Abdal Hakim Murad – Medical Benefits of the Sunnah
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Cambridge Muslim college training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers
as salaam alaikum, peace be upon you. Welcome to Cambridge Muslim
colleges second annual retreat and my name is Davina and on the
development officer at CMC. We're delighted to have you here,
especially those who have come all the way just for this talk. A
special warm welcome to those who have joined us on Facebook Live.
This is the MCS very first Facebook Live session, we'd like
to encourage you to please share the link with your friends, make
comments throughout the talk. And we will also be taking questions
from Facebook at the q&a especially and also from the
audience. Now just for the benefit of those who might not have heard
about Cambridge for some college before this night, Cambridge was
in college his vision is to improve the quality of Muslim
leadership in the UK and beyond. Since its establishment, we've had
a diploma in contextual Islamic Studies, which aims to train men
and women with a background in Islamic studies to more
effectively implement their knowledge in today's world.
Recently, we've also launched a four year program in Islamic
studies in sha Allah, we hope that this will become a BA degree
subject to award validation from an external body
applications and are open for both programs. So we encourage you to
please go on our website, Cambridge Muslim college.org for
more information. We're also in the process of developing more
external programs, courses both at CMC as well as online for a wider
audience. So please sign up to the mailing list through the website
to stay updated, as well as through social media.
So tonight's talk is medical benefits from the Sunnah.
In recent years, you may have read online on Article articles about
research, say for instance, on the benefits of intermittent fasting
on physical health. So is there an intrinsic link between acts of
worse worship or better such as prayer, Salah, fasting Psalm and
physical health? And has there been recent medical research that
substantiates and sheds light on these links.
So without further delay, I'd like to introduce tonight's speaker
chef de Hakim Murad. He's the founder and Dean of Cambridge
Muslim College. He was educated at Cambridge. I lost her in London
universities and is currently the shakers I had lecturer of Islamic
Studies and the faculty of divinity at Cambridge University.
He has published and contributed to numerous academic works on
Islam, including as director of the Sunnah project, and as a
leading figure in interfaith activity, notably as one of the
secretaries of the common word statement. He is well known as a
contributor to BBC Radio four's Thought for the Day, shuffle
taking
Mila here Rahmani Raheem.
As friends of Cambridge Muslim College, most of you will already
be aware that one of our preoccupations is to maintain a
research focus on the interface between science and religion. Our
diploma and also our new four year program, which sister Davina has
just mentioned, incorporate very significant teaching modules on
science and how this impacts on Muslim doctrinal and legal
thinking. We're also the host institution for the center of
Islam and medicine. And we also host thanks to a generous donation
from the Templeton Foundation to full time research fellows, who
specialized precisely in Islam and science. These are Dr. Awesome
Islam and works on number set theory and cosmology. You heard
his fascinating lecture earlier today. And we also have Professor
John Mabry, who's a consultant gastroenterologist, who is working
on the medical outcomes of the regular habit of of Muslim prayer
for as well as by sick persons. Both are organising what looked
like very promising conferences at CMC later this year. Dr. ArcIMS
has already been announced under the title of what is consciousness
and why observers matter in quantum theory.
CMC has determination, really to be the world's leading hub for
research into the science Islam interaction relates to our
conviction that the modern world presents significant challenges to
Muslim thought and practice which needs to be very accurately rather
than imaginatively understood and resolved.
However, the science Islam relation cannot be treated as the
occasion for the collocation of individual firefighting exercises,
as so often happens, dealing with the challenges one by one, Islam
and natural selection, Islam, artificial intelligence, Islam and
organ transplantation and so on. Very often, our approach tends to
be quite busy and atomized comment really, to all these theological,
ethical and filk puzzles is the much deeper theological issue of
how Islam views matter, and its processes and the nature of the
Divine agency in the world. So it's one of our longer term
ambitious ambition.
was to focus on the questions of cosmology and causation, being, as
it were the underlying scientific issue on the basis of which the
others rest, drawing from the insights particularly, of our
Kalam heritage, in challenging some very popular understandings
or perhaps misunderstandings of the religion science relation,
which often in the western context based on Christianity is very
different view of matter and divine power, what we're looking
for is something distinctively Islamic.
So today or this evening, I want to offer a few thoughts on how our
own Muslim theological understanding of nature might
pertain not so much to these deeper questions of being and
omnipotence, those really big questions, but rather, as it were,
to the second Shahada.
If our theologians agree that the world of manifestation which we
inhabit the created world, the colon of time and space is not
split into sacred and profane, under the erotic guidance of a God
who runs some aspect of the cosmic totality, but not others. In other
words, if we resolutely and completely reject any kind of
dualism, and say that He is Allah equally shitting Kadir, Powerful
Over All Things, then the second shahada has to loyally follow the
totalizing and uncompromising metaphysics of the first,
where many Christians for instance, see Jesus entering and
redeeming a natural world which has been made dark and broken by
Adam's sin. Muslims have always developed a vision of the final
prophet who remind mankind of the world's complete surrender to God,
in a way which emphasizes man's full belongingness to it.
Hence, unlike the Christ of the Gospels, are found that is part of
his people's economic, political and marital life is example the
Sunnah is all embracing.
Now the centrality and importance of following the Sunnah, it hardly
needs to have repeating what emphasizing to a Muslim audience,
because Allah has said Laqad cannula comfy Rasulullah will
sweat on Hassan, there has ever been for you in Allah's Messenger
and excellent exemplar.
The Hassan I hear recalls the usual Arabic combination of
whoreson, the good and the beautiful. So here's a worker of
what is right, but also of what is beautiful. So in copying him in
his emulation, there is the restoration in the human order of
beauty to the world. This is the meaning really of the Hadith that
says in Allahu Ketubot if Cerna Allah police shape, God has
prescribed f7 doing the beautiful in all things, and the Hadith and
goes on to enjoin us to do certain specific things beautifully. What
either the huddlecam philoxenia depois for instance, when one of
you slaughters an animal, let him do so well and beautifully. The
commentators wondering why that particular example is given in the
Hadith tells us that tell us that the Holy Prophet uses this this
example. Apparently an earthly one rhetorically, to show that beauty
can appear and even the most mundane and even apparently
disagreeable necessities. If one can slit a sheep stood in a way
which in some way events is beauty doing it well. How much more easy
is it beautifully to design a building or illuminate a
manuscript or recite the Quran with a military this voice
you know, Revelation the world is portrayed for us as something
surpassing the beautiful and to take our due place within it we
are to act with a beauty that has to be commensurate
considering the beauty of the stars and the seas. That is not a
very easy commandment. For us poor beings of mud to obey.
But man although his proved a tyrant and a fool has taken this
trust this Amana upon himself. He is to be custodian of the same
natural world of which she is fully apart.
So are perfect man are insane camel, some Allahu alayhi wa
sallam thus balances in his soul. The balance me Zan which we see in
nature.
And just as nature contains the July Allah as well as the Jamal
the divine qualities of rigor, as well as of beauty, his own nature
necessarily manifests that combination as well in do and
spectacular balance. Just as nature contains aspects of rigor,
reflecting that aspect of the Divine fullness. So today is the
heart of the Holy Prophet. His sunnah, in other words, you
inwardly mirrors the Sunnah of God himself in the world.
And hence a human being who lives the Sunnah, inwardly and outwardly
uniting and balancing these qualities, these complementary
properties of rigor and beauty, justice and mercy inevitably
recalls the closeness of the Divine. He also she is a human, a
holy person.
Now we all know that the Quran is a book which we are invited to
read, but it also invites us to read the other book, the book of
nature.
Our religion calls itself the dental fitrah the religion of
primordial human nature,
primordial natural state,
the term honey fear, which is important in our Abrahamic
understanding of our ancient primordial roots. The term honey
fear recalls this also, as the revelation which purports to be
for the end of time, the Quran also records the sacred style of
as it was at the beginning of time, to the ancient times. Hence,
its remarkable focus on nature and on the human need to read nature,
and to understand what it tells us about nature's author. So, recall
this first for instance, we'll often watch her Kelly Dini Hanifa
stay your face towards the religion as a Hanif God's nature
fitrah upon which he created humanity, there is no change in
God's creation, that is the upright religion.
So the sense is that by being Abrahamic we moved to a time
before Judaism and Christianity, and really before civilization as
we know it back to a time of nature.
And the commentator Tabari adds that this verse refers to our
humanity back to the time of Adam, himself. truly ours is presented
as the religion which recalls the normality of ancient times, which
nowadays, paleontologists, archaeologists would say,
represents 99% of the history of our species.
So the Holy Prophet points to nature as he himself reminds us of
God.
Human time began with a garden and ends for the blessing with a
garden. luxuriant, exquisite nature is thus in this deep sense,
our natural abode, it is where we are most profoundly at home. In
its presence, the heart finds itself opening up. And there's an
evidence symbolism in his domicile in the oasis of Medina, far from
the sophisticated urban forms of classical antiquity that
surrounded by by Verdier, indicated, perhaps symbolically by
the very greenness of his dome.
Now here, one could say so much about the Holy Prophets,
engagement with Nietzsche, specifically, his respect for the
trees and the mountains, is Defense of Animals, even in the
hadith is apparent ability to communicate with them.
But given that our subject this evening is about the medical
aspects of the Sunnah, that aspect of his perfection is irrelevant in
a generic way, insofar as we intuit that we feel better when in
the presence of nature, or with animals, or when we just look up
at the sky, something within us is uplifted. Few human souls ever
kind of fail to notice that upliftment and inner joy
and that joy and sense of return of rightness and of peace is
certainly health giving.
To see beauty and particularly the beauty of virgin nature nourishes
the soul with spiritual and also measurable physiological
consequences.
So that's the kind of first point that I want to look at the, the
prophetic and operatic direction that we should look to nature as
the first of the medical benefits of the sondland. Some of this has
been picked up in the work of somebody called Semir. Zeki who is
a professor of neuro esthetics, neuro esthetics at UCL. Most of
his recent research has focused on demonstrating the brain's
identification of and response to beauty, both visual and musical
beauty. It turns out to be a gigantically subtle process. But
the conclusion for our purposes seems to be clear. Beauty is not
perceived primarily as the result of cultural conditioning. It's not
just cultures that decide what's beautiful and what's beautiful,
not beautiful, but it's something that we are somehow designed to
perceive. It's within us. And hence when we perceive ugliness,
instead, human consciousness and
Naturally instinctively recoils and reacts negatively.
To pick up on a point that I was making. In my lecture yesterday,
scientists have been trying to discern what types of music
correspond to which human behavioral types. The biggest
project, I think at the moment is one that has been undertaken at
Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, which seems to indicate
that those who listened to the blues apparently are creative and
at ease with themselves. Whereas rock and heavy metal fans have low
self esteem and are generally not outgoing people. You can look it
up and that's the outcome of the research.
But let's set that aside and return to the one who we are
proposing just to describe as the prophet of nature, the end time
messenger in who's who in this very timely and urgent way,
reminds us that we are part of the natural world, despite our
generations often quite deliberate attack on nature, the ecosystem
and also natural human manners of behaving.
We could say that we find in him four dimensions, which are in very
many traditional societies, and literature's seen as the four
dimensions of human perfection in a specifically masculine mode. So
William Blake, for instance, writes this, four mighty ones are
in every man, a perfect unity, cannot exist, but from the
universal brotherhood of Eden, the universal man to whom be glory
evermore.
And Blake has a very long and often quite indigestible poem
called the valor, in which he is essentially talking about these
four manly qualities, which he feared already, in his time, the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution were being eroded by a
scientific materialistic worldview. So these are the four
aspects of the perfect human being mind, heart, loins, and the
principle of the balance between them sounds a little bit like
Plato, but it's actually different different sets of principles.
Now in our time, with its confusions and anxieties about
gender.
One of the classic books of the so called Men's movement has been a
book by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, which is called King
warrior magician lover, rediscovering the archetypes of
the mature masculine, as a best seller amongst Americans who are
anxious about there's also in this country, I think, anxious about
what manhood could mean, in a feminist world a world of
equality, a world in which increasingly people choose and
redefine their gender identities, what are we losing, and the
author's actually spend some time on on Blake and his understanding
of this, this valla is for Forverts users for orchid
archetypes, and the writing really not as theologians but as a
psychotherapist, and as counselors dealing with the current crisis of
manhood as they see it. So they ask why so much male behavior
nowadays dysfunctional. So many men in gangs, prison, failing to
lead families or to support their wives and children.
They believe that it's because of our detachment from nature, from
an ancient and primordial selfhood, and in particular, we
lack the capacity to reconnect with those ancient human
archetypes.
Now Blake had rejected Orthodox Christianity really remember the
dark satanic mills and his famous song is actually talking about the
church. He's not talking about?
Factors, he never went to church. Instead, he believed in a kind of
Platonism. In human perfectibility, through the
rediscovery of ancient intrinsic archetypes, discovered through
primordial virtues, and this Platonism allowed him to reject
the Christian idea of original sin, the intrinsic brokenness of
our fallen human nature. For Blake as in Islam, Nietzsche is fully
indicative. That's very platonic, and the body and its tendency
towards life isn't natural teleology, towards living towards
flourishing, is to be affirmed and not fought.
Yet nowadays, as these authors more internet affirm, we are a
long way from that. Nowadays, for example, boys are no longer
initiated into manhood. And they may often lack male mentors,
particularly in a school environment where teachers very
often are mainly female, and all the teachers are really busy with
with paperwork. And the result they say can be immature behavior,
or tyranny. In other words, transplanted into our language
will say, we have deprived them of br and of nausea, and at any kind
of socially recognized transition from boyhood into manhood.
Mind heart, Eros and completeness these four things in bother mind
heart Eros completeness. I held in discipline ballots, we just didn't
have a generation that can initiate the young male into that
any longer and hence the dysfunction. And this is one cause
they say if the frequently heard female complaint there are no men
anymore.
Men, including we should say many Muslim men seem to be nowadays
rather disconsolate, weedy, introverted, unwilling to lead to
love and to show the traditional there are virtues.
And we often hear that women are in this context somewhat less
damaged.
It's true that there is a steady increase in rates of female
depression, suicide, self harm, darting disorders, and so forth.
So one in four American women has struggled with mental health
issues. One in four British women now has actually self harmed at
some point. And the rate of post traumatic stress disorder amongst
women has apparently trebled in 10 years. So we're dealing with a
very quick acceleration of the process of some kind of deep
spiritual, systemic trauma. Still, women are not filling the prisons,
and only a minority of fundamentalists are women, the
extreme aberrations tend to be male aberrations. And the reason
seems to be clear enough.
In former times, men, including Muslim men were initiated into
their manhood through br or through joining the guild, the
asana, or a tariqa. Well, now these ancient processes these
rites of passage, discipline, Tober, hardly exist. Unless of
course, there's some ritual for joining a gang which is kind of
perverse
indication of something that should be there that society is
not not supplying. Women, however, initiated spontaneously by the
onset of the menstrual cycle, they know intuitively, that they have
matured, become women, for something extraordinary and
marvelous. So it's harder in general for women to become
detached from the body and hence from nature, and hence from
remembering God. So in our time, the most crude and outspoken
loudmouth, atheist tend to be men, while the most solid custodians of
traditional religion are very often women.
Now a lot can be said about the way in which Islam which
deliberately and explicitly in its founding moment and endure and in
shrines,
a natural form of life for women promotes well being. Those who
have entered Islam from a past of confusion about gender and Prozac
taking broken relationships often seem to embrace it with a kind of
palpable relief and recognition. Maybe one reason for the often or
some mystifying fact that the majority of educated converts to
Islam in Britain are women, puzzles, secular and feminist
commentators, but there may be some, some clue to this.
Of course, some of Islam social structures of wisdom are offensive
to our anti natural and atheistic age. But that is probably not
something that should worry us but perhaps should reassure us.
Religions which comply with the value set of our profane time are
unlikely to be religions at all. They're just strategies of
accommodation, secularization. Still, I'm not going to be talking
today about Islam's gift for reconnecting us to a natural way
of being through gender, specifically, partly because the
topic of gender has been done and done to death. So many times, too
many others are talking about that.
Instead, let's rewind a bit and consider the implications of the
way in which we're talking about the Holy Prophet as the man of the
dino fitrah. What does this tell us specifically about His way? We
know that Islam is not just a package of beliefs, but his
enactment?
Engagement relationality what Amala engagement with God with
mankind with the natural world, and in the deep forms of its five
pillars, we're going to find an abundance of clues.
The first shahada does not comprise faith, but it points to
faith which is the essence and purpose of everything. It's the
most evidence of these natural forms towards which the fitrah is
pointing.
La ilaha illallah evidently means not only that, so called Gods
apart from the one God are merely human segments, with no real
At, but that every source of power and apparent causality in the
world is entirely subject to the divine command called low level,
monotone. Everything is a slimmer Muslim totality.
God is not a kind of, as I say Deus Ex con Ditas a God who
somehow doesn't seem to be around who's receded from a cosmos that
is therefore dark, and without divine control. The fullness of
Islamic monotheism always recognizes that omnipotence. This
Allah coalition in Kadir means what it purports to mean. He knows
every leaf pitfalls he threw on the Holy Prophet through He
created us, he created what we do. Allah aqualisa In Kadir
this was the victory of socialism over the Morteza particularly. So
no dualism. Therefore, God is not descending in a halo of light into
a world that has gone wrong. It's out of his control trying to put
it right with looking around in different success. The Quran
refutes all crypto pagans suggestions of a partially active
but still effectively resisted doubting.
Instead the marvels and the sublimity and the order of the
created world. The natural world to which it directs our attention
are entirely his handiwork, and there's no co author,
even time itself, as the quantum theorists and Asha writes often
seem to agree is not what we think it is.
His orb, his closeness, his presence, is total and incessant.
And this is the basis of our view of nature. Now, Islam is certainly
not animism. But if animism is in a sense, the rejection of the
distinction between the natural and the supernatural, my
definition, then actually theology in particular with its insistence
that every atom moves by the direct divine power might be said
to push back to roll back, Cartesian Aristotelian and often
Christian ideas of a dualism between nature and spirit and
return us to a very antique modality of experiencing the stuff
of the world, his or his closeness and his omnipotence, in short, as
it were maximal security to the natural order.
And this is normal Fitri human believing.
The atheist sees the world as undirected or as existing in the
grip of a merciless, relentless set of physical laws. It has no
purpose, and there are no reassurances. But this terrifying
and inhuman vision is not normal.
Since the Upper Paleolithic, human beings have been religious.
Some academics are now even wondering whether religiosity is
so natural to ourselves that atheism should technically be
considered a mental illness.
It's so intrinsic to what we've always been as part of our normal
metabolism. Now, however, that might be the advantages of belief
in the unseen are ever evidence. The believers soul is protected by
the armor of confidence and trust in God's providence. His sense of
guilt is assuaged by his knowledge of God's mercy and forgiveness.
His pain and suffering are made easier to bear by his awareness
that on some level, probably incalculable to his finite mind,
there is wisdom in all things.
And religiosity itself is healthy, helping us to deal with stress,
releasing endorphins into our system. It's the normal human
attitude which the metabolism and the brain have been adapted for
hundreds of 1000s of years. Nobody knows exactly how long but maybe
something of that order. So we are homo religious versus that's the
nature of our species. And it's a fact which the medical curricula
are now increasingly taking note of
religious faith and its associated emotions, particularly gratitude
are known to boost serotonin production. Actively religious
people live noticeably longer than agnostics and atheists or those
who believe in a religion but don't practice it.
So a very famous study at the University of Colorado, which
worked on 28,000 people found that regular worshippers live on
average seven years longer than others.
This is not apparently an obvious case of people who are in any
case, living a more healthy life, avoiding alcohol and other
narcotics for instance, not smoking, because the researchers
took care to factor in education level tobacco and
Alcohol use just to ensure parity in the findings, for some causes
of morbidity, the correlation was even more striking. They found
that death from respiratory disease, for instance, was around
twice as likely for people who did not believe or worship in a
congregation.
Generally, it seems to be the subtler diseases, asthma,
allergies, and so forth, which have a strong psychological
component, which are likely to impact significantly less on those
who have strong religious commitments.
And that finding that was the first big one, but it's been
correlated by literally hundreds of other studies. And it's now
generally accepted that religiosity as a general
principle, is strongly associated with better health outcomes and
longevity prospects.
There's a more subtle dimension to this insofar as our lifespans are
as long as we experience them to be. And here also it is emerging
that religion stretches our lives in remarkable ways. The experience
of the sublime of haber has been shown to enhance our sense of
being present in the moment, and also our subjective experience of
time. The more magnificent and or inspiring we find the world to be,
the longer our lives seem to be for us.
So Stanford University professor Stephanie Rudd, who's looked into
this phenomenon says, quote, when you feel or you feel very present,
it captivates you in the current moment. And when you are so
focused on the here, and now the present moment is expanded, and
time along with it.
And that really corresponds very precisely with Quranic injunction
to utter the SubhanAllah. When we consider creation, and each other,
and life itself, all the more wonderful and amazing, when we
realize that it's not a dull, meaningless concatenation of
particles, but is the divine artistry. It's the nature of the
believer and the gift of faith, to see the world as intrinsically
astounding.
So already we find that following a religion and hence to be in
harmony, what human beings have been adapted to for 10s of 1000s
of years, has massively benign health impact.
But earlier I was speaking specifically of Islam as being the
dino fitrah. So narrowing the compass a little bit not talking
about religiosity and worship genuinely but the specifically
Islamic form of this specifically Muslim practices.
Well, we know that the specifically Mohammed and way of
relating to the fullness of la ilaha illa is founded in the four
ritual pillars of the deen which all enact truly ancient and
timeless secret ways of being human.
And the beginning of it is with water. All living things come from
water or mineral murky John Nicola che in height. And thus it is with
our basic practices we connect with the principle of movement,
cyclic ality purity, life itself by engaging personally and
intimately with water
is ginger in woodlot, and wholesome and so on. And the
symbolism here mirrors our archetypal human intuition. Water
is from heaven, my connection with heaven we wipe away our sins and
our evil inclinations. The Quran tells us that Allah loves the
penitent and loves those who purify themselves. In the law you
have to wear been where your football motto herein.
So ritual purity, which we tend to think is just something to get us
a bit less smelly when we're going to the masjid is actually
something very profound, that has a deep impact on subconscious
aspects of the human consciousness.
Very important. A Hadith even surprises us by saying a thorough
oral shuttle Amen. Purity or purification is half of faith,
which is a pretty emphatic statement of faith and Imam
Muslim, puts this hadith in the book of widow, which shows that
for the Hadith Scholars, this is referring to the formal ritual
splashing. It's not talking about some abstract intellectual purity
or moral purity. It's talking about evolution.
Half of face. Well, of course,
you can see that it's good basic personal hygiene to watch
regularly and to wash your feet. Doctors are going to nod
approvingly.
But the important thing here more than that, deeper than that is the
profound psychology that is going on. Not only is it appropriate
that we'd be clean and fragrant when we enter a place of worship
or bow to our maker, but also we intuited that
The act of washing somehow influences the soul. Because as
we've said, body and soul are not really separate things, but a two
facets of one human thing. And what we do to one is going to have
an immediate and probably profound impact on the other.
Now, psychologists whether or not they're interested in religion are
perfectly aware of important aspects of what's going on here.
My son call it Macbeth effect. You remember the dramatic scene in
Shakespeare where Lady Macbeth frantically tries to wipe out the
blood of King Duncan, who's the king has been murdered.
In scientific research confirms the immense impact of ritual
washing practices is not a trivial thing. It needs to be addressed
with Hodor. And with with respect
to Experiments show that those who wash are more likely to act
ethically or in a selfless way, while those who do not are more
willing to engage in profane or egotistic practices. So for
instance, one big study of the so called Macbeth effect, which was
done by Katie Lillian Quist, and Chen, Bo Zhang of Northwestern and
Toronto universities, reported in the journal Science, their
concerns, again, not specifically on religious rituals. But they
find, for instance, that volunteers who were asked to think
of an immoral act are then more likely to read the letters w dash
dash H as wash, and S dash dash p as soap than those who've been
asked to think of something morally uplifting. It's a big
statistical correlation there. And then they go on to to conduct
another remarkable experiment. They ask volunteers to imagine in
their minds an immoral act, and then gave some of them the
opportunity to wash their hands, but not others. They then asked
them whether they would volunteer to help a needy student 74% of
those who hadn't washed their hands agreed, while only 41% of
the others did say.
And the reason was, those who had not had a chance to wash their
hands were trying hard to cleanse themselves by doing something
moral, his biggest statistical differences just from washing. In
other words, all the evidence suggests that the act of washing
has a powerful effect, as we will see it on the soul. We do need
those will dock taps before entering our loss sanctuary in
order to prepare ourselves.
And perhaps in these scientific findings, we can find further
encouragement to follow the prophetic prophetic advice to keep
our will whenever we can. And to renew it whenever we can. It's
silent sound advice for mind and body are like renewing the word or
is always going to have this positive impact on us.
Related to this one should mention hygienic practice, which the
Hadith specifically identifies as one of the customs of the fitrah,
which is circumcision.
And this Abrahamic practice no doubt,
assists with mental health concomitant upon cleanliness. But
it's more than that it does seem to confer a number of physical
health advantages which are now starting to be understood. So if
you look at the World Health Organization website, you'll find
that they officially urge countries to adopt mass
circumcision programs, specifically because their trials
in Africa show that circumcised men are 60% less likely to be
infected by HIV than others. 60%. It's estimated that universal
circumcision in Africa could save 3 million lives over the next 20
years.
That's only one of many factors, incidentally, which give Islam a
demographic advantage in Africa. The 10 most heavily infected
countries in Africa are all Christian. And the 10 least
infected countries in Africa are all Muslim. So the divide the map,
if you look at the website, the dividing line between high and low
rates of HIV in the continent is essentially the boundary between
the two religions follows it very accurately.
Of course, circumcision is only one factor here. There's other
things at stake Muslim modesty rules, reluctance to free mixing,
the prohibition of alcohol, which reduces inhibitions. These are
also thought by people that are looking at this to be
to make Islam actually the most effective weapon against HIV
infection the world has yet developed.
Incidentally, I know somebody who used to run a development oriented
radio program in Botswana where HIV rates are kind of
catastrophic. And part of the purpose of this, which was funded
by the United States aid agency was to increase AIDS awareness.
And he found that actually, the Muslim community was so little
affected by HIV in Botswana, that he formally suggested to the State
Department that he'd be allowed to use his radio station simply for
the promotion of Islam.
They thought about this for a while, and then they said,
wasn't quite enough. HIV is bad, but some things are worse. It's
anyway,
lower rates of STD transmission may account further still actually
not very well understood correlation between circumcision
and significantly lower levels of prostate cancer in men.
The big British urology journal BJ, you international recently
confirmed the general perception that Jewish and Muslim men have
lower rates of prostate cancer than the general population. And
one theory for this they're not really sure why it should be is
that STDs may be a factor in the onset of prostate cancer.
In any case, having cleansed ourselves, outwardly and inwardly,
we then embark on the deepest and most ancient acts in all human
culture, which is worship.
This is what we're for. That's the reason for our creation. down the
ages. Despite the endless divergences differences between
religions, holy ritual has been the central affirming act of human
life, the keystone of the individual sense of meaning, and
have the community's internal cohesion and sense of common
purpose.
Life without ritual is historically freakish. It is an
aberration, like a body trying to continue to live when its heart
has been ripped up.
Rituals are native and normal to our biology. The repetition of
physical motions, and the phrases combined with some form of mental
self regulation and direction is a truly archaic practice.
EEG and magnetic resonance imaging shows clearly how beneficial
rituals are to us. There's even evidence of permanent changes to
the brain, thanks to neuroplasticity, quite similar to
some changes which are brought about for instance, by
memorization, which might also talk about
studies of practitioners of meditation, for instance,
regularly showed that long term meditators have larger than normal
regions of the prefrontal cortex, the brain actually changes if
you're engaged in regular ritual. The implications of this is still
not clear. But it's likely that there's numerous benefits to this,
including an improved capacity to concentrate and also to remember.
And there's another intriguing dimension to this.
The normality of ritual, the life of ancient man was shaped by the
motions of the sun and the moon. And Islam as the dino fitrah
recalls us to this ancient aspect of the normality of our species,
as Muslims will use a lunar not a solar calendar. And so we refuse
as it were to fight the geometry of the solar system. We are part
of it. Sun and Moon are the husband by measure and they're
there for our reckoning.
The Muslim life which I guess exists, for the sake of prayer is
shaped by the rolling of the planet, beneath our feet, and also
by the moon's steeply and beautiful procession through its
phases. When we look up and see Sun and Moon Yesterday, we saw the
beautiful moon of Rajab here we saw what our most distant
ancestors saw with no change at all.
Nothing else in our life is quite so archaic and so fixed uncertain.
Now, modern Neo pagans with their attempt to revive their demand,
pretty inaccurate, speculative memories of how religion was like
in pre Christian England, also tried to respect the movements of
the sun and the moon. Like ourselves, the pagans seek to
understand themselves as being healed through a kind of oneness
with nature. But for them, there's no real continuity with that
ancient past. For the most part, they're hobbyists play acting,
middle class, hobbyists engaged in amateur theatricals, really, it's
not real paganism.
Now we play a more serious game. We are authentic.
We are in living unbroken continuity with a primordial past.
Nobody is really going to revive belief in Odin or Ceccato. The Neo
pagans didn't really have authentic access to ancient
tradition, who can legitimately initiate a druid
Nowadays, where is the ijazah? Why is the snad was this insular, it's
mocked up, it's dead, it to revive it is just to have a kind of
ambulance Museum.
But at least they do feel some sort of real unease about
modernity and lifestyles, disconnection from nature and our
worship of matter and money. In some sense they do.
hanker after a time when humanity intuitively recognize the sanctity
of nature, so that suddenly Let's respect them.
Still turning to the way of theater, more Celine, master of
the messengers, we find that Yes, life is still shaped primordial.
Who in modern cities still knows when the sun rises and sets? We
just pray Maghrib Nelson Sol in college probably has the least
idea when the sun sets but we are shaped by it. Only the adherence
of the dental fitrah especially in Ramadan, for instance, look out of
your window over the point blocks of Lambeth before dawn, you'll see
lights and a lot of windows.
Those people at least remember what their souls are for they're
doing something very ancient they are, they are normal.
What happens to us exactly when we are disconnected from the
fundamental rhythms of life on the planet, scientists are only
starting to understand how plugged in we are to the movements of the
sun and the moon.
We know that the lunar phases, for instance, affects sleep. So a
study at the University of Berlin Switzerland, has shown clearly
that we do genuinely sleep less well when the moon is full, even
if we're living underground and can't see the moon.
And this puzzles the scientists and there's various theories,
could it be the gravitational effect of the moon rather, as it
affects the tides? Not sure is there some human circa lunar clock
within us that still operates even if you can't see the light of the
moon, we don't actually know. But if our distant ancestors lived in
close recognition of the light of the moon and its phases, it is
reasonable that something deep within us continues to respond to
that.
Other cyclical aspects of the human metabolism which may want
and sometimes still are connected to lunar phases, such as
ovulation, or times of cyclical low testosterone production, also
known to be associated with changes in our capacity for
spatial reasoning. So somehow, this idea of the lunar month is a
basic feature of how the mind works, but in a subtle way.
So the Salat, and the other rituals, which Islam connects to
the sun and the moon, seem to relate to very deep and subtle and
actually rather poorly understood aspects of human physiology.
And ritual itself. Of course, being a natural ancient human
activity is good for us in multiple more palpable ways. Study
after study, as we've seen, indicate that rituals and prayer
do thicken the cortex of the brain. And one consequence of this
is to reduce the likelihood of clinical depression.
So Professor Lisa Miller of Columbia University's Center of
clinical psychology, who's done a lot of research on this speaks of,
quote, an entire, an extremely large protective benefit of
spirituality or religion.
In the case of rituals of the Muslim type, which are done from
memory in the absence of books, the brain also gains from the
benefits of memorization. Incidentally, interestingly,
London taxi drivers who've had to memorize all the names of the
streets in London
before they're allowed to be taxi drivers are called the knowledge.
When they have the themselves scanned, you can see this this
enlarged hippocampus in the brain, that the memory does that. And
it's the same for half as a half years of memorize the whole report
and his brain does look different hippocampus is larger, and there's
some other features as well. And science has again shown that this
does benefit our well being a larger and healthier hippocampus
produces more endorphins, which contributes to our general levels
of happiness.
The prayer also as a congregational act, reduces our
sense of loneliness and physical separation from others. And you
might think that that's kind of trivial medically. But there was a
recent British government report that dubbed London the loneliness
capital of Europe. 1.1 million British adults suffer from extreme
loneliness. And it said that the medical consequences of that are
equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It is not good
for us to be alone. Yet Elahi mal drummer, God's hand is over the
congregation who
The prophet tells us we have to be with others us is a religion, of
fellowship of brotherhood of togetherness. It's not really a
religion of solitaries.
Now, the Muslim style of prayer, unlike the prayer that exists in
certain other religions that are a bit more buttoned up
in includes a lot of close physical contact, it's recommended
to be physically touching the worshipers on either side.
shaking their hands afterwards is also a widespread Islamic
practice. And again, studies seem to agree that physically touching
other human beings releases oxytocin, raising the spirits
contributing to general wellbeing.
Modern lives tend to atomize us to separate us out particularly when
we engage with others to technology, most of our friends
may not even be in the same country.
But it's normal for human beings to touch each other, to embrace
and to experience each other's proximity. And clearly, the
obligations of the Sangha can really help us to reconnect with
this and this is particularly important for solitary is for
older people, to have that practice of five times a day going
to the mosque and being physically with other people helps enormously
to dispel this problem of loneliness, and to release that,
that oxytocin. So staying in company with others and
maintaining high endorphin oxytocin levels, also protects us
from addictions of various kinds.
Some of these are particularly damaging the most recent being the
current epidemic of * addiction. Recent research right
here at University of Cambridge, emphasized how * use
causes permanent changes in the brain, particularly when the brain
is in distill formative state for teenagers and young people.
Dopamine, the pleasure chemical is constantly being triggered in an
abusive way, which leads * addicts to more and
more extreme and violent images, the next picture has to be still
more extreme in order to get the same.
The same high scans show the brain of those who regularly use
* resembles the brain of drug addicts.
The teenagers now being addicted to this stuff, routinely impose
the preferences of their newly modified brains on their
girlfriends and find the girlfriends not up to scratch. And
the result yet another reason for the volatility of relationships
amongst young people, and also stress for girls and young women
as they modify their behavior and physical appearance, sometimes
even surgically, in order to comply with our partners. Internet
induced preferences, and this is a real source of anxiety and even
suicide amongst young girls, trying to live up to the
expectations of a partner or boyfriends brain.
The brain has been has been changed, thanks to repeated
* use
another modern addiction, which happens with increasing frequency
in our Muslim communities. And it's also related to low self
esteem and loneliness is what some are calling fundamentalism
addiction.
And that might require some thought. There was a very
interesting book by Catholic priests called Leah booth called
when God becomes a drug.
And it gives some sobering examples of how this works
in his Christian world, but I think also in the world of a lot
of young Muslim extremists and fundamentalist, those who go in
and out of extreme forms of religion are often coming and
going from drug addiction problems.
Again, fundamentalism becomes a way of dealing with the dark,
external world which stimulates a happy rush of dopamine production
in the brain. So here's his list of Telltale symptoms of
fundamentalism addiction, and listen to this. This isn't his
Catholic world, but it does fit with the mindset of some of our
extremists. One the use of guilt to punish oneself or others.
Number two, manipulative behavior. Number three, finding pleasure in
identifying the faults of others. Number four, using religion to
avoid social and emotional issues in the family, typically,
number five, a general tendency to be antisocial and insensitive to
the experiences of others. Well, it does sound depressingly
familiar. Again, a correct and balanced Muslim lifestyle far from
drugs and lonely vices is likely to be a very strong protection
against this pathological state. Protection from extremism.
fundamentalism is not just a matter of teaching people the
correct Aqeedah it's also a matter of people's psychological state,
and the self esteem as the Holy Prophet tells us famous Hi
decent Sahih Muslim Hello Can matar not their own May the
extremist zealots perish is not some kind of Western thing is our
own tradition also
strongly dislikes extreme obsessive, fanatical dark types of
religion, the Holy Prophet, more or less curses them.
So positive health outcomes of the kind that we have been describing
oral consequences amongst other things of the practice of regular,
very regular preferably congregational ritual. And this is
again to turn back to the scientific literature pretty
firmly accepted now.
So here for instance, is the verdict of Duke University's Dr.
Harold Koenig.
Studies have shown that prayer can prevent people from getting sick,
and when they do get sick prayer can help them get better faster.
John Mabry and Cambridge Muslim college is doing work specifically
on this. He goes on, quote, the benefits of devout religious
practice, particularly involvement in a faith, community and
religious commitment are that people cope better. In general,
they cope with stress better, they experience greater well being
because they have more hope. They're more optimistic, they
experience less depression, less anxiety, and they commit suicide
less often. They have stronger immune systems, lower blood
pressure, and probably better cardiovascular functioning.
Moreover, of course, in the Muslim context with prayer is really a
physical thing. It's evident that the physicality of the prayer
keeps joints supple, and the center helps strengthen the
brain's capacity for memory and for hard work.
A study at University of Malaysia drew attention to a number of
physiological benefits of the solat of the namaz for the back
and posture, and suggests that the prayer is an effective way of
postponing the onset of osteo, arthritis and other joint
disorders, as well as reducing the harm done by the modern habit of
not sitting on the floor, sitting on the floor being the normal way
of sitting for almost Sapiens for millennia. Those who already
suffer from arthritis and study suggests may find the gentle but
significant movements of the prayer more beneficial in
maintaining the health of the joints than any available
pharmaceutical intervention.
The prayer then is a sign and facilitator of our awareness of
belonging to nature. We could see it in those terms, it links body
and soul in a serene that psychologically and symbolically
powerful enactment. That it's linked in subtle ways to other
aspects of our circadian rhythms. Sleep is perhaps the most evident
of these, we know that the human daily by rhythm is adapted to the
light dark cycle, with the release of melatonin at the end of the
day, preparing the body to sleep. artificial light and
electrical gadgets generally can subvert this resulting in
typically modern disruptive patterns, which can cause anxiety
and depression, and possibly other symptoms as well. So, the
University of Surrey has a sleep research laboratory, which has
noted that if human beings are shifted from a 24 hour day to a 28
hour day rhythm, without a natural light, dark cycle, and you then
take blood samples, 97% of the rhythmic genes in the body are
observably out of sync, and hence dysfunctional jetlag and medical
issues caused by shift work, for instance, are
pretty widely understood as consequences of, of these extreme
modern habits which profoundly interfere with the genetic basis
of our metabolism. Something like jetlag is an extreme example, but
getting a long time off to dawn and going to bed a long time after
Sundowns. Also kind of it's not not what the body needs.
It has to be said that scientists didn't actually seem to understand
the sleep mechanism terribly well, but it does seem clear that
lifestyle, lifestyle which as in Muslim case, recommend sleep right
after the night prayer and getting up early. The Dawn is a healthful
and potentially extremely important support to our mental as
well as our physical well being.
But humans are
evidently by phasic creatures, that is to say, we are programmed
to function not with one but with two episodes of sleep and every 24
hour cycle. We do need our 40 Winks in the early afternoon was a
natural dip at that time.
And this is as we would expect, confirmed in the summer. There's
lots of Hadith about the merit of the early afternoon or midday nap
that they Lola There's a famous one in Sahih al Bukhari that
indicates that the Sahaba would always
have a nap after the Juma prayer. There's a lot of it. And we've
even noticed this, I would say, amongst our madrasa students at
CMC, because the, the alarm institutions in England often
maintained a very healthy practice of teaching after fajr. They're
letting the students have a power nap in the early afternoon,
usually between Zohar And Asa. And if you go to the CMC library at
that particular time, you may well see some of our students
demonstrating this particular son in action.
But there's other aspects. There's so much to this in this rich story
of Islam's rich intervention in our physical lives. A lot could be
written, for instance, about the nibbly prophetic medicine. And we
could also spend time on the Sunnah wisdoms in our diet.
Let me just deal with one of these because this did come up with
somebody who just emailed me last week about issues of a fiancee who
is a vegetarian. And this is about the consumption of meat. And so
very often Muslims when they engage with people in the New Age
community in many ways, also not happy about modernity, trying to
be spiritual trying to reconnect with nature, there's a lot of
potential Islamic themes there. They're usually not happy and evil
fit.
It'll add half when the local sheep get the chop and the local
vegetarians who have been kind of talking to us about conservation
get a little bit unhappy. Glastonbury the Muslim community,
for instance, this is one of the things that divides them from many
of the local communities, Glastonbury being essentially the
capital of New Age religion in Britain.
So there's a big controversy here, about the way in which
specifically, our spirituality should take us back to nature.
Now, obviously, protein is good for us. The medical case is not
difficult to make. In fact, our species is naturally omnivorous.
And the way in which our tastes and our digestion are designed
indicates that meat is part of our mixed ancient diet and also shapes
ancient rituals, Patterns of Life.
So there's something about the Abrahamic principle, which is
actually strongly represented by the idea of the idle of heart.
And our friends, the Glastonbury villages are alarmed by this. And
there's a lot of a lot of discussions
between us and them. And it's been one, I think, significant reason
why people from that world who get a little bit tired of the endless
festivals under the moon and pagan thing, Islam looks really
interesting, and it is related to the natural world in this
beautiful way. It doesn't have Christian ideas of shame, guilt,
Original Sin, really appealing, but the vegetarian thing is often
what keeps them out.
But they're actually mistaken in their understanding of how to be
kind to animals.
We all know that there's a gigantic global environmental
crisis, which they're worried about, which we're worried about,
and in some measure, this is provoked by excessive and abusive
agricultural and also of course, fishing practices, consumerism and
human greediness generally. Plus an ever growing global population
results in a decline in biodiversity, which for us, of
course, is a shocking diminution of the number of divine signs in
the world. We have theological reasons for liking biodiversity.
The vegetarians who point accusingly, at the Sunnah, in this
respect all of that animal husbandry often claimed that its
meat consumption, specifically, that is killing the planet. And
sometimes we're not quite sure how to reply to that. But in fact, if
you think about it, it's not difficult to explain our position.
It is true, as the vegetarians will tell us that to produce one
pound of protein, you need at least 10 pounds of plant matter in
order to support the grazing animal. It looks like an
inefficient way of producing the food in a world of scarcity. But
the mass conversion of the world's grazing lands to arable
cultivation, even where that will be possible. And of desert areas,
that's not going to be possible. But even where it is possible,
would actually be a catastrophe for animals and for biodiversity.
grazing is much less damaging to native
ecosystems than is arable farming, over grazing is true can be
calamitous, can destroy desiccate a landscape. But a sensible
livestock manager is going to ensure that his land is always
going to be sustainable.
Once you convert that land to arable use, however, and there's a
kind of Holocaust
At the end of plant diversity, the end of the small mammals which
usually can coexist with cows and sheep, rabbits and badgers, and so
forth mice, but generally they can't coexist with machine
harvested wheat or legume crops. So that's why George mom Bo, who
was a vegan for years and years recently announced that he was no
longer vegan but was going to become an omnivore. He's not
eating meat again. And that's because he's read several recent
studies, which point to the disastrous consequences of typical
arable farming when compared to livestock husbandry. There's a
very influential essay in the world by somebody called Simon
fairly, this seems to have been what clinched it for mon VO, which
shows the arable cultivation actually results in far more
animal deaths than livestock production, through the
destruction of habitats, the death of small mammals in harvesting
machines, and the poisoning of millions and billions of mice and
rats in in grain storage facilities.
So there is food. And it turns out here we do have a moral animal
loving case. There's also drink and drink is one of the easiest
and most acute cases, you hardly need to point to the countless
lives and also relationships saved by Islam's straightforward policy
of temperance and prohibition.
I've already mentioned that religions that tolerate alcohol
consumption tend to have relatively high rates of HIV
transmission. But alcohol has so many other health consequences and
the significant ones are all really negative.
The scientific evidence here has been piling up for decades, much
to the annoyance of politicians who reap millions for the
exchequer every year. By taxing booze, very cynical way of raising
money for the state gets spent on the NHS, the NHS is dealing with
alcohol epidemic. Well, we've all heard of alcoholic liver disease,
and that actually causes over 4000 deaths a year just in the UK. But
that is just the beginning. 9% of men and 4% of women are classified
by the NHS, as actually alcohol dependent. 50% of physical
assaults in the UK are alcohol related 58% of rapes 30% of
suicides 22% of accidental deaths 21% of AMD admissions. The NHS is
also reporting that child abuse and also elder abuse shows a very
strong correlation with alcohol consumption.
So one recent study at Oxford University confirms that even one
glass of wine a day significantly increases a woman's risk of breast
liver and rectal cancer. Just one glass of wine a day gives you a
greater risk of those calamities, and they decided that in the UK,
perhaps 7000 women a year are affected, which is quite a
massacre.
But a rather depressing look at the NHS. Statistics shows that
a huge raft of other preventable diseases are triggered or made
much worse by alcohol. So here's a quote from the list on a recent
NHS report on the subject consequences of alcohol, brain
damage, stroke, fatty liver, liver failure, hepatocellular carcinoma,
gastritis, peptic ulcers, diarrhea and malabsorption, acute and
chronic pancreatic problems, heart arrhythmia, hypotension pseudo
Cushing's Syndrome, that is hyperglycemia hypogonadism, loss
of libido impotence, increased risk of accidents, fetal alcohol
syndrome, increased risk of adverse drug reaction, reduced
effectiveness of therapeutic drugs and the list goes on. And this is
not just for your typical dips a maniac to the extent that you
consume any alcohol statistically, your risk of these afflictions
increases.
Overall, the NHS calculates that alcohol is the third largest cause
of disease burden, not only in the UK, but across the developing
world. And the burden often falls disproportionately on minorities
and the poor, which we often forget. So consider the ongoing
tragedy and humiliation of Native American and Australian people 12%
of deaths among Native Americans are caused directly by the white
man's firewater. Among Australian Aboriginals aged between 34 and
55. Death is seven times more likely than among white
Australians. And alcohol is the major cause. There's also the
horrible curse of fetal alcohol syndrome syndrome. Study in one
region of Western Australia showed that 120 per every 1000 Children
demonstrated physical features and mental impairment associated with
alcohol consumption by their mother
As during pregnancy,
similar rates have been found in other non Muslim areas in the
developing world, including South Africa where rates seem to be even
higher. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why there's this
very significant
increase in Aboriginal conversion to Islam in Australia.
Report by ABC recently on that, which is on YouTube somewhere,
which is really quite amazing and quite, quite moving alcohol. And
Christianity is ambiguity about it is cited as a major reason for
this, this very hopeful movement. And I'm running very short of time
and I need to wind up. It's a huge topic, as I think we've seen, and
I've neglected a lot. And despite the Venus introduction, I haven't
actually said anything about fasting.
Specifically the Muslim form of it, which is a form of
intermittent fasting, as she said, and you can find a lot about
intermittent fasting on the internet, and sort of various
health conscious
websites. There's one good one called 10 benefits of intermittent
fasting which is directly relevant to Muslim fasting and to Ramadan.
So it's a big and complex subject. The conclusions also, I think, are
numerous and rather complicated. But most fundamentally, we see
that the Sunnah, the life form of the Hakim, the sage of Medina,
conserves for us a natural way of being a natural form of life whose
absence is likely to hurt us.
It turns out that despite our modern love of high tech lives,
that we actually need a lot of ancient things. We need faith, we
need ritual, we need a body soul synergy, which shapes our lives to
enable us to retain a connection with nature, and with our natural
and ancient selves in our what is now very strange in our natural
habitat, which we now occupy. If we pray, according to the blessing
founders counsel, see the world with a spirit of all and wonder,
avoid alcohol and other narcotics sleep but natural times maintain
close relationships with others, we are very considerably extending
our life expectancy and reducing the risk of many ailments,
particularly those to do with anxiety and stress, which seem to
be really proliferating, getting out of control in our as a post
natural society.
Perhaps we could conclude by proposing this as a new form of
Dawa. There's so many lifestyle programs available nowadays that
promise better mental and physical health outcomes. You can pay
upwards of 800 pounds a day to clock into some health spas that
will offer you various rather imprecise diets and massage
therapies and aromatherapy. It's expensive. But when we're finished
with those programs, we go back to the workplace and back to our
lifestyle, we might feel better, but probably a bit poorer. We go
back to the old routines and habits.
So let's start advertising a better lifestyle option to our
burdened compatriots, which we could call son no therapy has so
many advantages. It actually works. It seeks to turn us into
interesting spiritual, healthy, active and beautiful people. And
also not on interestingly, in these times of financial
uncertainty, the entire course of treatment is absolutely free.
said Mr. Alec Kamara.
Thank you very much. I have to I came for that illuminating talk.
We're now going to open to the floor for questions. Anybody from
the audience? Could you maybe expand even more on specific at of
the Sunnah that are also very good for the house. So for example, the
prophets insistence on using miswak and you know, sitting down
to drink, to drink water, these kinds of things, which are also
now being suggested by dentists and doctors that are also really
good for the health.
Yeah, I mentioned that I had to confine myself to some core things
like praying and waddle and often things that Muslims tend not to
think so much about in terms of their health implications.
There's things to do with sleep, for instance, and positions you
adopt during sleep.
It's against the sun and not good for you to sleep on your stomach.
sleeping on your back is not particularly good. The best
position generally, is to sleep on the right hand side. Left hand
side is less good for your right hand side because it puts less
pressure on the heart and some other organs sleep on the right is
better and there's so many other things. Sometimes Muslims push it
a little bit too far, I think and I've tried to find myself to some
fairly conservative and I think scientifically unarguable
conclusions based on on the latest research
If somebody at Imperial College has done something amazing on the
miswak, it would be certainly very interesting to, to look at that.
But I focused on core a bad issues to heart and, and I better,
largely because that's what I have been reading about, but also from
considerations of time. And because these are important, the
prayer is a million times more important than the miswak or
sitting down to drink a glass of water. Prayer is what Islam is for
a question from Facebook. Are there any specific parts of the
tip and Nabawi that contradict recent rigorous scientific study?
And how do you view that in light of the list of positive benefits
of the Sunnah?
Ah, I'm not sure. I think you'd have to ask her Hakeem
specifically on to Nagoya, that's something that I have skirted tip
number one, he tends to operate a lot with with herbs. And those are
the experts in the area know that it has certain gentle, non toxic
positive health outcomes. It's approximately what we call
complimentary therapy these days. It's something it's an aspect of
the Sunnah, that very often we have, we have neglected I think
it is, it is part of the sun. We do have this healing tradition,
people go to the Holy Prophet Elisa Islam, not just for their
spiritual ailments, but their physical ailments as well. He was
like the Chief Medical Officer of Medina. And there was much there
that we can learn that we can learn from. Occasionally there are
difficulties identifying the exact herbs and plants that are
specified in the Hadith. But the key ones are pretty much available
and you can buy them in
herbalist shops, particularly if you go to the Middle East, ones
that you get here may not be the exact equivalent and one assumes
that even slight differences can have a significant
significant difference in terms of their therapeutic value.
And it's also worth bearing in mind that Tip number eight is
understood to be part of a larger, holistic program delivered by a
sage who really knows the patient, and is taking the patient's pulse
and engaging in various ways with the patient's well being. Whereas
nowadays, we tend to use the novel way on the web, or looking things
up in books, which is kind of an abusive way of dealing with it.
Prophetic herbal medicines are part of a new Jazza based system,
which has to do with the physicians, or getting to know the
fullness of the patient and their lifestyle as well.
Not just listening to a list of symptoms, but
just looking at symptoms and looking for remedies is something
that even Western medicine tries to avoid.
Because you have to know the patient. That's why you go to see
the doctor member, I once had a little computer program
which purported to be able to tell you what was wrong with you, if
you entered all of your symptoms. This is 20 years ago, in that kind
of infancy of computers, it was on a floppy disk. And so I entered
all of my aches and pains. And it told me that I was pregnant.
20 years I didn't know which method means it can be 20 years,
but it's still no sign of a baby. So yeah, Islam really wants the
physician to know the patient really well. And the prescription
has to has to reflect that knowledge. So you mentioned
earlier on about
prayer being a
good for your health. Now, what about a regular recital of vicar,
the scientific proofs of benefits of this? Well, any kind of
repeated ritual incantation or performance will have the benefit
of something like prayer or Quranic recitation, if it's done
collectively, it will be more effective, better
inducing endorphins and so forth. So anything like that is going to
be going to be healthy and people's spirits should naturally
be felt to rise as a result of the vicar experience. It's just good
for the body. You touched on consuming meat and a lot of
Muslims that I'm aware of are turning to veganism now. And that
is mostly to do with a spiritual dimension of eating meat. Could
you talk about that a bit? Well, that's just a subjective judgment.
The great Alia, on great profits have eaten meats said Nisa used to
eat meat. It's a universal
experience that this is part of what's natural for the human body.
So there's a certain Hindu or Indic idea that needs to contain
the blood and hence it is fleshly and pollutes our spirituality
which has to do with a very ascetical view of the soul trying
to get out of the body and they have strong traditions of self
mortification in that world.
But in the mana
sestet context knows the saints eat meats and the rabbi's
Christians, Muslims, the great ones, Abdulkadir, Gilani, even RV.
All the great Alia of Islam. As far as I know, there's a few
exceptions for specific reasons of how large I suppose but generally,
eating meat is part of accepting the divine permission,
which one does not reject without good reason. So maybe in some
Indian contexts where Islam and Hinduism sometimes fuse a little
bit, you can find even some sofas who will prefer a vegetarian
option. It's not the Sunless, it can't really be part of Sufism, a
question from Facebook about depression and anxiety, what is a
way to deal with the spiritually and especially if the person
doesn't have motivation to do any acts of worship?
Well, that will depend on the individual.
There can be many reasons that can be a recent personal tragedy,
there can be sometimes medical reasons for depression, anxiety,
sometimes people overdose on the headlines, which is generally not
a good idea. We can't do much about the catastrophes of the
world. So why be depressed by learning about it all the time,
check the news every couple of weeks, maybe. But there's no point
in wasting your time learning about some famine in Africa, if
you're not immediately doing something about it just make you
feel dismal. And as that builds up, as the media succeeds in its
attempt to make you kind of
look at it with a sort of horrified fascination, of course,
you'll start feeling dismal after a while. So concentrate on what's
good. Concentrate on what's beautiful, follow the prophetic
example, to engage with the natural world to do what is
beautiful, to engage with beautiful people to get the right
company to engage in vicar. And as your spirits rise, then Insha
Allah, your energy for a better, and even quite secular people,
when they have looked at actually the real benefits for body and
spirit of
the Muslim prayer they should do even if they don't believe in
anything. There's this movement of atheist religion on England and
under Batam. And his book religion for atheists is as we atheists, we
were missing so much. And we have such poor health outcomes, that we
need to do something. And so even in Cambridge is an atheist church
now and building them all over the place. So they do as much as they
can of religion, but without actually being able to believe. So
people, if they didn't have much energy for a better should be told
about as it were the secular benefits of a birder so they
inhabit that space, and then they'll start to feel better. And
then in short, in law, they'll start to experience the
spirituality and the beauty of the practice as well. Salaam aleikum
regarding human studies of the alcohol, the alcohol is causing
the more damage to the NHS than the smoking.
But government has done to stop smoking. But still, the government
is not saying that alcohol is more expensive.
Well, it's partly to do with the fact that they get big duties,
import duties and VAT on alcohol sales.
It's also to do with the fact that I think there's nine bars in the
House of Commons. MPs have that particular lifestyle and
they don't want to drink a bottle of beer and it's got a health
warning. I'm saying alcohol makes you three times more likely to rip
somebody or whatever they want to see that.
Easy. And so they're saying this Oh, one you need to have Banco de
one.
I don't think so. No, I made that's a kind of cannot there is a
certain tannic acid in red wine, that does seem to have some
beneficial cardiovascular effects. But that's not to do with the
alcohol. It's something you get in grape juice and is readily
available elsewhere. So it's not alcohol.
That's just a kind of desperate excuse that they have just had
another glass out, not convincing. I wanted to discuss the point that
you kind of somewhat lighthearted D alluded to about Dawa and the
medical benefits of this. I think a lot of days, they kind of stray
away from this because of they feel they'll fall into the trap of
kind of the Marxist Religion is the opium of the people, etc, etc.
Although even in that quote, it's, he mentioned, it's the heart of a
heartless world, right? So, I guess religion has a massive
place, even in terms of bringing a soul and a reality to people but I
just wanted you know, there's a there's a focus in our workplace
and in many offices of kind of well being and they do borrow from
a lot of religious tradition. How do we then bridge the gap between
that and then theology I
This is a device, device or daemon. Yeah, the problem with all
of those, say mindfulness type, or secular yoga processes or office
meditation section sessions, is that they operate on a rather sort
of basic level of relaxation and exercise. But the deeper benefits
of religious ritual are to do with the state of mind to do with
trust, hope, optimism, gratitude, which affects you much, much more
profoundly. So the challenge for those therapists that you've
suggested is how they can actually have not just the form of
spirituality, but the content as well. And that is something that
really escapes them because of the kind of irrational phobia that
people have. Religious religion nowadays, religion is a bad word,
ritual is a bad word. Ritual is normal to what we are. Everybody
has rituals, students and exams, you should see the rituals
students, teddy bear has to be there, and three pencils and
ritual creatures. But it's become a kind of dirty word. Somehow,
people feel trapped by it, they want to be free, this modern New
Age spiritual nonsense about how spirituality is being free from
restraints, which is completely crazy, the ego has to be
restrained, and then the Spirit will be free, but they've got no
conception of ego and raw. They're just trying to be themselves. We
really want to be ourselves, we know what the self is not very
impressive most of the time.
We want to, we want the rule to be active, the self is just nafs with
its unpleasant habits. But that wisdom is just not known in the
New Age environment at all. Which becomes just a kind of self help
teaching and self affirmation self esteem. They can't deal with
egotism as a as a human vise, because it's all about expressing
yourself, discovering yourself being yourself, which is the
inversion of traditional religions, transcending yourself.
But they still have some beneficial effect.
I read about one office in New York where they adopted a got a
secular office where they decided to adopt as their office mantra,
toilet tissue, toilet tissue, toilet tissue, and they will say
dysregulated find some kind of blood pressure will go down karma
but that's ultimately what it can be all it can be unless there's
some sense of real transcendence.
But it's tricky. If you've got to religiously mixed office, I must
say there not too many genuinely religious practices that can be
shared across religious boundaries. That's a tough one.
Another one from Facebook first are not such discussions complicit
in the medicalization of society? In this case, the Sunnah, which
scholars like Foucault and Zola were critical of by extension
rather than discussing medical benefits of sunnah. Shouldn't we
discuss how the body one acquires through the Sunnah is different
than the body that is envisaged by biomedicine?
Well, I did begin by talking about the idea of the prophetic
perfection and the prophetic particular perfection, being
constituted by a balance of the July antigen mouth that mirrors
the presence of those divine qualities in the exterior
creation. I've used a lot of examples from modern medical
science, partly because they're based on empirical methods and
they do yield certain outcomes are often quite uncomfortable to
secular people. Sec, their secular arguments for the sacred if you
like, and therefore, are useful to us. But of course, ultimately, our
conception of the body, the soul, the roof is something that is
derived from Revelation. And particularly when you get to the
beating heart of our humanity consciousness itself, it's evident
that the science breaks down, there is no scientific model of
consciousness, they can't really define it. It's not a scientific
term.
They say that they're working on it, but they haven't really
understood even the elementary functions of the brain, it's
moving. But in terms of creating artificial intelligence, for
instance, which is theoretically possible on a physicalist model of
the world, there's no sign that the internet is waking up and
becoming conscious consciousness is something mystical, mysterious,
not really native to the physical world. You spoke about some of the
ways in which so worship are things that we would consider
ritualistic can intervene in ways that upon our physical body that
we can observe empirically and medically. Do you have any
insights about the ways in which aspects of modern life or being
hyper connected technologically or certain forms of very
New Technology, or other aspects of modern life, have the opposite
effect or observed opposite effect in terms of mimicking what we
would call like a cult or demonic sort of effects upon the human
being that might be observable empirically. Do you have any
insights in that respect? It's clearly an important subject. And
a lot of people are wondering about the effect on human
consciousness and brain function of our increasingly wired reality.
What is the I mentioned? The effects of * is on
permanent rewiring of the brain. That's something that's
established and known now.
What do we know about the implications of massive use of
social media or texting?
This university did informal inquiry recently about the impact
of texting use among students on examination performance, whether
regular texting keeps the brain kind of constantly firing. So
there's no downtime, there's always a new message.
Students are sending 678 1000 texts a month, for instance, we
found some students are texting in their sleep. We find some students
make kind of movements when they're asleep, because in their
dreams, they're texting. What is the consequence of that, in terms
of neuroplasticity, and the possible flexibility of the brain
and the limits to that flexibility? We don't really know.
What we do know is that a lot of young people are hurting and
reporting more and more psychosomatic disorders. There may
well be a connection there. But our understanding of how the brain
works is so limited. And our
experience of these new technologies is so recent.
In the long term, we really don't know what's going to happen to the
species as a result of these radical new forms of being chances
are that the further we go from what we're designed to be, the
sicker we'll get.
But we shall see Slocum check, is there a concept of the mind of no
mind in Islam like the emptiness
because when we when we have consciousness we have God
consciousness, but I was just wondering whether we have in our
sunnah we had the idea of getting our mind empty and then just
seeing
but this type concept should know machine.
That is, even because early says that is not possible. Because the
thoughts in the mind the heart have never come to an end.
It just part of the nature of the mind that there are always
concepts sense a sense of pressure and something new happening, even
when you're asleep.
So the idea of the mind being completely blank, which is a
fairly Horrible idea, it's more or less like an atheistic conception
of death is not something that Islam aspires to. We want to be
the best form of ourselves rather than to deny ourselves