are some um uh neoliberal philosophers who
1:08:21
actually talk about how individualism is is the superior way of living so fundamentally
1:08:27
ideologically conceptually we would say that's harmful not just to society and and
1:08:33
the practicalities of life but it's harmful to your mental health yeah to be honest I don't I don't know how they can argue from it from mental health point because things such as spirituality
1:08:44
community are known epistemologically from both theoretical but even there are uh bases in studies
1:08:53
in observations let's say of course this is not hard science these are always observations but still they tell us something that human beings are meant for meaningful interaction and not just from
1:09:03
consumption and we can see it from all walks of life people who cultivate meaning outside
1:09:10
work and sometimes in the west we have this misunderstanding which is very harmful of mental
1:09:16
health that one can find uh self-affirmation through work or that one can find their meaning
1:09:23
through work this is such a strange idea if we really unpack it from an Islamic psychology
1:09:28
perspective because work something we do to earn money to feed our family that's what work is is
1:09:35
not the meaning of life these spheres are usually kept completely separate in classical Islam in
1:09:41
fact one would have their job and then would go to the techia and see their shift would go to their family would go to the mosque would go to many different environments yet nowadays we have been
1:09:50
we have fallen for the trick of capitalism which tells us look work more so you can become more
1:09:55
yourself which is the only thing that is moving us but we should be able to do this work of presence
1:10:01
and see illusions as such right um there's an epidemic of amongst men and uh we know that in
1:10:09
many societies i'm not sure if it's just western societies i suspect there is also a problem in in
Men
1:10:14
eastern societies that men are more susceptible to thoughts and even unfortunately um um why do
1:10:22
you think that is and how uh does your discipline Islamic psychology deal with uh this problem that
1:10:30
seems to be targeted and and focus very much on on men in particular it is it's crucial to keep into
1:10:38
account gender when we're treating mental health it's something I haven't mentioned yet but in Islamic psychology we wouldn't treat in the same way a male and a female person suffering from the
1:10:47
same disorder yeah and we have a basis for this uh in Islam and of course for example we have the
1:10:54
discipline of futa right of chivalry which is generally aimed towards men right but nowadays
1:11:00
men do not have this futua anymore they don't know really what are they meant to become what is their
1:11:05
model is it going to be the super aggressive alpha podcasterate or something whatever of
1:11:11
that or it's going to be the hyper understanding and non-threatening type of human being and in
1:11:18
both of them there is an imbalance and of course people are going if they lose their identity and
1:11:24
meaning nowadays it's it's a disaster because all you have left is identity nowadays unfortunately
1:11:30
sometimes even Islam become just an identity we we live through we are the Muslims so we should be
1:11:35
against the westerners and this is the beginning of destruction in many aspect but going back to
1:11:41
this is an issue that it is deriving sometimes from many feelings being bottled up by men by
1:11:49
men choosing more lethal ways of and not talking about it and not going through prevention and this
1:11:59
some some of part some parts of it are socialized so we have learned from the environment but some part of it talk to masculine nature of not really seeking for help a lot and that is why it is a
1:12:09
key especially in the west where this epidemic is present for the for the imams to talk about these
1:12:16
aspects of life and this is because we are losing people to it we do not have a lot of for example
1:12:23
helplines active from an Islamic perspective we do not have a lot of prevention and sometimes when a
1:12:29
does occur we talk about it in the wrong way which can actually cause um even more people to commit
1:12:36
the same act so it is necessary for people to be alphabetized about it and to consider gender as
1:12:42
well because a man without a purpose is going to have different mental and physical manifestation
1:12:49
than a woman and we should recognize this and integrate it in our earlier conversation we talked
1:12:54
about um how Islamic psychology was an embedded discipline within the Muslim world and and there
Islamic history disconnect
1:12:59
were uh institutes that was set up um that dealt with this human condition and it was a in popular
1:13:07
parliament you know there was no stigma attached to those who went through challenges in their life
1:13:12
and couldn't find sort of the internal tools to deal with it uh but of course when we think about psychology today we we often uh think about sort of western psychology and and our parents and
1:13:24
their parents often didn't you know talk about these issues and and were very uh very cold I'm
1:13:32
not not in a negative sense but cold to some of these sort of psychological issues so there seems to be a disconnect between our illustrious Islamic history where these diverse sciences were
1:13:44
taught and practiced or or disciplines were taught and practiced and uh the last 100 200 years what
1:13:51
went wrong why is there a disconnect between our current sort of condition and generation and and
1:13:58
those of the past this is a very important problem to address because sometimes it can seem this is a simple problem of oops we forgot something but it's not so this heritage has been consciously
1:14:10
destroyed through colonialism consciously yes i'll make a few examples to to make it uh more clear
1:14:16
and this is not only Muslim observers that said it but also non-Muslims such as France Fenon uh
1:14:22
who wrote and wretched of the earth he criticized western western uh psychiatry a lot and it says
1:14:28
that the west through colonialism is not only satisfied with destroying a people's present but
1:14:35
also its memory its past and this is done through psychiatry there are other authors for example
1:14:41
there has been a period in Egypt after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in which psychoanalysis became
1:14:47
the key for the elite to read uh their own past and there have been critics of it like Abdul Wahab
1:14:53
Maseri he said it this psychoanalysis reduces the soul to a bundle of dark impulses and desires
1:15:01
and this was brought to dominate these people and again in the British India there was this lunatics
1:15:08
asylum act which closed all the existing they were weren't called baristan but mental health hospital
1:15:14
tech that were taking care of them of the mentally ill and in central Asia when we had the soviet
1:15:20
uh government practices of Islam were taken as science of uh mental health instability so on
1:15:29
the one hand this criminalization of classical practices on the other hand closure of the AUAF
1:15:35
system this has been a disaster because these weren't kept in place by the states they were
1:15:41
kept in place by donation and on the Akaf we could talk a lot how that is an alternative to capitalism and to stateun institutions so this was taken out the madrasa curriculum was taken out
1:15:54
and used to teach nerv and then of course we have the intellectual colonization where it stigmatized
1:16:01
certain practices such as ria such as dicker as folk pycology like they don't really work
1:16:07
and especially the targeting of sufism in early salafism in early modernization it has a meaning
1:16:14
in the tradition of Islamic psychology because these things have been marginalized and then
1:16:19
forgotten just to go back a little bit uh ADHD and some of the sort of conditions that again I I come
Mental health conditions
1:16:26
across this amongst young young people a lot um um uh are these exaggerations uh uh uh or uh and
1:16:36
and you know you you talked about how people are identified according to these conditions just talk me through many parents will be watching this show and and they may have children who who
1:16:47
suffer from you know uh this I have a spectrum and they're on this side of the spectrum wherever like
1:16:53
talk me through how you would view some of these conditions in these type of disorders especially
1:16:58
the ones that are born in infancy we should take into account the whole system right and we
1:17:03
shouldn't criminalize like either the medication or the diagnosis I'm going to make an example and this is with ADHD sometimes Sometimes child is born and when they're less than one years old they
1:17:13
start using a screen and sometimes they're not really accompanied by a trusting figure as well
1:17:20
and sometimes they're put through long periods of isolation like kindergarten and then they
1:17:26
come back home and there are screens and then they're fed a diet which is poor and it's full
1:17:31
of sugars and a layering of conditions and then they develop ADHD now are we going to put point
1:17:37
the finger at too much diagnosis of ADHD or rather there is a whole system that is not really helping
1:17:44
development in the best way keeping in mind that development has to include nature and a contact
1:17:52
with nature and traditionally people used to have contact with animals which are used as a therapy
1:17:58
of ADHD in many cases and nutrition has a key role and screen exposure has a key role so all
1:18:05
these factors sometimes are part of the problem and it's very hard to point a finger at one and say well you shouldn't medicate people with ADHD what I claim is that this is like diabetes
1:18:15
you can't take someone off insulin if they have eaten sugar drinks for a lifetime or they had a poor lifetime for for a long time sometimes they develop a sickness and it is there so you should
1:18:25
recognize it and treat it but try to rethink the whole system and try to not only medicate but to
1:18:34
put patches in other points if possible because the more holistic the care the higher the effects
1:18:39
are going to be so combine combine medication with talk therapy with nature with a good diet and many
1:18:46
times mental health can be managed through a combination of those rather than relying simply on medication earlier on today alhamdulillah I met your son 10 years 15 years old mashallah you know
1:18:57
very very bright young man may Allah give him you know goodness uh and make him of service to his
1:19:03
ummah and um I wondered while I was walking with him how much you think about um uh your discipline
1:19:13
when it comes to uh bringing up a a child in you know societies that sometimes are hostile
1:19:19
to our traditions like what is it just like on a practical level how how do you think about
Parenting
1:19:25
because you know uh so many parents today are suffering uh maybe belatedly they didn't realize
1:19:32
but suffering from uh some of the behaviors and attitudes of their children once they reached the teenage years uh like what do you think about when bringing up when bringing up a young man
1:19:42
or a young young boy young girl in in these sorts of but this is difficult to summarize because I think about it a lot yeah so some aspects have to do with general lifestyle management and this is
1:19:53
the same as I think about myself and this is because we live in a world in an environment where the default choice is not really good for mental health and these again are simple things
1:20:03
like how much time are we spending this week in nature contemplating nature and we know this
1:20:09
is something that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam used to do so this is not marginal for hippies or whatever this is part of our balance yeah and then I think about how much did I express
1:20:20
my emotions towards him if I did give him positive inputs today uh if the feedback I'm giving him is
1:20:27
meaningful if I take took care of this also mental development and uh he's now 10 so in
1:20:33
in a stage where really the mind grows up and they start abstracting and thinking am I taking care of
1:20:38
that too so I think most parents actually have this type of thoughts so in Islamic psychology
1:20:43
what really matters is doing things foran and not because we want a certain result i think this is
1:20:52
one of the best advice for parents because people and children are going to be their own person and
1:20:57
you cannot control who they become as an adult but you can control thean the perfection that
1:21:02
you are giving to this education and if you really are focused on doing the best you can do this is
1:21:08
going to be much easier and being with a lot of less anxiety which is a key in parenting nowadays
1:21:14
many parents also tell me I'm very anxious I think every day what is he going to do when he becomes older will he find a job will these things let's leave them to to someone else's Muslims and
1:21:23
let's focus on being present great sorry I aged him by 5 years my apologies about that my final
1:21:30
question is about Gaza of course what's happened to the Muslims of Gaza is horrendous and they've
1:21:36
gone through you know almost two years of this collective pain as a as a community yet we do see
1:21:43
on our screens you know stories of resilience and stories of those who lose their family members but
1:21:50
to remain ver steadfast and have subber and you know these qualities are subhan angelic qualities
1:21:57
almost or prophetic qualities that we all wish we had when it comes to loss and when it comes to adversity um sometimes we can overromanticize of course you know what they're going through and
1:22:07
I'm sure the the pain and the anxieties remain in that society just you know h how do you evaluate
1:22:15
uh the the people of Gaza and what they're going through and and how um their psyche
1:22:22
is being impacted by this sort of grinding pain uh that they're inflicted with yes so it is it
1:22:29
is correct that what we're seeing is like great signs of faith but we shouldn't deny at the same time that Palestinians are indeed suffering and the extent to which uh they are i'm currently for
1:22:41
for a different project working through surveys of mental health done to Palestinians last year it's about a thousand questionnaires and it's heartbreaking to read them is as much sufference
1:22:51
as you can possibly imagine and some of the uh for example Gaza Mental Health Awareness Network has
1:22:57
published results and they claim that even labels such as PTSD don't work anymore because these are
1:23:04
thought for the western world where all is calm and merry and the worst thing that one can do
1:23:09
is go to war six months and come back that is much worse so however Palestinians as such do
1:23:16
have some protective factors uh against the major crisis that they still experiment because of the
1:23:22
severity of what they're going through and that is of course uh sabar and reliance on Allah let's
1:23:28
not forget community support but at the same time even in the famous hadith where we say that one
1:23:34
part of the body suffers it really does suffer let us not romanticize that let us not idealize
1:23:40
this suffering as having some sort of value that perhaps it does not have for us and perhaps for
1:23:48
us the work is to work for their mental health and to recognize that their mental health is suffering and campaigning for it and claiming that indeed is genocide causing incredible harms also
1:23:59
on mental health which is a forgotten field and let us not lose our balance for just protecting
1:24:05
ourself ignoring their pain dr franchesca Baraka fig i mean this has been a I think a really revealing conversation for me and it's been so very instructive so I thank you so much for
1:24:14
your time today thanks a lot please remember to subscribe to our social media and YouTube channels
1:24:22
and head over to our website thinkingmuslim.com to sign up to my weekly newsletter perfect