Rania Awaad – The Prophet’s Approach to Mental Health
AI: Summary ©
The importance of mental health and forgiveness is emphasized, along with the need for accountability and support for physical and emotional health. The speakers emphasize the importance of understanding one's emotions in order to regulate them and avoid negative emotions. The community helps people to understand their emotions and offers healing circle and resources for mental well-being.AI: Transcript ©
In our discussion today,
the topic I was asked to address, by
this wonderful group and congregation
is the discussion on the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam himself
and his approach to mental health.
And you might think, SubhanAllah, what is this
connection?
Is there something from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam himself
that talks about mental health? Is this term
even found at the time of the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam?
What is this how do you translate this
word into Arabic exactly and did they have
something like mental health or psychology or psychiatry
in that time?
And SubhanAllah, this is a long discussion and
I'll give you the nutshell kind of, you
know, in a nutshell kind of explanation
to say that
the prophet himself, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, inspired an
entire generation of people
and generations
after them, including ourselves,
this many centuries later
to really,
take care of all aspects of health.
This concept of health or sikha
is something that actually the that Islam,
right, directly from within Islam, says that there
should be no distinguishing or discrimination between any
one of the sorts of or the facets
of health,
not physical health, not mental health, not emotional
health, not spiritual health, all of which are
equally important.
And so for anybody who's thinking still,
I don't know.
I don't know, doctor Anya. Mental health seems
to be kind of like this new age
thing. Are are you sure? It seems kind
of a
I don't know.
Maybe
a kind of more of a modern construct?
Was it really something part of Islam? Is
it really something part of the prophet himself,
sallallahu alaihi wasallam, in his sunnah, his blessed
sunnah?
Well, let's explore this together InshaAllah Ta'ala.
So this is where I'd like to begin.
You know, some of you know that I
love to speak about history, but I'm not
gonna bore you about history today, inshallah.
Although I find it very exciting. From Zirena.
But what I will tell you about is
directly about him, Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam. One of the most important things that
we understand about the reason Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala sent prophets.
Now listen
closely to this. Okay?
Think about this. If Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
has a message to humanity,
it is very easy for Allah to
send down that message
directly to us.
It could have been in the form of
a book.
It could have been in the form of
tablets. It could have been in the form
of any sort of scripture that comes.
But he brought his message
with
a messenger,
sallallahu
alaihi wasallam.
And he could have said maybe that's sufficient.
We will learn the Quran, literally the scripture,
the living example of the Quran through the
prophet himself, salallahu alaihi wa sallam, a walking
Quran, as we say.
But in addition to that, he also sends
a community,
Sahaba and Sahabiats,
men and women around the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam to live life,
everyday life,
so that whatever happens with them,
good and bad,
whatever good happens and whatever mistakes happen,
He sallallahu alaihi wasallam can explain to us
what is appropriate according
to the Quran
and what isn't.
You see? Because He Himself,
as the most perfect
of all human beings,
the most blessed of all human beings, the
best of them, khayri, khankallah,
He's not going to make the kind of
mistakes,
right, that ordinary individuals will. But the companions,
men and women, may. And so we'll learn,
right, through his, right, through his sunnah, through
his sayings, through his actions, what is accurate
and what isn't.
You take all of this together, the Quran,
the Sunnah,
and the examples of the righteous that were
all there at the time of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam that then inspire the next
generations
and you start to understand
the story of mental health.
Let me tell you how.
Let's start with the prophet himself,
Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam.
Many times when people think about mental health,
they think about difficulties.
They think about words like depression or anxiety.
They think about trauma.
They think about diagnoses.
They think about
maybe even medications or maybe they think about
a label that someone puts on them or
their children, let's say.
How did the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam himself
deal with his difficulties?
That's the question.
Because he is the best of all of
creation
and human.
Human,
meaning there were times that things were rough.
There were times that he cried and grieved.
There were times that he was frustrated and
things were difficult.
There were times where things did not go
his way, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And through his example,
and later I'll get to the next layer
out, the example of the companions, we learn
quite a bit about how you deal
with
trials and tribulations
and your mental health, your mental well-being.
The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
had a year
that was very difficult for him,
So much so and so prolonged
that the scholars of Sida, those who kind
of captured everything related to his life,
Called it what? Does anyone remember?
Am and Husid.
Literally, Am, a year of sorrow, a year
of grief,
a year of
prolonged
sadness.
Why is this important?
When I tell people sometimes
that are going through something difficult
and I say, this is rather human,
But it doesn't just sort of mean that
you twiddle your thumbs and sit around and
say,
you know, if Allah sent it to me,
then it shall pass. Of course, it will
because Allah has also said that if He
sent you difficulty, He will send you ease.
Yusra And it's repeated a second time.
Inna ma'al Ausri
yusra
And whenever Allah
repeats something twice in the Quran,
it means,
pay attention,
This is important, and therefore, I'm repeating it.
And when we talk about difficulty,
people think, well, how is ease
with difficulty? Because it's not after difficulty comes
ease, it's literally what? Mara, it's with.
Literally tucked on tucked into the difficulty
is your ease.
But sometimes you can't see it right away.
And sometimes that ease isn't the thing itself,
but rather
circumstances around it. People, individuals,
resources,
just the ability to deal with something heavy
emotionally.
All of these are forms of yusra.
Right?
And so look at the Prophet
in this year of prolonged sadness and difficulty.
Let's count together what happens.
Who knows the CEDAW well? How does it
start?
What's the first thing? There's a series of
losses that happen.
What's the first loss?
I'm hearing different things.
So I'm hearing his wife. His wife, Syeda
Syeda Khadija
Right? This is his wife of so many
years. The mother of all of his children
up until this point and,
right, his blessed
companion,
his anchor. Beautiful description. Allahi, beautiful description.
Yani, in home, internally,
this is his anchor. We would call her
his internal support.
Yani, when you're terrified and you're running off
the mountain and you're literally trembling as it's
described in the Quran,
And she is there to hold you, to
support you, and to remind you that Allah
does not want bad for you.
After all these years of support, who's given
you all of this, what, emotional
sustenance and support
and has literally given all of her wealth
for the Dawah,
right, for Islam,
and has given all of her support to
you,
she passes away.
It's heavy.
It's heavy.
And soon after, what happens?
The next loss.
Yes, Bashar, we have some Sida experts here.
The loss of his uncle. What's his name?
Abu Talib. Why is he important?
Why is he important?
What is the role that Abu Talib plays
for the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and
for Islam?
And you say, for Islam? We don't know
him to be a Muslim. There's some Khalaf.
But let's just say that there's we don't
know him publicly, visibly to be a Muslim.
So why is he so important?
Yes. Exactly. While his uncle was alive,
the people of Quresh, the enemies, could not
touch the prophet salawat alaihi wasalam. He was
protected.
So you have an internal protection and anchor
from Sayeda'a from Khadija.
Sayasha for some reason. Sayeda Khadija.
And you have an external protection from
his uncle,
both of whom pass away and in a
very short span of time.
Tell me, there's another loss that happens after
that.
Yes. In the backdrop, there is a sanction.
There is an economic boycott against the Muslims,
meaning no trade, no in, no out.
So much so that they're literally
starving.
In this period of time, the Sahaba would
talk about how they were eating leaves.
One of them said, I took in the
darkness, I picked up something mushy.
I didn't know what it was. It was
dark.
And I picked it up and I put
it in my mouth and it was chewing.
I just chewed it. Yani, to this level
of starvation.
And then there's another loss.
What else happens in this year?
All within weeks of each other.
Before that, there's something.
And then
we're missing something.
La f. Very good. All I know is,
Alekki, very good. What happens after the death
of the uncle
and in the backdrop
of this economic boycott, the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam says, well, I have distant family
that's in Ta'if.
I no longer have protection of Paresh,
and they're not going to be listening to
me. They're they're they're the people that are,
you know, the important people of Paresh are
no longer listening to me. So why don't
I try another set of distant family members
and another tribe altogether? Maybe they'll listen.
So he literally walks.
Has anyone been to Thoughtlife, by the way?
Anyone visited Thoughtlife?
Yeah? Can you describe Thoughtlife? What's it like?
It's 50 some miles.
Right?
And what what does it look like?
It's so much beautiful. What about Thayf?
It's very different than the other cities. It's
different than Mecca. It's different than
Medina.
It's very luscious.
Yani, it's yes. You're still in the Arabian
Peninsula, but it's very green. It's very lush.
It has orchards and orchards.
It's it's so interesting. A different place, subhanAllah.
And here you have the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, head over there and he starts his
dawah. He starts to call people to Islam.
He's got very specific the heads of the
tribe that he wants to reach 1 by
1.
And he goes to them 1 by 1.
You know what they say to him?
1 person says to him, what? Your Allah
couldn't find someone better than you to send
us?
Someone else says, if you really are the
prophet, then I'll be cursed.
Right?
The next person says, don't even try to
talk to me. Basically, each one of them
kicks him out. Each one of them in
turn kicks him out.
And so he decides despite all of this
pain, right, of people being very human humiliating
him, he decides to stay in thought for
a little bit longer. Why?
He says, well, let me give the Dawah
to the common people.
Right? There are leaders that want to listen,
maybe the commoners will listen.
And then they started to actually be interested
in what is this message of Islam.
Do you know what happens next?
The leaders
get wind of the fact that the people
are getting interested in Islam. So what do
they do to him? They literally drive him
out of the
if. And tell me what they do because
it's very humiliating what they do. You know
this part of the story. What do they
do?
They they gather the who? The children.
And they literally pick up stones
and pelt him
with this so much so that literally he
starts to bleed.
It said that his heels were so *
from this incident of so many
stones hitting him that his foot is sticking
into his sandal
because of the blood.
And you know when you're when you're,
targeted like this, you're so humiliated like this.
He said, I lost track of where I
was. Can you imagine? You're being driven out
and being pelted and pelted with stones and
you're bleeding and you're kind of a little
bit confused where you are. He said, I
did not even know where I was
until he got to a specific orchard.
Do you know whose orchard it was?
Yes. Adesis who's with him, who's the the
person's servant their servant,
subhanallah.
And he sits in this orchard on a
rock and he makes a very special du'a
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Powerful du'a. I
encourage us all to learn it and even
memorize it.
Because in this dua, he literally says to
Allah,
if I've done something wrong
and this is some sort of punishment for
me,
then forgive me, and I accept it.
But if you are happy with me, you're
pleased with me, and this is basically like
a test or a tribulation that I'm going
through, then I accept.
I accept.
And he sees at that point what?
Who? Who does he see?
The angel.
The angel?
What angel?
Sayyidina Jibril. What is Sayyidina Jibril coming with
a message? What does he tell him?
See, you said hills earlier and there were
mountains there.
And he says to him, if you want,
I will take these mountains and
basically destroy this group of people that have
humiliated you so much.
And what does the prophet say sallallahu alaihi
wasalam?
Use a rahma, mercy.
He says, maybe
it could be that from their progeny, from
their next generations, they'll be believers. So keep
them. Look how merciful tia sallallahu alaihi wasalam
despite
the agony,
despite the agony. And there's a beautiful next
part of the story, and I didn't mean
to go all the way into the story
thought if I love the story thought. But
there's the next part of the story, which
is I'll just share very quickly.
Where is the where is the yusrah tucked
into the usr here?
He's sitting in an orchard,
and the orchard belongs to people who are
technically enemies.
Right? But he's sitting there
and the people see him and he's bleeding
and very it's a very difficult, Yani. It's
like they had some shakakha for him. Right?
They had some, you know, empathy for him.
And so they said they sent their servant
to him and they said, give him some
grapes
from the orchard. Remember I told you orchards.
Right? So when he when he see when
he when he's offered these grapes,
he says, Bismillah.
And the servant who listens to this, he
says, who taught you to say this?
And he says,
I'm a prophet of God. I'm taught this
the way Allah has taught the prophets.
And so he says the servant says, I
haven't heard anyone in these lands say these
words.
And he says, well, where are you from?
Do you guys know where he was from?
From your city?
Masha'allah.
Masha'allah.
How beautiful.
And he said,
I too am a descendant of which prophet?
Sayyidna Yunus. And I am a prophet just
like the prophet Yunus, and we are both
given a message from the same God. Do
you know that that servant right there took
shahada
and became a Muslim? People don't know some
of the little finer details,
but that was he hoped for Ta'if to
become Muslim, but he had this one person.
And he said with this one person,
it was the weight
of that entire current city that later, Alhamdulillah,
I had a chance to visit. It sounds
like you did too.
They are the most generous beautiful people you
will meet.
And they are core, like like very proud
believers of Muslims today.
And generous, generous.
They still have the orchards and they're very
generous, SubhanAllah. And you think about had that
whole city been annihilated,
there wouldn't have been those believers today.
But let's go back to our story. Here's
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
He's had what?
Multiple losses one after another after another in
his life.
And you're right. You mentioned something that happens
right after the in the Sira. What is
that?
Al Isra wal Ma'raj.
This is the night journey.
Right? And the ascension
happens right after this incident.
Allah is giving him relief after these difficult
moments and things that he has he has
been through, subhanAllah.
As he goes through these difficulties,
He we learned from him
and from all of the stories
that he grieved,
that he cried,
that he felt
a sense
of even being in that confusion and and
almost like everyone is against you, and he
physically bled
and hurt.
Why do I share this?
Because when you think about the discussion on
mental health
and you think about a person's well-being and
mental wellness,
we turn first to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam.
What is it that we don't see?
We don't see somebody
turning, after some difficulty, turning against Allah We
don't see somebody saying, why me?
We don't see somebody saying,
I can do this completely on my own.
That last point is very important
because we talked about how the prophet
had his internal anchor, his external anchor,
and he had his community.
And he went and tried to seek out
support from the leaders who wouldn't listen to
him, but he was trying because he knew
that you don't do this alone.
See, today, we have a little bit of
a trouble with this. A lot of us
believe that we can do things completely on
our own.
We think that we need to be self
sufficient.
We need to be able to wipe away
our own tears and, in fact, we maybe
shouldn't even have tears in the first place.
And that's just simply not the message of
our prophet or the prophets of the Quran.
Do you know my best example of this?
You must know my best example of this.
Who am I referring to in the Quran?
Sayidna Yaqoob.
What about Sayidna Yaqoob in the Quran?
Allah
described
very eloquently and specifically
the crying and the tears of Sayyid Ay
Yaqub.
What did he say? What's the verse?
He did say that
to Imam. And how does he say his
crying specifically?
It's amazing.
The fact that the description of the crying
of Sayyid Nabu, the father of Yusuf,
on the loss of his son,
His loss of his son right? This is
the part of the story early on in
the Surah. Right? The whole Surah reads like
a story.
And early on, we see that the loss
of Sayid Nay Yusuf, the brothers are jealous
of him.
They put him in they can't get themselves
to kill him, although they think about murder,
what jealousy can do to you.
And instead, they put him in the the
well. They come back and complain to their
or they report to their father as though
he was dead.
Philip has a sense, a feeling
that something's not right.
But nevertheless,
even as a prophet of God who's receiving
revelation from God,
he's what?
He cries.
I wanna ask you something.
Would we ever
say that Sayyid Day Yaqb is any less
of a prophet because he cried?
No.
Would we say that he's any less of
a man because he cried?
Would we say that he's any less of
a believer
because he cried?
Prussia,
you can't.
There's no way.
And not only does he cry, I don't
mean just some tears. I'm talking about the
kind of tears and crying that's described in
the Quran as
his eyes went white
with grief.
And the scholars debate, was this blindness,
or was this more like a haziness the
way cataracts might do to you? Whatever it
is, the point is the word in Arabic
is, well,
His eyes went white
with grief.
Yani, so much crying in a prolonged
period of time. Do you know from the
time Syedne Yusuf was lost until he was
found
or reunited, Annie, with his father? How many
years was that? Does anyone know?
How many years?
It's it's a few decades.
Some say between 20 to 30 years
before he's reunited with his son.
That many years of crying,
it'll do it to you.
What do I wanna say? We would never
say here's a prophet of God after the
prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa sallam, our understanding
of who are the best humans are the
prophets, the most closest to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. And here is a prophet of God
who is crying so much. Why do I
really emphasize this?
Because forgive me, but I'm going to put
something there that you may not be happy
with me, but especially our boys and our
men,
what do we say to them?
Be a man.
Don't be a
girl.
Men don't cry.
Man up.
Would you say that's a prophet? Yeah. Absolutely.
I'm not
trying to say and let everybody start crying.
That's what I'm saying. But what I am
trying to say is tears have a purpose
and tears have
a place
and tears are something that is not considered
to be the opposite of a believer.
This point is very important
because for so many people, when we talk
about mental health, the immediate thing is, well,
if they just had better iman,
they wouldn't have mental health problems.
You say that about Prophet Yaqubah, the Prophet
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam?
You have a whole entire 'am and huzn,
a whole year of sadness,
of grief, of sorrow.
Would we say this to them, that their
iman wasn't strong enough?
No.
So what do we mean then? It means
that it's possible that a person can have
very strong belief in Allah and be an
immense
pillar
of belief,
But
Mike sometimes don't like me. That's okay.
They are gonna start crying 2 thirties.
And here's my proof for you. The prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says about the believers.
Right? He says about believers that if Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala wanted
good for you, He's going to test you.
Because the best of all people are the
prophets, and they are the most tested.
And after them are the people who are
the closest to Allah and
they are the most tested after the
prophets and so on and so forth.
And people have a really hard time with
this but it is part of our tradition.
It's part of our
Islamic concept.
For example, the prophet
says,
What does that translate to whoever Allah intends
good for, He sends them affliction
that benefits them.
Sometimes these difficulties are purification.
Sometimes these difficulties are reminder.
Sometimes it's a prick that kind of says,
okay, what is this? Or maybe it's
a humiliating
and humbling experience to say, I need to
get help.
I shouldn't and can't do this completely on
my own.
And I think that's really important because so
many times, I talk to individuals who they
themselves have gotten to a point where they
realize I need help.
And they'll say to members of their family
and their community, their friends, and they'll say,
I think I need some help.
But often, they're met with resistance.
No. You don't.
Just pray more.
No. You don't. Don't be so lazy. No.
Get up. Get up. No. You don't.
If you just did x, y, or z,
you'd be fine.
But this isn't the message of our deen,
and it's not the message of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
In fact, you wanna know what is the
message?
I'll tell you.
There were times in the prophet's life himself,
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
that he
wanted so much to spread Islam, to give
this message of Dawah. He wanted everyone to
be part of the fold of Islam.
But there were some who were resistant and
they just weren't going to listen.
SubhanAllah.
And Allah
talked to him or addressed him directly in
the Quran.
And he says to him,
as an ayah that you all know and
probably recite weekly, but let's think of the
context in which it's revealed.
Are you familiar with this verse? You recite
it. You know it.
What does it look like translated to? It
says, now perhaps, oh prophet, you will grieve
yourself to death. K. Listen to me. Grieve
yourself
to death
over their denial
if they continue to disbelieve in this message.
Allah is saying to him,
there is a limit
of what you can do and of convincing
other people about this message.
Even if they don't listen, you can't basically
put yourself in a situation where you will
grieve so heavily and so deeply that it
will start to affect you psychologically
and physically.
So Allah puts a limit in place
of how far you can go before you
have to address this.
Do you see what I'm saying?
And
Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, told him,
Do not grieve yourself to death over him,
oh Prophet.
Yani,
remember that even the prophet
as
a human, yes, the best of all humans
was prone
was prone to going into a state of
grieving so extensively that it could be problematic.
So Allah is telling him, don't go that
far.
Right?
So I have 5 messages for you or
5 main aspects of when people want to
know, what is the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wasalam's approach himself
to mental health? Let's take all 5. Number
1,
the first and foremost
that suffering can be that blessing from Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And for somebody who does not believe in
Allah and doesn't understand the concept of,
a God centered kind of concepts
or worldview where you realize that you are
not the one in charge. There is Allah's
divine wisdom
really orchestrating everything. It's hard to understand this
concept. Why would you have somebody who's going
to have
a suffering be a blessing?
But here's my proof for you.
There's a hadith where the prophets, Muhammad
says,
That the the wondrous it's wondrous
the believer.
All that happens to the believer is hayr,
is good.
All that
happens
is
good.
And he emphasizes that this is not for
anybody except for the believer.
That if Allah gives them good,
alhamdulillah,
it's good for them. But if he gives
them difficulty,
then what?
Also, alhamdulillah.
Exactly.
That if it that if the good, the
gratitude, the prosperity comes to them, then they
have shukr, They're in gratitude to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. And if the difficulty comes to
them, the adversity falls them, they endure
patiently.
And this is also good for them.
Only a believer can understand this, and only
a believer can have the kind of patience
to kinda push them through or pull them
through this difficulty when it comes to them.
Number 2,
to embrace this knowledge
of your emotions
in balance.
Like the message I was saying earlier about
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Even Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala put limits to the dawah that
he was doing.
That it can't be a point where it
drives him into the ground,
essentially.
Right?
Even the dawah of Islam.
And so here, this idea of balance, the
prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, taught us the
importance of acknowledging
our own emotions.
And people think this is so interesting that
this is really the prophet told us about
our emotions. Yes.
Not only did he acknowledge
his own emotions, but he acknowledged emotions of
the people of his community.
And there are many examples of this, but
let me tell you the story,
which is a difficult story but an important
story.
And it comes later in the prophet's life,
and now he has the youngest of his
children,
a son,
by the name of
Ibrahim.
And
Ibrahim was not to live. He was not
going to live very long.
And as
he is literally taking his very last breaths,
he is sitting on the lap of his
father, the Prophet sallallahu
alaihi
wasallam. And this little child is taking their
very last breaths
and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi wasallam
begins to cry,
visible tears
coming down his cheeks,
so much so that the companions
see the tears.
And so they ask him
because they're curious. They wanna know everything the
prophet does, everything he says, everything he does,
every they have to understand, is this okay?
Is this not okay? What do we do?
What does this mean?
So they ask him about the tears.
And this is what He says,
Indeed, the eyes shed tears
and the heart feels sorrow.
But we do not say that except which
is pleasing to Allah
Surely,
your departure, O Ibrahim,
leaves us all deeply saddened.
And he explains to the companions,
tears
are normal.
They are normative.
There is what this is what Allah has
given us to grieve with.
It's different. Crying is different than wailing and
screaming and carrying on.
The tears and being overcome by emotion
and the feeling of sorrow and grief in
your heart is human.
And if you don't have this, then you're
a robot.
And he shows through his own blessed example,
sallallahu alaihi wasallam, that not only is it
okay to cry,
but a believer
cries.
But what they don't do
is push against
or say something that Allah would not be
okay with.
Does that make sense?
It's so important when he says, and we
do not say except that pleases Allah, means
I don't complain about what Allah has given
me.
I don't push. I don't have
I don't push against
the fate that God has given me. He's
taken my young son away. Some might say,
why me? How come? Why not him? Why
not her?
I understand that this has come to me,
and so I accept it. But it does
not negate that I can be tearful and
sad.
Does that make sense?
This is important.
This balance this is what I mean by
balance of emotion,
recognizing emotions. See, sometimes as modern humans, what
we do is we start to label emotions.
We say sadness and tears, bad.
Happiness and joy, good.
We don't realize that the entire spectrum of
emotions is something Allah created.
He created sadness just like he created happiness.
And therefore,
all of which are the creation of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. So you can't label some
of them good and some of them bad.
Does that make sense? And this balance is
part of his prophetic example
towards mental health. Number 3,
to regulate our emotions.
The prophetic example on mental health here is
a regulation of emotions.
Think about a hadith that you know, I
know you know this one,
about anger.
What does the prophet say? Anger is an
emotion Allah has created.
And put in the right direction, it could
actually lead to good. Put in the wrong
and to an extreme situation, it can definitely
lead to bad.
What is the hadith that you know about
anger?
Tell me more. What else do you know
about anger?
What happens if you're angry? What is the
prophetic sunnah to do?
Good.
Excellent. Excellent. You're saying all different parts of
the hadith. Excellent. But if a person is
standing, they
sit.
And if they're very
and if they feel that heat, right, what
is this? This is another narration of what?
That anger is
from? Shaitan. Shaitan is made from fire. So
how do you put this out?
Water. So go make.
Right? There is a behavior this is in
psychology. We would call this a behavioral
modification
to
an emotion that you're feeling.
Literally, you are regulating the emotions
by putting, again, limits around them. You're not
canceling them out and saying, nope, canceled.
You're actually modulating them,
modifying them, helping them
to be the best version of you, Insha
Allah Ta'ala.
Number 4,
to take time to take care of yourself.
And you'll say, really? Self care is part
of the sutta of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam?
Absolutely.
Sometimes people hear this word self care, and
they think I'm saying
selfish.
I'm not telling us to be selfish.
But when I'm saying self care,
it's the same kind of care that we
give to anything that we're doing.
When we say self care, I don't just
mean spa days, ladies.
When I mean self care, I mean everything,
all aspects of care. So if it's physical,
then it's taking care of our physical bodies,
whatever form of exercise it allows you to
do that.
When I say emotional
self care, it's regulating and working on our
emotions.
And if there's something
that is just like physical, by the way,
some people are very motivated.
They say, oh, I can go run a
mile. No problem.
Other people, they literally need, like, a running
group to do anything.
Some people are like, I can have the
run the machine, the treadmill in my own
house, and I'll
have the self discipline to get up on
it and to do something with it. Others,
they'll have every machine
created.
Yet what's missing is them getting on to
the machines.
So then what do they need? They need
encouragement.
They need a group. Sometimes they need a
trainer.
Right? I have this excellent trainer,
And, Muslim lady, she was really excellent,
And I've noticed the difference of having a
trainer versus not having a trainer.
You know, it's something about there's accountability.
I knew that I was accountable.
I was gonna show up and she was
gonna ask. Right? And I had to be
there. And there were certain times and certain
days that I had to be on time.
SubhanAllah.
And that level of accountability was very useful.
If we do that for physical health, what
about for emotional health?
Okay. You're not ready to hear about emotional
health? Fine. What about spiritual health? Now come
back to emotional health. What do you do
for your spiritual health?
You're here here on a Friday night. You
could be at the movie theaters.
You could be at the
mall. I don't know. The hoop?
The gym?
To an extent, the gym might be okay.
But it's a Friday night. You could really
be literally anywhere, SubhanAllah.
What are you doing for your spiritual health
and well-being?
You're here with the imam,
You're here in a circle of knowledge, ahalakah.
You're here in a bonds of sisterhood and
brotherhood that kind of uplift you and keep
you going spiritually,
and, alhamdulillah, the many programs that you're attending,
this is helping you, spiritual health.
If you completely cut out all aspects of
a Muslim community and a place in which
you're learning Islam, you'll find this is deficient.
It's just like the treadmill that can't get
the person on it.
Same thing with spiritual health.
Now we're ready to get to emotional health.
What happens with emotional mental health if we
find ourselves
unable to do this completely on our own?
Some people can. They may have the resources
or the family
or the friends or the support, and maybe
what they're dealing with is what we would
call mild.
Mild
on this the grand scheme of things,
mild.
But maybe for some people, their tribulation in
life comes in that
mental health or emotional health aspect.
And maybe it's a moderate or even a
severe.
Even then people say, you can do this
on your own. Why? We're not Superwoman and
Superman.
We're not. That's not how God created us.
He didn't create us to fly.
He didn't create us with special superpower. He
really didn't. He created us humans.
And he gave us examples
of people close to him who also told
us to get help.
You want my proof?
The companions went to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam,
and they said to him, if we get
sick,
should we go get treatment?
What are they implying in this question?
They are asking the prophet of God.
It's as though even though it's not said,
it's as though it's implied, You Rasulullah isn't
prayer enough or thicket enough?
They didn't say this but it's essentially implied,
should we go get treatment?
They're asking the prophet
who if you go to the average Muslim
today and you told him, I'm depressed,
he would say,
a believer does not get depressed,
go pray.
This is the typical
answer.
What was the prophet's answer,
Seek out treatments, O servants of God.
For In
some narrations, Dawat.
I'll translate.
The companions asked the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
if we get sick, should we go get
treatment?
And he, salallahu alaihi wasalam, answered and said,
seek out treatments,
oh servants of God.
For God does not send down
illnesses.
He does not create illnesses.
Unless he creates
its cure,
or in some narrations, its treatment.
And this is what modern medicine would tell
you today. There are some illnesses that have
cures
and some illnesses that have only
treatments.
They're chronic. They won't go away, but you
can treat them.
And this is powerful.
You know, when the pandemic happened
and nobody understood what was happening with COVID
19, especially in those 1st few months,
think about March 2020.
Right? For the 1st few months, can you
put yourself back there? It's not that long
ago. Yeah? Put yourself back there. I don't
know. None of us wanna be back there.
Just for just a few months. It's just
emotionally because it's so recent history.
Right? Can't believe we're saying history. But anyway,
it's so recent that you can put yourself
back into the feeling of anguish, of just
angst, of, like, not knowing what is this
thing and people are dying and they're telling
us to isolate and to drop everything we're
doing and to stay at home.
And do you remember that feeling?
This tiny little micros microscopic
And I was so wonderful to hear believers
say
that if Allah created an illness,
He's also created it,
cure or treatment.
And, subhanAllah, it would only be within a
matter of months given to modern medicine, subhanAllah,
and the work of people, some of whom
were Muslim by the way, right, who figured
out the vaccine for COVID,
who
put right? Because the cure doesn't just fall
from the sky. You have to actually take
active work to make it happen.
Science and rep
and lab work and kinda research and so
on. Anyway, the point is
the belief of knowing that if Allah sent
an illness, even a brand new one we've
never seen before, he's also going to send
it
cure or treatment.
There is no discrimination
in Islam between physical illness and mental illness.
And if you want my proof to this,
the proof are the institutions that the Muslims
created.
We actually named our nonprofit organization, Madastan,
after these institutions.
For those of you who know Farsi or
Odedoo, you know the word,
illness,
stand, location.
Bimaristan
is
the hospitals of the Muslims.
The Arabic of this is Darushifa.
Interestingly, in the Arab lands, they have the
Imarustans.
That's what they call them. And in the
non Arab lands, they call them the Dara
Shifa. I don't know. Anyway,
they're the same kind of institution.
They're a hospital.
And the hospital was run by physicians.
And you know what was so beautiful by
it?
We're writing a book at this moment, make
du'a, inshallah, we're almost done with inshallah ta'ala,
that we can't find proof
of other civilizations
parallel or before the Muslims
that put psychiatric
wards in their hospitals before the Muslims. When
you
When you tell me that there's something in
Islam that discriminates between mental health and physical
health,
There isn't.
Yani, they had the wherewithal to say, if
Allah says there's an illness, there must be
a treatment, that I'm going to whatever illness
I see in front of me in society,
I'm going to work hard to make sure
we provide health and care for that person.
So their hospitals are literally like this, a
section for surgery, a section for obstetrics, a
section for internal medicine, a section
ophthalmology,
a section for psychiatry.
There are papers written by non Muslims that
say that that blueprint
of the Muslim Hospitals is the blueprint of
the modern hospital system.
They took it from the Muslims.
Because you know what the alternatives were that
were available at the time?
Send them to the nuns or priests to
pray on them.
Or in Europe, at the same exact time,
burn them as witches at the stake
because this is all supernatural
possession
that's happening to them.
Do you see what I'm saying?
This is not what the Muslims understood.
And where are they getting it from?
Seek out treatments, O servants of God.
And lastly, number 5,
to seek help.
This is part of the prophet Sunna Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, it's himself.
You already heard the hadith,
but I'll tell you something very beautiful about
the Sida.
Now, Sittina, Isha, I get to finally say
talk about her.
That Sittina, Isha radiAllahu anha,
years years after the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam passed away. She outlived him for many
many years.
And for years afterwards,
people would come to her specifically
for many things,
one of which is medicine.
And people were always so amazed by this.
They would say,
oh, Aisha, we know that you
are really good with your fiqh,
your Islamic laws and legislation because you lived
with the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. You're
an immense narrator of the hadith of the
prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. So that makes
sense.
We know you're really good with lineages,
which was very important at the time for
the Arabs and until today. It's one of
our maqasid actually to the preservation of the
lineage.
And they would say, we know that that's
the case because your father is
Abu Bakr, and he was very good at
this knowledge. So he passed it down to
his daughter.
But how is it that you're so good
at medicine?
And she would say,
because when I would get sick, when I
when when when the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasalam,
would get sick,
all of the tribes of Arabia would try
to send him different types of medicine. Right?
They all wanna make sure that he's okay.
So everyone is giving, can you imagine, try
this, try this, try this treatment, try this
herb, try this thing. Right? So she was
a witness to all of this. She said,
I learned all of the different kinds of
treatments that were available at her time.
And so she learned
medicine.
And she learned from the prophet Muhammad salallahu
alaihi wasalam himself
to give people treatment when they were ill,
not just simply to make du'a for them
or pray for them. You do that plus
you take the medicine.
And that's really important.
And one such example that I'll give you
is a special kind of soup or kind
of
a meal, you call it maybe a comfort
food
called tilbina.
Do people know tilbina? Some people still make
it till today.
Do you know what tilbina is?
It's a barley. Yes. Exactly. It's a it's
a it's a it's,
you take barley flour and milk and honey,
and they would make it and they would
give it to anybody who's feeling down,
having some anxiety or some down,
you know, sadness.
And when the people asked her about this,
why do you give tilbina to these people?
Because this was something she was doing, so
it's an Aisha. She said, I heard the
prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam say, tilbina
helps the ailing heart cope and find rest
and it also relieves some sorrow and grief,
SubhanAllah.
Now, to me, the Talbina itself is an
interesting thing, but what's more interesting
is the fact that she actually learned from
the prophet to treat depression and anxiety and
sorrow and difficulty
with a physical substance,
not just merely dua and prayer.
Does that make sense?
Does that make sense? It's really important to
understand that they took things to help them
as well. And in the generations after them,
because in the book that we're writing, we're
looking at how did that in that hospital
that I'm telling you about the madistans,
what did they treat? They have the psychiatric
wards. How did they treat those who are
mentally ill?
They had actual treatments for them,
including treatments that were medication based,
including treatments that were talk therapy. Mhmm. Yep.
You just heard me right.
Talk therapy.
I'm not saying the Muslims created it. We
still have to do more research to see
if they were the first ever. But they
were definitely some of the very first to
work and to really help
understand
the benefit of something like talk therapy.
But it's not just talking, talking, talking, but
it's actually learning techniques and tools to help
you
in healing.
And the Muslims did this. And thirdly,
spiritual
help.
When you combine the 3 together, medications
plus the therapy plus the spiritual upliftment, you
get a recipe
for care and concern.
Alhamdulillah,
I can go into many, many more,
examples
from our traditions, subhanAllah, in which
the, the types of treatments that were used
and the types of certain scholars and certain,
leaders of our historical past that actually
were really,
at the forefront of all of this discussion
on mental illness. And I'm happy to share
some of those things. I do wanna give
some time for the q and a.
But I'll conclude with this. We had our
5 kind of main
examples of how the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
dealt with mental health.
And in addition,
we'll say this, in this my my closing
kind of remark here is a call to
action,
really, for our community.
And what is our call to action?
That we have a tradition that literally teaches
us
that in addition
to making du'a
and making sure that we don't lose that
connection with Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, and continuing
with strong iman,
despite whatever difficulties and tribulations come our way,
it is also a tradition that says,
get help when you need it.
Please don't stand in the way of all
those who do need that help. And here,
I bear with with a lot of humility.
Say to our community,
please, parents, don't stand in the way of
the children that need the help.
Please, husbands, don't stand in the way of
the wives that need the help. Please, wives,
don't stand in the way of the husbands
that need help.
Please, young people, don't stand in the way
of the elders that need the help.
SubhanAllah, at every level
and I meet so many people that come
and talk to me. And afterwards, and they
approach and they say, I know I need
help or I know someone so needs help,
but I can't seem to move the needle.
And I ask why. And they say shame.
Or if they're young, they'll say, my parent
is worried that I'm not going to get
married.
Or they'll say, they don't want it on
their insurance record.
Or they'll say,
is it going to go on some other
academic or job record?
Or they'll
say, I'm not sure that I actually need
this help in the first place.
My concern with all of these things is
all of them have a solution. None of
them are. You're not making any of them
up. All of them are real important things
to consider.
But, ultimately,
my concern
is a decade later, 2 decades later, after
you see the young people become older people,
you see what happens is the cycle
perpetuates.
It just continues to perpetuate.
I know people from my generation that grew
up when I was growing up here. Right?
And now they're my age, and they have
children.
Our children are teenagers now.
And as we see the cycles continue to
perpetuate,
it's it's sad.
And you think, subhanAllah,
had there been intervention earlier on, what could
have happened? And we don't go back and
say, well, because Lawi Iftahaba is Shaytan.
Right?
The word if opens the door of Shaytan.
So we're not gonna say, you know, what
if we got that help earlier? But what
we will say is today,
from today,
moving forward,
let's make sure that that help can happen,
that the healing can happen, that we can
break cycles of difficulty
and cycles that will and will perpetuate that
unnecessarily don't need to perpetuate themselves.
And I say this to people, and they're
not always happy when I say it. But
I say,
I don't want
your child
or your family member,
10 years from now, to sit in my
office and complain about you.
Not because you did something, but maybe it's
the lack of doing something,
the lack of getting help when they needed
the help,
the lack of being there when they needed
it.
And more importantly than that,
is to stand in front of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala and to be asked and be
said, I put you in a community and
in a place, in a situation where you
had resources,
and you didn't take up the resources to
get the help when needed.
Are you upset with me that I said
this?
Some might be, so forgive me. SubhanAllah.
But it's it's really a year it's it's
it's it's because of literally now, Alhamdulillah,
been doing this work for a number of
years, and it's like
a number of years worth of seeing
kind of a pile up of what could
be avoided
by actually doing the thing that we're taught
to do by our own prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam in our own tradition of getting
the help. Clearly, their madistans weren't empty. They
clearly would fill the people that needed the
help.
And so they created the institutions. They created
the programming. They created the treatments.
My friends, my sisters, my brothers, they created
this.
The earliest of these happened right after the
time of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
He he ordered the very first of them
to be created and the stand alone institutions,
actual brick and mortar institutions
from as early as the 8th century.
Psychiatric rewards
as early as the 8th century.
So
are we somewhat convinced now, Insha'Allah?
I'll end with this. Let's remember Insha'Allah that
all of the prophets were sent to us
as role models and examples and the prophet
Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam himself
was the best example of
holistic
well-being,
balanced well-being,
balanced whether it's emotional,
mental, spiritual, intellectual,
physical, all of it is very much balanced
together. This is the tradition of Arsun,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. And that our
Muslim,
pioneers, our noble predecessors really pioneered in this
field that we today call mental health. And
we hope inshallah
that we'll have many from our communities going
forward. Many of you inshallah
who are in this pipeline of really contributing
to something that I believe the Muslims had
a beautiful
tradition and heritage of. But somewhere along the
way, we seem to have lost
the sense of that and it's time to
revive it, Insha'Allah, in the best way. Bridging,
of course, the best of modern medicine, but
also understanding that we have a holistic
methodology that differs than just the straight way
you see psychiatry today. It needs some fixing
as well, that holistic fixing that can come
and lend from Islam. So the 2 together,
I think, can be something very powerful and
I hope, inshallah, that prophetic example
continues to live forward and that we're able
to benefit not only the Muslims but even
all of humanity. This is my dua, all
of humanity.
And I'll clarify. Thank you very much for
the question. I'll just repeat it so that
everyone can hear it as well. The question
is, what happens if the person who needs
the help may be the head of the
family,
the person who is leading the family, if
you will? And
and so are you saying they're not willing
or you're worried about their ego? It is.
I agree with you about the challenge part.
Anytime we don't acknowledge. In fact,
in therapy, 1 in in this field, one
of the first things we tell people is
in order to be able to start to
move the needle, one of the very first
steps is acknowledgment.
And you can't really go anywhere without it.
If a person isn't willing to acknowledge that
there is a problem or that there is
help that's needed, then you're right, it's very
hard to do so. So what do you
do?
1st,
there's there's 2 points to this. 1 has
to do with the ego and one has
to do with getting the help for someone
who doesn't want to get the help. I'll
address the not getting the help first and
then I'll talk about the ego part.
Often, I tell people, look, there's different approaches
you can take for somebody who probably needs
that help. You can see the help as
they need the help, but they're not willing.
Maybe they aren't willing to listen to you,
but there may be somebody else that they're
willing to listen to. So I often say,
whose support can you leverage? Do they have
a brother? Do they have a father, an
uncle?
Even the imam. Somebody who that they respect.
And maybe that person, when they say it
to them, they hear it differently. Either saying
the same things, Pamela, but they hear it
differently from somebody else.
That they respect, that they honor, that they
are able to deliver to leverage their
support. Sometimes the issue is knowledge.
Right? They don't realize that there's actually something
related for even from within our dean that
gives the full permissibility
for this and encourages this, in fact. Right?
So maybe it's knowledge.
Sometimes the issue has to do, as you
said, with ego.
And this
often is much more cultural than it is
anything else. But it's also the system communities
that we build
because we cause that, SubhanAllah.
As in to say, if there were communities
that is much more normative,
and you see this now. In fact, so
many of the, you know, fellow people who
are, people who speak, you know, the shulks
and the sheikads and the people who are
Ustad and Ustadas. You know, I often say
to them, I know that many of them
are in therapy because we have private conversations.
But I say to them, if you're willing
and when you're willing and you feel it's
the right time, when you're on the microphone,
say, even in the middle of a holdup
on the middle of a class, you might
say, and when I'm in therapy because I
because I you know. So and people are
like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, so and
so is in therapy. And it's and but
what does it do? It normalizes
the conversation.
Why? It makes sense that they would be.
They're carrying so much stress and burden. So
panel, they're carrying an entire community on their
shoulders. It makes sense they would be.
But somehow normalizing the conversation.
Now you'll see especially for those who are
on social media, you'll see this.
You're talking about athletes, actors,
entertainers, whoever.
If everyone's talking about mental health and therapy,
it's like the new buzzword out there.
And for better or for worse, it's starting
to normalize the conversation a little bit. So
when a person does say a big shot
person says, and I go to therapy, it's
not like a whoo. It's like, oh, yeah.
That makes sense. They have a lot that
they're dealing with. It makes sense. Right? So
when we start to normalize this, you start
to break away some of the ego issues.
So it's really about a community.
We're in a community. I'll tell you this
much. Where I normally am on a Friday
night is my own home community, my own
home Masjid,
where I live in California. So,
and the Rahmah Foundation, assalamu alaykum to the
sisters, a lot of my halakha sisters are
actually watching online because I normally am with
them on a Friday night doing our halakas,
and this is in California.
And within the masjid,
hint hint to unity,
Within the masjid,
we literally have a therapy office.
And the reason and it's interesting. People are
like, why why? So because in the years
that we've done this, what I have found
what I have found is that about half
of our community
literally will not send their children or themselves,
will not go to therapy unless it's within
somewhere they trust.
So they wouldn't they wouldn't go. They wouldn't
let their child go anywhere else unless it
was literally inside of the Masjid because this
is a safe space.
The other half of our community wanted nothing
to do with the Masjid.
They didn't want anything mental health related to
the Masjid. They wanted it to be like
in an actual medical building. So the so
we have a medical clinic that's actually in
an actual separate building, and we needed that.
We needed the 2 pronged approach, and it
was very important. And we found people were
starting to utilize services by having these 2
different or multiple different kinds of models of
service.
Why do I say this? The community that
we created became one of mental health language.
You go into the MCC today, Salamtul MCC,
InshaAllah,
which is our my my home masjid,
alhamdulillah, and you'll see that the conversations on
mental health is very common.
Yes. Okay. Maybe because I get publicas every
week later. But the reality
is people started to talk the language of
mental health. It became much more normalized.
And then you started to see the husbands,
the fathers, the breadwinner start to come through.
And if they weren't willing at first, you
know what I do very often in therapy?
I do a lot most of my work
is with women and and
with women, young and old. And,
you know, they'll say my husband isn't willing,
my father isn't willing, etcetera. And I'll say,
how about we do one family session?
One family session.
And I don't mean to trick anybody. Rather,
it's actually very helpful for me to understand
what is the backdrop. So I'll say to
the husband, I need you to come to
this one session
because it helps me you get to complain
you you get to tell me what's happening
from your point of view. They're like, oh,
I can complain about my wife? Excellent. I'll
be there.
But anyhow, they'll come and they'll come to
the session. And what it does, it gives
me a sense of what's happening in the
background. But more importantly,
and maybe as equally importantly, it breaks the
ice.
You fear the unknown. You're not sure what
this whole therapy thing is. But when they're
there, they're kinda like, oh, is this it?
This is this is okay. Actually, I think
I could benefit from this. I have so
many husbands after that session say, I think
I can benefit from this, that we refer
them for their own session as well.
Hopefully, one of these aspects work, Insha'Allah.
Now
There's a brother here, then we can come
back, Insha'Allah.
Thank you for that courageousness.
So
When somebody is seeking therapy, they kinda wait
till they're in a crisis
space.
Yeah. That's a great question. So you're talking
about resources as in ahead of time.
Okay.
Okay. That the office is, you know, a
big challenge. Yes. Yes. So this is true.
And I also agree with the idea of,
like, we wait sometimes until it's, I don't
wanna say too late, but it's late in
the game.
Right?
So a couple of ideas.
I do know that there is a group
in Michigan or there is a group of
mental health providers that are put together. I
don't know if anyone's here from that group
in Michigan. Any here from our Michigan Muslim
mental health group?
There is a group, and
And I know that they have been pulling
together the resources that are part of the
Michigan community.
So basically, Metro Detroit or just all of
Michigan, kind of, who are the therapists, who
are the resources.
On our, and I've I've I'm leaving here
some information, both the pens for you guys
and the bookmarks. But on Madison's website, this
is the nonprofit that I've, helped found. On
the resources tab of our website, we actually
have listed the different directories that have on
it. We don't know everybody there, but we
know that they're all Muslim. So we've gathered
together as many Muslim mental health professionals across
the US as we could find.
And so you'll find actually a list specifically
for Michigan on there.
And, I hope, inshallah, that's useful. So that's
providers.
And then in addition to that, there's also
the kind of resources that are just how
do you keep up with mental well-being.
So one of the things I'd like to
actually invite you all to do is if
you're part of our mailing list, one of
the things you'll sign find is we do
every month a,
a mental wellness healing circle or learning circle.
Learning circles are about topics on mental health.
So this this month, for example, it was
actually yesterday or the day before, We actually
had one on men's mental health, Muslim men's
mental health. It was actually specifically for that.
June is related to men's Muslim, men's mental
health. So that was the topic, but you
can find the recording on our YouTube channel.
And then sometimes when there's a crisis that
happens, like across the, we'll actually do a
healing circle.
And so those are helpful too because it's
just the moment of, like, being able to
tap into something that kinda grounds you again.
And, we've done one just recently for Sudan
prior to that to the earthquakes in Turkey
and Syria and so on and so forth
whenever there's a crisis in the Ummah, and
there's many of those that happen as well.
So hopefully those resources
can just jump start
being able to tap into something
consistently that helps with some of the mental
health and well-being.
Of
course.
Still good?
We're done. We're done. Inshallah because of Maghrib.
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