Abdullah Hakim Quick – Health and Wellness – Islamic History Month Special
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AI: Transcript ©
Insha'Allah, if we can ask everyone to
come and have their seats, we are going
to start momentarily.
As-salamu alaykum.
So I'll be the one to say insha
'Allah, we are not going to start unless
the front seats are filled insha'Allah.
We're just not, we're not going to do
it insha'Allah.
So let's just, let's be very honest.
So if you're not, so if you're sitting
in the back and there are seats in
the front that are empty, you're the reason
why everything is being delayed.
It's just because people come a little bit
later, and it doesn't look good when they
come in front of everybody and sit in
the front.
Let's fill the front insha'Allah.
You got in your cars, you came in
this beautiful weather, and you're sitting in the
back just doesn't, it's not befitting of your
place insha'Allah.
So please come forward.
Please come forward.
Please come forward.
I should put brother Mamoon in charge.
My respected shuyukh, my beloved brothers and sisters.
Once again, I'd like to welcome each and
every one of you to our second event
in Islamic History Month.
This is a program that we have been
doing for a number of years, headlined by
our beautiful Shaykh, Shaykh Dr. Abdullah Hakim Kwik.
Alhamdulillah, you know, the shuyukh like him, and
Shaykh Ahmed Kuti, and Shaykh Abdul Hamid, and
the others are an inspiration for us.
And so we would like to first of
all take a moment to acknowledge them, and
to make du'a to Allah Subh'anaHu
Wa Ta-A'la to preserve them insha
'Allah.
We will begin our program with a recitation
of the Quran.
This will be done by our Qari Ridwan
and that will be followed by a presentation
by our dear brother Hassan Munir, who is
a historian in the making.
And after that, insha'Allah, we will hear
from Imam Ziyad on a very important subject
on healing from trauma.
And so without further ado, I'd like to
ask Qari Ridwan to recite from us, to
recite to us from Surah Shuhara.
Qari
Ridwan recites
Surah
Shuhara Al
-Fatiha JazakAllah
Khair, Qari Ridwan.
The translation of this relate to them, O
Prophet, the story of Abraham, when he questioned
his father and his people, what is it
that you worship besides Allah?
They replied, we worship idols to which we
are fully devoted.
Abraham asked, can they hear you when you
call upon them?
Or can they benefit or harm you?
They replied, no, but we found our forefathers
doing the same.
Abraham responded, have you really considered what you
have been worshipping, you and your ancestors?
They are all enemies to me, except the
Lord of all worlds.
He is the one who created me, and
He alone guides me.
He is the one who provides me with
food and drink, and He alone heals me
when I am sick.
And He is the one who will cause
me to die, and then bring me back
to life.
And He is the one who, I hope,
will forgive my flaws on the Day of
Judgment.
My Lord, grant me wisdom and join me
with the righteous.
Bless me with honourable mention among later generations.
Make me one of those awarded the Garden
of Bliss.
Forgive my father, for he is certainly one
of them misguided.
And do not disgrace me on the day
all will be resurrected, the day when neither
wealth nor children will be of any benefit.
Only those who come before Allah with a
pure heart will be saved.
Allah has spoken the truth.
Jazakumullah khair.
Inshallah, we will go right into our program.
Our first speaker is Brother Hassam Munir.
And Brother Hassam has been with us for
many years at Islamic History Month.
He has been teaching and giving lectures on
Islamic history, not only in Canada, but in
other parts of the world.
Alhamdulillah, he is very well received.
He is very well researched, and he does
some work for Yaqeen Institute.
He is passionate about researching and teaching Islamic
history, pursuing an MA in History at the
University of Toronto, enthusiastic about community building via
communications, PR, and social media work, in which
he has been active since 2018, and I
think even before that.
He is currently part of the great team
at Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research.
So, we are very pleased and honoured to
welcome our brother, Hassam Munir.
As-salamu alaykum, everyone.
Bismillah, walhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salamu ala Rasulullah
wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala.
I'm very grateful to the organisers for giving
me the opportunity once again to be here
with you today to share some very brief
insights on Muslim contributions to medicine throughout history
and the inspiration that we can take from
that today.
As we begin, I just want to ask
you a couple of questions to get our
minds running a little bit.
The first question that I want to ask
you is the medical instrument that is associated
with the city of Gaza.
What is it called?
Very common medical instrument.
We should all know this at this point.
So, you can yell it out.
Let's see some energy.
It's the ghaz, right?
So, it's associated, the name of it is
associated with the city of Gaza.
Who is the earliest person?
This is the second question.
Who is the earliest known person who had
some medical training, the earliest known Muslim who
had medical training and was from the city
of Gaza?
Who knows?
Yell it out.
And no wrong answers.
Take your best guess.
Sorry?
You're going to have to speak loudly.
I'm a bit hard of hearing right now.
So, this is Imam Al-Shafi'i.
We all know, Rahimahullah, Imam Al-Shafi'i
is from Gaza.
Imam Al-Zahabi, Rahimahullah, he says in his,
in his prophetic medicine book, which we'll talk
about, that Imam Al-Shafi'i was actually
trained in medicine and Imam Al-Shafi'i
in his time actually lamented the fact that
there are not more Muslim physicians and more
Muslims going into medicine, which is very interesting
and we will see this as a recurring
phenomena.
So, Imam Al-Shafi'i, he says a
few things in a recorded statement.
He says that the Muslims in his time
are neglecting one half of human knowledge and
what he's referring to here is medicine.
He says the best knowledge to have after
the knowledge of the haram and the halal,
the lawful and the unlawful, he says the
best knowledge to have is the knowledge of
medicine and this is half of all beneficial
knowledge and he says that the Muslims have
left it to the Jews and the Christians
and they have neglected to get into this
field himself and this is again Imam Al
-Shafi'i saying this in his time and
we will reflect as we go along on
what this means.
So, if you can go to the next
slide, change the slides manually.
Sorry?
Okay, okay.
Alhamdulillah.
Just a moment.
So, this is going to be a very
high level overview.
I know there's a lot of questions, a
lot of interest, mashallah and a lot we
need to learn, a lot that I need
to learn.
So, I'm sure there's many things that I
can learn from you all.
So, let's make this a collective learning opportunity.
If we have time for a Q&A
at the end, we're going to have more
excellent presentations and if we have time for
a Q&A at the end, of course,
we want to hear from everyone as well
about your own experiences, about what you know
about the history of Islamic medicine as well
as your current experience as a Muslim in
the society in which we live in terms
of both your access to healthcare, your experiences
in the healthcare system, where you see and
where you are invested and involved in the
improvement of that system for the benefit of
all Canadians and you know in terms of
pursuits of our careers and the career choices
that we make, where do we direct our
energies.
So, overall to summarize, what is it that
we are going to be touching on here?
The first thing and our first source of
guidance always is the Prophet ﷺ, the revelation
that was revealed to him, which is the
Qur'an.
So, the first thing, the first sort of
source of guidance, as I said, is that
and that's what we pay attention to first
and foremost and the teachings of the Prophet
ﷺ in relation to health were compiled over
time and became this genre that's known as
the Ibn Nabawi, the prophetic medicine and I'm
sure you've seen even English translations now of
the books that were written by many, many
authors and we will describe some of them.
So, I won't go into detail about that,
you know, right now but we'll get back
to it in a moment, inshallah.
The second thing is the folk medicine of
different cultures and this is also very important
to pay attention to because Ibn Khaldun explains
this for us and I will get to
it once again when we get to the
Ibn Nabawi ﷺ.
The third source that the Muslims drew upon
very early on for their medical knowledge and
very heavily, particularly from this source, was the
Greek tradition, especially between two Greek medical professionals,
researchers, writers, Hippocrates and Galen, who lived, Hippocrates
in the pre-Gregorian era, so, you know,
BCE and Galen lived in Alexandria in Egypt
just a few hundred years before the time
of the Prophet ﷺ.
There is that tradition.
Then you have the Indo-Persian tradition, which
were two traditions that were kind of, you
know, there was some confluence between them, they
were relying heavily on each other, so this
is also something that the Muslims would draw
heavily upon.
And finally, of course, the contributions of the
Islamicate medical professionals and the researchers themselves.
And this word might be new to some
of you, Islamicate, it's usually used by researchers
in academia to differentiate between the Islamic, the
Islamically authentic, right, the Islamically accurate, and the
culture that was produced by the Muslims.
What do we mean by that?
There might be an individual, and we'll actually
see an example of this kind of an
individual who is maybe not the best practicing
Muslim, but they are an excellent physician in
their time, right?
So, we could say that that person actually
has, through their own words, distanced themselves from
the teachings of Islam, and that's not something
that we can celebrate, that's something that needs
to be corrected, and that's not something that
we can emulate.
But nevertheless, the culture that allowed them to
excel in the field of medicine in the
first place was a culture produced by Islam.
So, this is why we find so many
Christians, and Jews, and Hindus, and Buddhists, and,
you know, their knowledge and the knowledge of
their civilizations all being pulled into this vortex
very early on in Islamic history, where the
Muslims were able to take all of that
knowledge, consolidate it, and continue to benefit from
the expertise and from the knowledge of the
people as well, not just their books, but
the people who had knowledge of those traditions
and could continue to practice, as well as
Muslims, right?
So, you didn't necessarily look for a pious
Muslim physician or a pious Muslim practitioner, even
though that would be ideal, you looked for
someone who was an excellent practitioner, and then
if they could be pious as well, that
would be, again, as we mentioned, ideal, but
nevertheless, you benefited from people even though they
might have had some disagreeable positions and opinions
that, as Muslims, we cannot appreciate, and this
goes even for some of the most famous
physicians in Islamic history, Ibn Sina and the
like, because they were heavily involved in philosophy
and many, many other disciplines, they did take
some positions that cannot be appreciated from the
lens of piety by us as Muslims.
So, this is why we say Islamicate, that
there was a culture that was produced that
allowed individuals to thrive on their own personal
trajectories, and then they could succeed in the
field of medicine or in another field if
they so were inclined towards that.
If you move to the next slide, please.
JazakAllah khair.
So, Tibb al-Nabawi ﷺ, some of the
things that we know very commonly now that
the Prophet ﷺ would recommend, you know, the
consumption of black seed, of nabeed, swimming, archery,
running, these are some of the practices that
the Prophet ﷺ himself took part in, and
there were contributors to this genre, the names
are listed there, and some of them are
very famous scholars, as we mentioned, so I
won't read them out to you, but I
want to pay attention to the general principles
that the Prophet ﷺ was also providing in
addition to this specific guidance that he was
providing.
So, he was saying, you know, make use
of honey, make use of black seed, things
of that sort, but he was also providing
the principles that would guide this very ambitious
approach to medicine that would take off in
Islamic history.
So, you have two of those ahadith there,
O servants of Allah, the Prophet ﷺ said,
to paraphrase, seek treatment, surely Allah did not
place a disease, but that He has also
placed its treatment, or a cure, except for
one ailment, which is old age.
The Prophet ﷺ also says, to the effect
of whoever practices medicine without any prior knowledge
of medicine will be held liable, right, so
you can't just kind of take knowledge of
medicine from anywhere and start to practice it
because you are playing with the lives of
people, right, and especially people who are already
in a vulnerable situation in their lifetime.
Some other instructive things that would, again, guide
this process, one of them is that the
Prophet ﷺ said something to the effect of,
wisdom is the lost property of the believer.
So, wherever you find wisdom, you take it
for yourself because it's the lost property of
the believer.
And so, you know, in a lot of
Muslim cultures, the person who is the medical
practitioner traditionally has been known as the hakeem,
right, the person who is wise, not the
person who necessarily has knowledge of medicine, although
that's an important component, but that on its
own is not enough because you have to
draw on so many different sources as we
will talk about.
And so, this hikmah is very important.
You have all of this knowledge to sift
through, and this is something for us to
think about as well in our day and
age when the amount of medical information that
is available to us in an instant today
is way more than centuries worth of information
put together throughout Islamic history, right.
I can find more so much more quickly,
I can, you know, look at so many
different sources, so many different options, etc.
So, where do we derive and how do
we develop the hikmah that guides us in
navigating through this, you know, flood of information
so that we can arrive at the best
possible solution?
The Prophet ﷺ also said, and these are
the auxiliary fields that, you know, we also
need to pay attention to, one of the
interesting hadith in At-Tabarani or recorded by
Imam At-Tabarani is the Prophet ﷺ said
to the Sahaba radiyallahu anhum to bind knowledge,
to bind the knowledge, and they said in
which form should we bind it, and the
Prophet ﷺ said in the form of books,
right.
Ibn Sina's Qanun or some of these famous
compilations of medical knowledge would not be possible,
this entire Islamic medical tradition would not be
possible if Muslims had turned away from the
adoption and the adaptation of paper, which was
a new technology that they encountered, or at
least mass-producible paper, which was a new
technology that they encountered in the year 751.
If they had turned away from that and
had only, you know, orally passed on this
tradition, perhaps it would not have had the
same kind of far-reaching effects, and, you
know, there's many other narrations to this effect,
but I will leave it just with that.
So, it's not just about, when we think
about prophetic medicine, the lesson here is that
don't just think about the prescriptions of the
Prophet ﷺ that you should, you know, partake
of honey and you should partake of black
seed, but pay attention to the principles that
the Prophet ﷺ provided us that you can
actually apply to any field of work, whichever
field that you are in, whether it's medicine
or technology or anything like that.
I actually was in a presentation just last
week where this hadith about liability in medicine,
the scholar, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
bless his insight, he actually said that this
is the hadith that we have to pay
attention to as we approach the AIH, right?
Artificial intelligence, how do we use it?
The person who uses it is going to
be held liable, right?
Because not only will you use it without
the unforeseen consequences being known to you, but
you will also be kind of encouraging and
inspiring others perhaps to use it in a
certain way.
And again, we don't know what it's going
to lead to down the line, so there's
a very heavy responsibility in how we approach
these things.
Next slide, please.
I think we'll have to reload that.
Okay, there we go.
Humble and hungry, two very important words in
the Muslims' approach to medicine, right?
So, you have this encouragement, this impetus by
the Prophet ﷺ.
He has told you that wisdom is your
own lost property, so you can seek it,
right?
And you can benefit from it wherever you
find it.
He has also told you that for every
disease except for old age, there is a
cure, which means you can go out and
seek that cure, and you can actually benefit
people.
And again, as we know, as Muslims, whoever
saves a life is what?
Whoever saves one life has done what?
It's as if they've saved all of humanity,
right?
Enormous reward just for saving one life.
And so, this drives this incredible curiosity and
this incredible effort, again, facilitated by the new
technology of paper that was available as well,
and also facilitated by the size of the
Muslim empire, the largest empire ever seen in
the world up until that time.
You now have cultures that are connected under
a single polity that have never been connected
before, so you have this huge exchange of
information that's going to happen, and the depth
at which the people are going to go
to, to figure out every possible thing, right?
You guys can read the slide as I
go through it.
This is the study of laughter, right?
If you ask somebody today that do you
want to make a major contribution to the
field of medicine, someone might want to cure
cancer, right?
Somebody might want to cure autism.
Someone might want to like do these types
of things, and those things were important to
the Muslim physicians, but they were leaving absolutely
no stone unturned.
So, even a question like, why do we
laugh?
Where does laughter come from?
What is the relation of laughter to the
mental state of a human being, to the
physical state of a human being?
They're exploring all of these things.
They're theorizing about all of these things, and
so this is the level of humility that
is required as well for someone to pursue
something like this, because we often think that
certain subjects are below us, right?
Oh, that's a silly thing to pay attention
to.
That's a silly thing for me to study,
because I'm a specialist in this and this
and this, right?
Why would I care about laughter?
But these are some of the greatest Muslim
scientists and thinkers who, in addition to everything
else that they're doing, they don't even leave
that one question unexplored.
If they can make a contribution over there,
they're making sure that they write a treatise,
a two-pager, a one-pager, whatever insights
that they can find in relation to that,
that they are providing those.
So, I won't go through all of that,
but as you can see, it's actually a
field of study now.
The study of laughter is actually a field
that people can specialize in today, and this
is something that Muslims have enormously contributed to.
The other thing you will notice in this
slide is that the entire approach to health
care is based on a presumption about the
balance of certain substances within the body.
So, if you're curious about this, this is
known as humoral theory or humoral pathology, that
you have these humors within the body, these
different substances that are in a very delicate
balance, and so when you feel sick or
when you are unhealthy, it means the balance
has been thrown off in some way, and
so you have to do certain activities, consume
certain kinds of food, give up certain habits,
etc., to restore that balance, and then you
can hopefully proceed to live a healthy life.
Next slide, please.
And so, here we see, again, that one
concrete example, but here we see many other
examples of the things that Muslim physicians in
classical period were writing about.
They're writing about homesickness, they're writing about prisoner's
rights to medical treatment, they're writing about the
humility that is necessary for a physician, they're
writing about vegetarianism, can a Muslim be a
vegetarian, should Muslims be vegetarian, don't make your
stomach the graveyard of animals, they're writing about
the relationship between health care and economics, particularly
in the times of public health crisis, they're
writing about the best places to source, you
know, materia medica, the medicinal ingredients that make
up the simple drugs and the compound drugs
of their time, so what is the geography,
what is the relation of the Muslim empire
to those empires, how do we kind of
get this moving.
Ibn Sina writes very interesting poetry on why
all the other physicians are jealous of him.
Ibn Sina is a very, very interesting character,
definitely need a Netflix series or a movie
or something about him one day, so, you
know, I think there's some work being done
towards that.
What's the relationship between the diet, the specific
foods that we eat, and the kind of
health effects that they have, so eggplant and
freckles, music therapy to treat illness, water therapy,
the sound of water, so we are moving
from individual treatment of people with certain illnesses
towards an institutional approach, which is hospitals, which
I won't go into a lot of detail
here about Muslim contribution to hospitals, but I
highly encourage you to read about that, because
that really does kind of explain the institutions
that had to be created for this research
to progress and for this research to spread
and to inspire hospitals, such as the ones
that we see today, so we go from
individual to the institution to a framework of
public health, so now we are talking about
everything, right, so people are contributing to the
field of medicine in many, many different ways,
questions are being asked at the political level,
what about the people who don't live in
the cities that have the big hospital, what
about people who live in the desert or
in the remote areas, how do we provide
health care to them, do prisoners have a
right to health care, you know, during the
crusades, the crusaders would have PTSD from all
the wars that they took part in, and
they would come show up to the Muslims
hospitals to seek treatment, and they would be
provided treatment, and then they would go back
and maybe join the war again, right, but
the idea of anybody who shows up, you
have a responsibility to provide them treatment, right,
so when we, when we, the point here
is that when we talk about Muslim contributions
to medicine, we're not just focusing on, you
know, the achievements from the scientific standpoint, but
also from the public health standpoint, and specifically
from the medical ethics standpoint, and these are
things that we have to bring into the
conversation today as well, in the society in
which we live, in the ongoing conversations about
medical ethics, etc.
Next slide, please.
Where are all the women?
So this is a very important question, whenever
we're discussing history, because women are often not
mentioned, they're often not discussed, but there's actually
a famous quote from a Christian physician from
the early Abbasid period, who is complaining that
when men get sick, instead of going to
the doctor, they go to their wife first,
and they exhaust all of the cures that
their wife is giving them, right, and then
it's a very advanced stage of illness that
they finally show up to the doctor to
seek the doctor's medical advice, so, you know,
I actually had my family doctor tell me
the same thing, he's like, men show up
to the doctor's clinic when they're about to
die, right, before that, they're just kind of
exploring and trying different things, etc., and so
it underscores the very, very crucial role of
women, just like Imam Ashafi's quote underscores the
very, very crucial role of Jews and Christians
and people of other backgrounds in medicine, so
these are not necessarily discriminatory statements, in fact,
they're telling us the opposite, that this is
a, not a formalized kind of specialized approach
to healthcare yet, but there is a family
approach, there is a communal approach, there's many
different layers in this complex ecosystem of how
Muslims seek healthcare for themselves, so again, I
won't go through all of these examples, but
there are many more examples in addition to
this as well, of Muslim women who not
only made contributions, but actually had positions of
leadership in the medical infrastructure at different times
and places in Islamic history, I'm just going
to move quickly through these because, you know,
lack of time, so if you want to
take pictures of the slides, feel free to
do so, next slide please, this is Ibn
Zakariya Al-Razi, Muhammad Ibn Zakariya Al-Razi,
and this is his Kitab Al-Hawi, which
is one of the most popular throughout history
books ever written, encyclopedias of medicine that was
ever written, very popular in Europe as well,
but his most popular work, if you can
go to the next slide, brother Marmoon, his
next, or his most popular work was actually
differentiating between smallpox and measles, right, so something
that's insightful, but if you could please go
to the next slide, I'm not seeing it,
okay, Jazakallah Khairan, yeah, thank you, so basically
that book was so influential that the last
new edition of it that was published was
actually published more than a thousand years after
Al-Razi passed away, it was published in
the 1860s, at the same time that Canada
was being established, Confederation was happening here, Al
-Razi, who had been dead for almost a
thousand years at that point, a new edition
of his work was being published because it
was still the most authoritative text on that
very specific illness, smallpox and measles, as you
can see there, he's one of the first
people to discuss allergies, he's known as the
father of pediatrics because of a unique approach
to providing treatment to children, a pioneering figure
in the field of immunology, his 20-volume
Kitab Al-Hawi Filtib, which we already mentioned,
you saw a picture of it there, you
know, addressing virtually every known medical problem at
the time, he's one of the first people
to write about joint pains, and you can
see his death date there, right, he died
in the year 923, what's very interesting about
him is that medicine wasn't even his career
until he turned 30 years old, he was
pursuing something else, and then he decided to
switch careers and come into medicine, and he
passed away about 20 years later at about
the age of 50, so in a 20
-year period, he is able to have this
phenomenal impact throughout Islamic history, and so here
we want to pay attention again to the
question of was he a practicing pious Muslim,
or just Islamicate, from our standpoint, ultimately Allah
knows best the state of each individual, but
from our standpoint, he said certain things that
are not appropriate for a Muslim to say,
certain beliefs that he had, right, so we
celebrate him not necessarily for the fact that
he is Muslim, and he excelled in medicine,
but for the fact that he was produced
by Islamic culture, the fact that, you know,
in a room like this, if we're all
sitting here, we have all have our own
journeys in Islam, we have our varying levels
of piety, I cannot point to a certain
individual here and say this person is going
to be the most pious physician in Ontario,
you know, 10 years from now, point at
a young person for example, right, all we
can do is make a collective culture that
enables the person who has that aspiration for
themselves to be able to thrive, how can
we support them in every way possible, we
don't know the future, who's going to end
up like what, right, so this is not
how we develop people, we don't develop individuals,
we develop a culture in which individuals can
thrive if they have that inclination to do
so, and so Al-Razi was able to
thrive despite his opinions that are not appropriate
Islamically.
Next slide, please.
Anyone know who this is?
Okay, good, Alhamdulillah, this is Ibn Sina, this
is a famous portrait of him, obviously someone's
imagination, not necessarily accurate, but you can see
from the Kitab Al-Qanun the most famous
Muslim medical encyclopedia ever produced by Ibn Sina
there, again like I mentioned I won't go
into a lot of detail about Ibn Sina's
life because he's the person that you can
read about and learn about most easily, right,
you can easily search up a lot of
information, he's very, very famous and he has
a roller coaster of a life story, so
I would encourage you to definitely benefit from
that.
Next slide, please.
Medical instruments and specifically surgical instruments, this slide
is about Al-Zahrawi, so you can see
an illustration, I wanted to show that first,
but if you go to the next slide,
we can actually see some information about him,
almost there, Al-Zahrawi
is from Al-Andalus, he's from the city
of Cordoba, he dies in approximately the year
1013, he flourishes in the Medina Al-Zahra,
which you can still visit or the ruins
of it in Al-Andalus in Spain, he
invented more than 100 surgical instruments, many of
which are still in use today, including some
very popular ones, of course, the syringe as
we know it today, the forceps that are
used during childbirth and many others, he pioneered
the use of inhalant anesthesia and the translations
of his Kitab al-Tasrif, which was his
main medical text that he produced, were still
being used as a medical textbook in European
universities until the 17th century, next slide please,
this is a bust as it's called, as
well as some of the illustrations of the
work of Ibn al-Nafis, who is another
very famous physician from Islamic history and if
we go to the next slide, we'll just
do a quick run through of his achievements
as well, born in Damascus, lived much of
his life in Cairo, he's the first person
to correctly but incompletely describe pulmonary and coronary
circulation of the blood inside the body, so
basically how blood flows inside the body, the
first person to discuss the concept of the
body's metabolism, he's also one of the original
thinkers in the sense that he held that
it was the brain and not the heart
that was responsible for thinking and sensation, so
this was a radical concept in his particular
time and he also compiled one of the
largest encyclopedias ever written, there's very famous stories
about Ibn al-Nafis, one of them is
that he would go to have a public
bath or on one occasion he went to
have a public bath and an idea occurred
to him while he was having the bath,
so he stepped out of the bath, he
put his clothes on, he sat down in
a side room in the public bath and
he actually wrote an entire treatise on a
medical topic, he finished writing it and then
he got up and he went and he
completed his bath, right, so sometimes these kind
of bursts of inspiration are said to have
come to these people, next slide please, okay
here we are, some honorable mentions and there's
many many more than this, you can find
entire books on Christian physicians in Islamic history,
Jewish physicians in Islamic history, just directories full
of hundreds and hundreds of names of not
even Muslims but non-Muslims who are contributing
to the field of medicine throughout Islamic history,
so you find some other names here, you
see things like autopsy, dissection, right, you see
things like the Hippocratic oath, you see things
like the translations of medical knowledge, you see
Musa ibn Hamun who was a Spanish Jewish
physician who was expelled from Spain and he
was rescued by the Ottomans, resettled in Istanbul
and there in the the masjid of Muhammad
al-Fatih actually in Istanbul is where he
wrote the first known work in the field
of dentistry, next slide, now I want us
to pay attention to this as well because
we have a, you know, we live in
a globalized world but because we specifically live
in the west, we have this kind of
leaning towards what did Muslims contribute to western
civilization, what is still being used in western
civilization whereas Muslim contributions were reaching people in
every part of the world and here's one
example of Husi Hui who was actually from,
he may have been a Uyghur background or
he may have been a Turkic background or
Chinese background, we're not entirely sure but he
takes the teachings of Ibn Sina, he takes
the teachings of other Muslim physicians and he
compiles, he's a dietician for the royal court
of the Mongols in China and he actually
uses that medical knowledge to compile these healthy,
nutritious and delicious recipes for the Mongol rulers
in China and we find other examples as
well, again you can take some pictures here,
you also see Isa Tarjuman and his wife
Sara who were both Christians but they took
on Muslim medical knowledge and also had an
impact in Chinese civilization, you see the 13th
century Java Sea wreck kind of, that's of
course referring to Indonesia region, so again you
can read about all these things but I
just want to discuss one more slide in
some detail, so this is bringing it closer
to the modern period right and now we
get into more isolated examples and here and
there but these are all examples that we
need to pay attention to, the Begums of
Bhopal, Bhopal is a city in India, the
Begums of Bhopal were the rulers of Bhopal
in the early 20th century and they actually
revolutionized the public healthcare infrastructure of the city
of Bhopal in India in such a way
that it was unrivaled for a very long
time and unparalleled for a very long time
by other municipalities and other local governments in
India for a long time, so you can
see their contributions not only in health education
but also just developing the health infrastructure, keeping
the needs of women in mind and also
supporting as far away as the Ottoman Empire
when there was a need during the First
World War to provide that knowledge and that
guidance related to healthcare for the Muslims there.
I'm just going to ask us to skip
over this slide and the next one, one
more, okay here we are so this is
the slide that I'm going to conclude on
inshallah is that the responsibility on us now
is to learn about Muslim contributions to medicine
more broadly, right, so hopefully this presentation has
inspired you a little bit, has given you
a few clues, a few names, things that
you can go and search up on your
own but Muslims in different cultures of different
backgrounds, different walks of life have been contributing
including the history of contributions to medicine right
here in Canada is something that we have
to explore right here in North America and
this particular story of inoculation which is the
precursor to vaccination as we know it today,
again I won't go through all of the
details but there's a rich tradition of Muslim
contributions to medicine in West Africa that is
very unique, that draws upon local West African
cultural medicine, folk medicine like we mentioned in
our second slide as well as Islamic guidance,
Islamic medicine and combines all of that together
to provide a unique approach to medicine that
benefits not only Muslims in West Africa but
also non-Muslims in West Africa as well
as the Muslims who are forcibly transported from
West Africa to the Americas and we see
some examples here of for example Adnan Musa
in the early 1800s who is probably the
first person to try to get into medical
school, the first person of Muslim background to
try to get into medical school in the
western hemisphere and he tried to do that
in Kingston Jamaica right so we have these
kind of isolated incidents, you also have the
story of Mustafa Azamuri or Esteban the Moor
right, read about him, very very interesting story
just about 30 years after Columbus and how
he was able to develop a special relationship
with Indigenous people because of his knowledge of
healing right because of his knowledge of healing
so the note I leave you with and
I apologize for going slightly over time but
what I want to leave you with is
that we need to start getting on the
front end of providing solutions and becoming part
of conversations particularly when it comes to health
care you know there is a very rapid
development in health care infrastructure right at the
same time as there seems to be a
rapid deterioration many of us are here in
Canada one of the main benefits of living
in Canada is our free health care right
the system that we enjoy here but that
system needs to be maintained and that system
needs to be improved and that system needs
to become more culturally sensitive to reflect the
needs of diverse Canadians and we have a
lot to say about this right we are
not just Muslims here to talk about our
core Islamic teachings or Islamophobia or certain subjects
that you know it seems society has kind
of expected us at this point to speak
about but we want to continue to contribute
our contributions weren't a thousand years ago we
have a responsibility to continue to contribute for
the benefit of all Canadians for the benefit
of the society at large and so it's
on us right nobody's going to do it
for us we have to dig into our
own tradition find these stories find this inspiration
and start to find ways to share it
with the rest of the world with our
family doctors with the people who we have
conversations about health care and remember to keep
that spirit of openness right remember to keep
that spirit of openness the solution to a
certain illness that we can't find might actually
be found in indigenous medicine right it could
be found in Islamic medicine there's so many
different traditions that we can draw upon and
Canada we have a unique opportunity because we
feel connected to people of all these different
backgrounds and so we need to leverage that
and we need to get on the front
end of making sure that we say that
we have something to say about the medical
ethics about the progress of medicine about the
approach to science and all of these things
that are very important again thank you for
your attention and I apologize for going over
time I'm looking forward to the rest of
the presentation Jazakumullah khairan if you have questions
I'll be here till the end so feel
free to approach me or you saw my
Instagram handle on some of the slides feel
free to send me a message Jazakumullah khairan,
Assalamu alaikum.
Jazakumullah khairan brother Hassan always bringing something of
real real importance may Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala bless him I was just remembering that
my father named me I wanted to name
me Ibn Sina and then he must have
changed his mind he named me Al-Razi
then he probably thought that that was too
much like you can't be a doctor guy
so he named me Farhad you know from
the story of Shirin and Farhad like Layla
Majnoon maybe he had something in his mind
but I still have those names Alhamdulillah may
Allah bless you brother Hassan our next speaker
is Imam Ziyad Dalaj he is very well
known to our community Imam Ziyad has a
PhD from Simon Fraser University has been a
teacher an educator an imam a community leader
in Canada for many many years he has
initiated a number of projects including what we
are commemorating here Islamic history months and I
know personally that he has a lot to
offer our community without further ado Imam Ziyad
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh how is everybody doing
sure you are quiet I
will inshallah go into this topic but before
I go there I want to uh shall
I go through some over historical issues here
in Canada okay when do we have first
record showing Muslims in Canada first record
1871 13 Muslims 13 okay mostly
living in the prairies prairie areas okay 2024
I suspect up to three million okay first
masjid when did it when did we have
first masjid in Canada 1938
Edmonton sister Hilvey was behind
it she came as a young bride from
Lebanon and came into Canada very soon she
was running the business she was known as
the finest white lady in the north sister
Hilvey remember this name she challenged everybody and
mayor of Edmonton gave the land that is
right now museum and masjid that Rashid is
moved to another location I just want to
remind you you know we have history all
right okay when did we start Islamic history
month Canada in Canada when Islamic history month
Canada was proclaimed see you guys okay no
this is an educational thing alhamdulillah Allah has
blessed me to be part of it you
know it's so well I'm the biggest miskeen
but Allah has blessed me to be part
of it I want to mention a few
people Dr. Mohamed El Misri sister Waheeda Waliente
may Allah give her jannah late MP Muriel
Balanje MP Ottawa Vanier great man when I
moved from Vancouver to Ottawa I met him
and we worked so closely he was like
united nations on the parliament hill trying to
bring all different parties together to proclaim Islamic
history month Canada October 25th 2007 he made
them proclaim October Islamic history month Canada on
parliament hill historic day because as I told
them on parliament hill I don't want somebody
else to tell my story I don't want
somebody else to tell my narrative I do
want to tell my narrative why because I
know that narrative better than them and I
love that narrative more than them therefore I
do have right to tell my narrative you
know what we made it which was the
first city to proclaim Islamic history month Canada
not Toronto sorry guys Purnaby Purnaby BC
second city Kingston our first capital all right
and then the rest alhamdulillah it moved very
fast thousands of event happened and when you
look into last 18 years this is 18th
year alhamdulillah you've heard oh sheikh alhamdulillah explaining
to you Muslims didn't think about it I
didn't think about it that was a strange
knowledge for me but it's so deep that
when you start reading specifically as a young
person it takes you from one place to
another and you know you don't know which
one you love more it's like a maze
of beautiful knowledge and you become proud of
yourself but I don't want you to stay
there it's not enough to be proud I
don't want to live in the past I
want to live with the past it's different
all right you cannot walk over your own
shadow as Gadamer pointed out German philosopher all
right so moving to today medical
field is very much busy with Muslims today
there are some hospitals in Canada if you
pull out Muslim doctors they will have to
close doors that's the way to do it
in US many messages are having their own
clinics many I was three weeks ago in
Houston and I saw clinic very busy Muslims
non-Muslims you don't have access no money
come in we'll help you you know what
we Muslims talk a lot including myself I
see some people maybe being a little bit
sleepy oh no I want to ask you
a question do you know why Imams love
to talk so much sorry not
case with anybody but a believer we don't
brag when we do something good we just
thank God thank you for giving me this
opportunity me miskin I am just in your
service I am a tool to benefit somebody
and as you have noticed oh sheikh told
us something beautiful and wallahi that's what I
expect from you to go beyond our contributions
to ourselves Islamic identity is beyond us if
you look seriously through history you'll find out
that our scholars have told us Islamic identity
is based minimum on four strong ingredients spirituality
knowledge of text and the context number three
I have to call it giving knowledge to
our future generation and contribution
so there is no actualization of Islam without
us engaging into the society and contributing to
the society amazing and Mashallah he explained it
so well it was almost like plastic so
when we when we really look into Islamic
contributions they have to go beyond our homes
beyond our masajid beyond to others our prophet
peace be upon him said the best of
people he didn't say the best of Muslims
are those who benefit Muslims generic the best
of people are those who benefit people everybody
everybody okay so when we understand our faith
well when we understand the purpose of our
living when we understand life itself and the
grace of god almighty when we understand this
concept we tend not to easily be destructed
we tend not to easily be paranoid be
disappointed and we tend in those difficult moment
to flee to allah not to flee from
him to flee to allah not to flee
from him people who flee from allah in
those moments they really don't know their lord
they don't understand his grace they don't understand
his sifat and that's the reason why i
always tell young brothers and sisters and of
course all of us wallah if you want
to know god going to ismaul husna wallah
they will help you they will ground you
actually as our ulema tell us that's the
base of islamic knowledge if you and i
do not know allah we cannot worship him
properly we cannot love him properly right and
we cannot have trust in him properly and
in moments like this challenges where you see
people confused where you see truth as i
said on friday being wrapped up to look
like lies and lies you know covered up
to look like truth when people have lost
hearts when they have lost humanity when they
have lost direction there is no any other
way but to him there
is no there is no you know going
there is no resort but to him really
there is no resort there is no refuge
and power but with him so yes when
we when we understand the purpose of life
all place in this universe grace of god
almighty all perspectives change really we become much
more sober human beings so palestine issue my
brothers and sisters isn't the first challenge that
we have faced and maybe it is not
the last challenge that we are facing and
what is interesting to know when you think
and this is what i want to remind
you on when you think about mustafa muhammad
sallallahu alayhi wasallam i want inshallah to remind
you that he has faced challenges and he
told us that when he speaks about his
challenges in life what he has gone through
his own family worked against him they kicked
him out his own family didn't want to
help him and support him he goes to
taif and he has been abused and the
way how he responded to all of these
is very unique he's teaching us he understood
that calamities afflictions are inevitable tests in our
lives do you think that we it's enough
for us to just say amen now we
believe and that it would be that would
be it we would go through these challenges
we would see some of these challenges and
actually for muslims challenges are some sort you
know when you go up the hill you
think you are losing energy that's what in
our human universe we think that's not true
we are gaining potential energy that's the reason
why next time when you go up the
hill you go easier right that's exactly with
our spiritual energy when things happen in our
life that muscle is built and developed and
you easily go through those challenges and if
you have gone through any you know it
be it related to your family be it
related to your health be it related to
your job to discrimination or these atrocities across
the globe you take it differently and we
talk about the believer right so prophet peace
be upon him he understood that reality number
two when when affliction be they natural or
or humanly imposed when they hit prophet peace
be upon him knew then that that there
is no other way but through sabr there
is no other way but through sabr and
sabr is not after a month it is
in the moment when it hits that's when
it is measured and when it counts that's
when it will not negatively impact on you
rather will develop you okay god almighty taught
him to hope all right give glad tidings
to sovereign allah promised that after every difficulty
ease would come ease would come so it
doesn't and you know it you know sometimes
you know your husband your wife you had
a fight and you are thinking what's going
on and the next morning mashallah like nothing
happened all right it's called grace of god
almighty okay okay and i have just five
more minutes and i want to inshallah sum
it up with something beautiful okay he taught
us uh that that we expect the best
of allah this is a beautiful hadith could
see i am as my servants expect of
me if they think good of me they
will have it then if they think something
else that that's what they will have then
prophet peace be upon in one beautiful hadith
said subhanallah brothers sisters there
is nothing better than this thinking well of
allah is the best form of ibadah actually
it tells how much you love allah it
tells how much you put trust in allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala it tells so much
and lastly prophet peace be upon him when
he has done all of it when when
there is no and when all walls are
on him he goes to allah he goes
to allah and he says he talks to
allah to you only i complain about my
weakness and lack of resources let's matter where
i am you are the most merciful and
you are the lord of and one particular
part of the of the of the dua
is so powerful subhanallah if you are not
angry with me disappointed in me i don't
mind as long as you are happy with
me i'm okay and then he says but
i would like to have a little bit
of mercy so turning back to him and
inshallah just to conclude and this is important
for us to know um when we really
talk about firar ilallah i just want you
to to realize this this word in arabic
it means it's fleeing running away from something
but when you really look into the depth
of language this is what it means it
means that someone is frightened you experience some
fear number two you notice there is a
danger and right now you are looking for
the ways to run away from it and
not only that you are looking for security
place that is secure for you and in
the context of the ayah it means allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala that's where we are
secure then when when scholars are discussing it
and i would like to conclude with that
with that specifically in the context of us
living here shaykh abdul rahman al-saadi he
said that firar this
firar is this fleeing away is from everything
what allah doesn't like to that what allah
loves be it open or secret and then
he says running from away from it towards
what allah loves openly and secretly and then
he describes it he said the other firar
it is fleeing from ignorance to knowledge a
muslim a person cannot become a muslim and
remain a good muslim in a state of
jahil let us be very clear a person
of jahil is easily manipulated by people who
want manipulation and by shaitan and by desires
knowledgeable person don't easily fall into through the
cracks and then he said from kufr into
iman and gratitude and then he said from
sinning to obedience and from heedlessness into
remembrance of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala uncertainty
may allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us
of those who would heal through the best
way of healing and i swear by god
when we take this path towards our personal
issues or family issues or communal issues societal
issues or international issues would be seen through
different lenses without
further ado i'd just like to ask if
there are any questions for any of the
two speakers if you could come up inshallah
and after that very briefly sheikh abdullah will
address you for a couple of minutes to
tell you about what we are doing next
week inshallah you could sit are there any
questions for any of the two speakers you
can raise your hand if not you know
i'll ask sheikh abdullah and then you could
openly there will be an open session informally
where you can connect with them inshallah alhamdulillah
the issue of health and healing is a
critical issue for muslims not only in the
hospital but in your own life and so
what we have done is brought you some
historical information and then some real life experience
and the set of posters that you have
in the back is taken from tibba nabawi
so these posters if you have a chance
with your cell phone record this information because
these are principles of prophetic knowledge you know
you have western medicine chinese medicine irodetic medicine
different forms there is actually a system of
curing ourselves right from the prophet and so
some of these principles are here for you
tonight if you get a chance look at
them record them we need to heal ourselves
not only physically but psychologically and this is
part of the reason why muslims have been
able to come back over the centuries they
may have destroyed our buildings they may have
attacked our cities but when they turn around
we came back again spiritually we have toba
we have repentance and so we can cure
our spirit and physically we have a tibba
nabawi which is a way to actually cure
your body and it's important to have these
principles as you are getting medicine from hospitals
and doctors you need to compare it with
what the prophet peace and blessings be upon
him has brought to us next week we
will continue inshallah and we want to bring
you some information about different parts of the
world critical information of the muslim world updates
about issues that are happening that you don't
find in the press and so we'll have
people here who are speaking about rohingya muslims
what is happening in maynamah also the muslims
of india and what is happening in india
many people are not aware of what is
happening the uyghur muslims in china as well
and we want to bring you some updates
to bring us closer to where we should
be in the ummah consciousness that's the consciousness
when we look at every muslim as our
brother and our sister in the final week
we want to bring you some solutions and
we want to bring some organizations and people
who are working on the ground to give
you some practical solutions as to how you
can get involved in the struggle that muslims
are going through so we pray that allah
subhanaw taala would bless our speakers who have
come here tonight and to strengthen them and
to bless you for taking from your time
and may allah make it easy for all
of us and we constantly make du'a
for our brothers and sisters in philistine those
in the sudan those who are suffering around
the muslim world subhanakallahu wa bihamdika