Rania Awaad – What did the Prophet SAW say about Mental Health Anxiety Depression & Loneliness
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The importance of mental health in Islam is discussed, including struggles with Prophet Muhammad's family and negative consequences of his struggles. The use of virtual bubble as an educational channel and understanding the meaning of loneliness in spiritual isolation are emphasized. The treatment is aimed at treating mental health rather than harming people, and researching and understanding the language used in various fields is emphasized. The Q&A session is conducted by Dr. R realize Awad and is being conducted by the host.
AI: Summary ©
proof right here at the Adam Center because
you have individuals like Sue and her team
that have been doing this work for years,
subhanAllah, and actually has been the model for
so many people to say that you can
have mental health services right here inside of
a masjid setting.
So I'm very proud to be here, alhamdulillah.
Now from our tradition, let's kind of ask
all of you first.
I'd love to get a little bit of
feedback from the audience.
What do you think of when we say
mental health in Islam?
And you can just sort of give me
some words.
What's coming to mind for you?
Spirituality, reading Quran, being content, okay.
Patience, sabr, okay.
Sakinah, tranquility, taking care of your brain, taking
care of your brain, got it.
Tolerance, okay, very
nice.
Prayer and worship, absolutely, yes.
So being able to rely on Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala to others, yes.
The emotional intelligence modeled by the Prophet, sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam, absolutely, very beautiful.
Counseling, that's what comes to mind for you,
got it, excellent.
Anything else?
Well, this is beautiful.
And what's really interesting is that no two
answers are exactly alike.
You have everything from a brain-based model,
all the way to a very spiritual kind
of quoting the Quran directly, and a lot
of concepts, characteristics like patience, relying on Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So this is beautiful because that entire spectrum
is part of our conversation today.
So let's first look at the definition of
mental health from your typical kind of textbook
relating to mental health.
Normally, the way they explain this is the
well-being in which a state of well
-being in which an individual realizes their own
abilities and can cope with the normal stresses
of life and able to make a contribution
to their community.
This is usually your textbook definition.
I'd like to take us a step further
and take us now from a prophetic understanding
of what this means.
And where I'd like to start the conversation
is there is, when we look at the
Prophet himself, salallahu alayhi wasalam, there is a
practice that he would have on a daily
basis.
Now we understand them when we group them
together as being part of the adhkar or
the remembrances of the morning and the evening.
And one of the main adhkar that many
of you may know is this one right
here.
If we look at it together, the Prophet
salallahu alayhi wasalam, this is narrated to us
in hadith, and then of course practiced in
his daily practice, is a dua where he
would say, translate
it to, oh Allah, I seek refuge in
you from worry and grief, incapacity and laziness,
cowardice and miserliness, from being heavily in debt
and being overpowered by others.
Now there's a backstory to this dua, and
I'm going to break it down in just
a moment and explain how this is something
that didn't just, it wasn't just something that,
you know, the Prophet did haphazardly.
This was very specific.
What happens here is one day he walks
into his masjid, like so, and he finds
that there is a sahabi there who's sitting
in his masjid with his hand on his
cheek, like this.
And it's not during the prayer time, so
he asks him and he says, oh Aba
Umama, why are you here in the masjid
at a time that's not the prayer time?
And he sees that he's clearly in distress.
And so the sahabi answers and he says,
oh Rasulullah, I'm heavily in debt and I
have a lot of worries.
So the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam says to
him, can I teach you, shall I teach
you some words that if you were to
say them, you're going to be relieved of
your anxieties, your worries, and you're going to
be able to have the debt lifted off
of you?
And he says, yes, ya Rasulullah.
And he teaches them these words right here.
And if you look closely at the dua
that he teaches him, and you stop right
there, just right there, the first part of
that dua, you see immediately the Prophet salallahu
alayhi wasalam is talking about the concept of
worry, anxieties, and grief, like depression.
And this is a lighter version, there's a
deeper version of what depression is, but him
is a little bit lighter, so we say
grief and worries.
And if you look at this a little
closer, when people start to say, is this
mental health thing really part of Islam?
Is this really something that existed at the
time of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam and
that he addressed and was part of his
community, the Medinan society that he created and
raised?
And the answer is yes.
He walked into the masjid, just as we
are in today, he found a Sahabi sitting
with his hand on his cheek saying that
he's so overwhelmed with anxieties.
And so he teaches him what to say.
And he teaches him to deal with it.
I'm going to come to this in a
couple more slides from now, is you don't
just make du'a, you make du'a
and you make a change.
And eventually for Abu Umama, this makes the
difference.
And he says later in life, he says,
I never stopped saying that du'a on
a daily basis, and eventually my issues were
relieved.
Now, it wasn't just Abu Umama, the Prophet
salallahu alayhi wasalam himself would make this du
'a on a daily basis.
Yet you and I know, and you and
I have studied, that the Prophet Muhammad salallahu
alayhi wasalam is the most perfected human.
He is the best of all creation.
He is khayri khalqillah.
So how do you have the most perfect
of all humans who stands before his Lord
every morning, he gets up, and even though
he is perfected, he does what?
He makes du'a that Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala protect him from worry and grief.
Now try to tell me that our tradition,
our deen, does not pay attention to or
acknowledge things like anxiety and depression.
No, it's part and parcel of our tradition.
It is understood that this is something that
happens to people and we have antidotes or
solutions to them.
Alhamdulillah.
Further, let's continue going into the life of
the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam a step further.
There was a year in the Prophet's life
where the scholars of the seerah, who categorized
and kind of put together the story of
his life, call this year in retrospect, they
call it the year of, the year of
grief, the year of sadness.
In Arabic, what?
Aam al-huzn.
And why did they call it Aam al
-huzn?
Let's see who knows seerah well.
There are four incidents that happened in this
year.
Who can tell us what they are?
She says that the wife of the Prophet
salallahu alayhi wasalam, Sayyida Khadijah, radiyallahu anha, passes
away.
This is his innermost protection, the one that
is most beloved to him, the one when
he's distressed, when he's distressed, he goes to
for support.
The day that he received revelation, yes, at
the age of 40.
And where was he?
Anybody climb Jabal al-Nur?
Yes?
How long did it take you?
Three hours.
Three hours to climb up and now there's
like these makeshift kind of stairs.
Even with the stairs, she says, it's three
hours.
Imagine at his time, salallahu alayhi wasalam.
But he would go up there and I'm
going to come back to this point again
when we talk about how it is that
we heal ourselves because he had a very
precious practice even before he was a prophet
salallahu alayhi wasalam.
He was always, he was always the prophet
but before he knew as revelation came to
him, right, as a practice to just take
pause and be away from people, just even
momentarily.
So he would do this.
But the day the revelation came and he
was squeezed tight and he didn't know what
that was.
He didn't know it was Sayyidun Jibreel, that
angelic presence, but he was squeezed tight and
he was said to him, what?
And what did he say?
I cannot read.
Iqra' for the third time.
And finally when he was released from that
really tight embrace, what was the first thing
the prophet did?
Oh, he went running down that mountain.
Yes, he did.
He was terrified.
He was terrified.
He ran down that mountain.
And where's the first person that he went
to?
Sayyidun Khadijah.
He didn't go to his best friend, Abu
Bakr.
He didn't go to Sayyidun Ali.
He went to his innermost protection.
And what does she say to him?
We're going to come back to this part
of the story, but it's beautiful.
She absolutely supported him.
And so her death, her loss was an
immense loss for the prophet.
Okay, that's one of four.
What else?
Yes, the death of his uncle, Abu Talib,
who raises him and is very near and
dear to him and is what we call
his external support.
Sayyidun Khadijah is an internal support.
Abu Talib is an external support.
Okay, you got two of four.
Yes, after that comes the incident of Ta
'if.
Ta'if is a very difficult incident.
Why?
Because he's humiliated.
He's chased out of the city that he's
trying to give da'wah to and tell
about Islam.
And it's very hard on him.
And years later, when Sayyida Aisha asks him,
oh Rasulullah, what was the most difficult day
of your life?
And she says later, she explains to us
in her saying, she says, I thought he
was going to say Uhud.
Because on the day of Uhud, the Prophet
ï·º almost lost his life.
And he was injured, and he was bleeding,
and he loses a tooth, and the Sahaba
are surrounding him, and they think he's going
to die.
But he doesn't say Uhud.
He says Ta'if.
So you could have a painful memory years
later, that still hurts when you think of
it.
But you gave me three, and there's four
incidents in this year.
Yes.
There's two hands here.
Yes.
You're, you're, you're sort of close.
Yes.
Somebody else?
Yeah.
That comes later.
Yes.
Mashallah, there you got it.
In the backdrop, in this entire year that
we're describing, there is a harsh economic boycott
against the Muslims.
They're early.
This is early in Islam.
They're still few, and they're still vulnerable and
weak.
And the Quraish cuts off any trade.
No food in, no food out.
No selling, no business.
Nothing.
Completely.
Complete famine and starvation sets in, and people
actually die.
In fact, the Sayyida Khadijah ï·º, it is
said that likely this boycott affected her health
and caused her to die.
So in the backdrop, the Prophet ï·º is
carrying this.
He's carrying the fact that his Sahaba are
being persecuted.
There's a famine.
And then he loses his internal support, and
he loses his external support.
And he has this terrible incident that happens
at Ta'if.
And so, you know what happens?
Here is Khayri Khalqillah, the best of all
of creation, our teacher, our role model, ï·º.
But you know what happens?
He withdraws.
That's what the Sayyida says.
He withdraws.
He goes into his room, into his house,
and he doesn't come out very often as
much as he used to.
You can see it on him that he
is not doing well.
He's sad.
He's kind of devastated.
And the Sahaba say one to another, should
we intervene and try to help him?
Because they can tell that he's not doing
very well.
And this is all a reason why the
scholars then categorize this year as a'am
al-huzn, the year of grief, the year
of sadness.
I say this to you because how many
of us know these stories?
Well, I hope it's the majority of the
hands in the room.
Okay.
Okay.
I hope most people know this a'am
al-huzn.
But the reason I say this is to
you, usually we know the stories of the
Seerah, but do we connect the dots well
enough to be able to say, yes, grief
and depression is a real thing.
Anxiety like the Sahabi was sitting there worried
about his deaths is a real thing.
In our tradition, our Prophet ï·º didn't say,
what is this?
Have better iman.
What is this?
Go pray some more.
What is this?
You're such a weak Muslim.
We have no proof that anywhere in the
Seerah, any of those kind of comments show
up.
But what do we hear about in our
own masajid?
I know my masjid.
I don't know yours.
But something tells me there's some similarities across
the board here.
And I love my masjid, by the way.
Usually on a Friday night, they're doing the
lectures for them.
I think we lost our screen.
Just like this, so it's beautiful.
My Friday nights are the anchor, alhamdulillah, of
the week.
So I'm very happy to be in a
masjid on a Friday night, alhamdulillah.
But let me tell you, the majority of
the time in our communities, we hear people
say exactly these kind of comments.
They find someone who's kind of down, who's
been upset, dealing with some maybe grief or
even depression, or a lot of just anxiety.
And they'll say to them, you're not being
a good enough Muslim.
Had you had better iman, what would happen?
You wouldn't be this depressed.
You wouldn't have these anxieties.
That's simply not how the Prophet ï·º dealt
with his community, nor with himself ï·º.
Now let's move to the stories in the
Qur'an.
Because it's one thing to talk about the
Seerah of the Prophet ï·º.
Let's kind of expand the conversation a little
bit more.
One of my favorite surahs, as I imagine
it's for many of you as well, is
Surah Yusuf.
And in Surah Yusuf, the entire surah reads
as a story.
It's the most beautiful thing.
From the minute the surah starts until it
ends, the whole thing is a story.
And for us, we're able to follow stories
easier, if you will, right?
And so we read along and we're like,
oh look, this happened, and this happened, this
happened.
And so much is happening in Surah Yusuf,
so much.
We could spend the entire hour talking just
about Surah Yusuf.
But one of the portions of Surah Yusuf
talks about his father, Sayyidina Ya'qub.
And in the description, where Sayyidina Ya'qub
has now lost Sayyidina Yusuf, we know from
the story that he's thrown into the well,
but his father doesn't know this.
All he knows, he doesn't know whether the
son is dead, alive, where is he?
He doesn't know.
And so he's grieved terribly about this.
And Allah ï·» describes something about Sayyidina Ya
'qub in the Qur'an about the immense
amount of grief that he had.
He talks about how he cried intensely and
for a long, long period of time.
Does anyone know from the time Sayyidina Yusuf
was lost until he was reunited with his
father, how many years had passed?
Anyone know this?
Some trivia tonight.
Ah, 40.
Good, right on, masha'Allah.
It was about 40 years.
That's a barakah.
The reason that's important is when you think
about, here is a prophet of God, a
man who was crying intensely over the span
of 40 years.
I didn't say 40 days.
This is so intense.
And in the Qur'an, it describes that
even his family got tired of him.
They said to him, are you going to
keep on remembering Yusuf until you go senile?
Right?
They got tired of how much crying he
was doing and how upset he was and
grieved he was over the loss of Yusuf.
Now you tell me something.
I was working with somebody in clinic, and
she said to me when her grandmother died,
literally, they just heard the news that the
grandmother had passed.
And so she starts crying because she was
very close to her grandmother.
And this uncle who was sitting next to
her turns to her and says, don't cry.
Pray.
Pray for her.
No crying.
She's like, I just heard the news that
my grandmother just passed.
How many times do we hear about this
in the community?
Where people will literally silence or shame one
another for crying over grief and a human
reaction that happens.
Where does this come from?
Where does someone say culture?
Yes, culture mixed with religion.
I agree with you very much.
Where you have even the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, when his own son, and he
had multiple children who died in his lifetime,
actually all but one, were buried by the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in his lifetime.
But there's one in particular, it's his son
Ibrahim, who is the youngest.
And as an infant, he's carrying him in
his lap, and Ibrahim is taking his very
last breaths.
Falas, he's dying.
And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam begins to
tear up and cry.
You can see the tears coming down his
cheek, and we know this because the Sahaba
sitting with him see this, and they ask
him, oh Rasulullah, you cry?
Like, they're trying to figure out, is it
okay that you're crying?
Is it okay for us to cry?
Like, what's the answer here?
And so he says these beautiful words.
He says, I'll translate in a moment.
And then he looks at Ibrahim and he
says, He says, the eyes shed tears, and
the heart feels sorrow, but we won't say
that except what pleases Allah Subh'anaHu Wa
Ta-A'la.
And he looks at Ibrahim and he says,
and for your departure, oh Ibrahim, we are
going to be greatly saddened, grieved.
This is our Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And here is another prophet in the Qur
'an, Prophet Yaqub, who's crying so intensely that
how does Allah describe him in the Qur
'an?
What's the verse?
What's the verse?
Who knows the verse?
Where's our Qur'an people here?
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la describes
Sayyidina Yaqub as having such intense amount of
grief and crying that literally it changes his
eyesight, that his eyes go white with grief.
And the explain this as being not necessarily
blindness, but basically a haziness of vision.
And you can have something emotional take over
you that literally it changes your physical reality.
Now tell me, tell me, is crying okay
as a Muslim?
Why am I pushing on this a little
bit?
I'm pushing on this because I didn't say
screaming and wailing and tearing at your clothes
and carrying on.
This is not allowed.
But normal human reaction of grief, of sadness,
tears are an outlet.
You see it with the prophets themselves.
And we need to have more mercy towards
one another and to our family members when
they're not doing very well, when they are
crying, when they are grieving.
Does that make sense?
I can't emphasize enough the importance of these
lessons because they're straight from the Qur'an
and straight from the Sunnah.
Yet subhanAllah sometimes what?
We don't connect the dots as well perhaps
as we need to.
Now let me share a story with you.
Continue.
We talked about prophets and you might think
to yourself, okay well the prophets were extraordinary
and I'm just an ordinary person.
How does that connect to me?
But remember they're our teachers so it still
connects to you.
But let's look at the sahaba.
Yes they are the best of all generations
but they're human absolutely like you and I
right?
They happen to be at the right place
at the right time subhanAllah right?
Excellent excellent people and they were his direct
students of the prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam.
There's a hadith that I love to share
because it's a story of how the prophet
salallahu alayhi wasalam paired, you know how he
paired the sahaba from the muhajirun and the
ansar right?
He would pair one to another as brothers
so two of them got paired to each
other.
Salman al-Farisi was paired with Aba Darda
and one day Aba Darda is talking to
his brother Salman al-Farisi and he says
to him something really really great.
Aba Darda was very you know kind of
excitable and so he says to him, I'm
going to pray all night and not sleep
and I'm going to fast all day and
not break my fast and I don't need
to get married.
Not important.
And so Salman says to him a very
beautiful saying but then later gets incorporated in
the hadith and I'll explain to you how.
He says he says to him inna li
rabbika alayka haqqa wa li ahlika alayka haqqa
wa li nafsika alayka haqqa.
I mixed that up.
It goes inna li rabbika alayka haqqa wa
li nafsika alayka haqqa wa li ahlika alayka
haqqa fa'ti kulladhi haqqin haqqa.
That your lord has a right upon you
and your body has a right upon you
and your family has a right upon you
so give each one their right.
So how does this become a hadith if
two sahaba are talking to one another?
Well everything breaches the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam
eventually and so they said you know the
story comes to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam
and they say Salman said this Aba Darda
said this so they're trying to figure out
who's right and the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam
responds and he says Salman has spoken the
truth and that's how it enters into the
hadith narrations.
Look at this.
The students of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam
understood what balance was.
They understood that there was a peace here
because this is the prophetic model that he
taught them.
So when people talk about self-care, I
know that's a buzzword these days, and people
think that we're saying to be selfish.
We're not saying to be selfish.
We're saying that you need to fill your
own cup so that you can pour out
to other people including your friends and your
family especially your family.
And when you think about how Salman said
this so beautifully and reminding him look your
lord has a right upon you but so
does your body and so does your family
and so there needs to be a sense
of balance in all of this.
So this idea of self-care has always
been part of the Islamic tradition.
This is not some new age buzzwordy thing
that happens today right and yes some people
are like well what about the manicures and
the pedicures and the massages and the you
know everyone has a different way of self
-care.
Aloha but and you find what needs to
work for you so that you can then
turn around and be able to be have
a cup full enough right to be able
to then pour out to the rest of
everyone around you.
But for those of you who drive you
know this your car will run on empty
eventually and even those of you who have
your fancy electric cars you still need to
plug in eventually.
Yes otherwise you start running on fumes and
that's what so many people do because especially
I'm looking now specifically at the woman here
but it applies to everybody.
We women we just give, give, give.
That's how Allah created us.
So sometimes we give but to the detriment
of our own selves and then we become
very bitter and angry and resentful to everyone
around us and we feel like we're not
fulfilled because the cup simply that we're pouring
out from is literally empty.
In Islam there's this concept of a person
who does not have something cannot give it.
You must have this sense of wholeness and
wellness in order to be able to extend
it to anyone else.
So self-care is not selfish it is
actually part and parcel of our Islamic duties.
Yes and so I hope from this first
part that we talked about we've been able
to now show that the Prophet ï·º had
a very holistic concept of what it meant
to take care of ourselves including our mental
well-being and that mental health like any
other form of health needs to be prioritized.
There is no health without mental health as
they often say right and this you see
it directly in the sunnah of the Prophet
ï·º.
Does that seem clear to everybody?
The stories directly from the sunnah from our
tradition?
So with that inshallah let's take a look
at this concept of self-care just a
little bit more.
In order to really do your best you're
going to have to figure out what this
looks like for you and in the long
run you need to know that you need
to have that kind of energy and vitality
to be able to be effective at whatever
it is that you're doing.
And so when you think about what that
looks like now I want to share with
you the second part of this and this
is where the challenges come in.
This is a graph or a chart that
I often a drawing a diagram that's the
word I'm looking for a diagram that I
often show my students in the courses that
I teach on Islamic psychology.
I won't go into tons of depth on
this right this minute because there's a lot
of theory in all of this but I
want to explain kind of the basic aspect.
When we talk about psychology today and I
think earlier in the room it was said
is something about the mind or the brain
and it's true.
Where I'm located for example in the department
of psychiatry is located in the school of
medicine yani in the sciences and normally when
you look at psychology or psychiatry today it's
literally brain based today in modern western psychology.
However in Islam that's just one part of
multiple parts the brain is important the mind
is there it's important but so is the
heart the qalb so was the ruh the
spirit or the soul so is the nafs
the self and so is your aql the
intellect.
And the reason I show this and its
interaction between all the parts here that can
see that the way Islam understands the human
psyche is very important because if you look
at it from a modern western psychological perspective
they're only going to talk about what they
can literally reproduce in a lab and touch
right what I can see under an MRI
machine or fMRI machine right and that to
them is real science but because they can't
touch or see the ruh or the soul
they won't study in their labs but do
they not have souls too?
They have souls as well and so it's
interesting to me it's a little bit of
a facade honestly and I have a lot
of criticisms about my own field but what
I want to share here is an important
aspect of understanding the interconnectedness of all of
it.
The reason I share this is I just
finished saying that the Prophet ï·º sunnah is
very holistic which means that he wants us
to look at our hearts just as much
as he wants us to look at our
minds just as much as he wants us
to better our nafs.
The different forms of nafs is described in
the Qur'an.
What are they?
What are the three forms of nafs?
Very good.
So these different forms or levels of nafs
are part and parcel of the discussion of
Islamic psychology.
You have a nafs that's literally pulling you
towards sin right or towards some things that
are not proper but you also have the
nafs that's kind of like reproaching you and
reminding you right and then you have this
beautiful tranquil nafs and there's levels of this
in which we are meant to work on.
There's also the ruh that Allah says what
about in the Qur'an?
What does he say in the Qur'an
about the ruh?
What is it?
Yes yes that he's saying here about the
Prophet Muhammad ï·º that they're going to ask
you about the ruh but this is a
matter of my Lord and I've only given
you humans just a little bit of knowledge
on it but it's still part and parcel
of the discussion.
So when I talk about holistic understanding it
matches something that you have in today's conversation
around psychology.
They have something called the bio-psycho-social
model.
For those of you who've studied anything around
this you might have heard this before but
they're missing something even in their bio-biological
psychological sociological model.
They're still missing something.
What do you guys think that is?
Yes 100% 100%.
They're missing the spiritual and you find that
rarely in discussions of psychology today.
So it took me a while you know
to understand why it is that when we
tell people hey go to therapy hey psychology
psychiatry consider these and people try they try
to go to therapists not not this group
over here that's awesome and wonderful but I
mean to say in general they'll go and
then they find a disconnect or a lack
of understanding of their who they are as
Muslims or they need to explain for the
15th time what Eid is right it's hard
right and so you realize what's probably missing
and making psychology kind of seem very foreign
is the spiritual aspect seems to be missing
from the equation.
So that brings us to a different topic
here which I want to address that I
was specifically asked to touch on and I
think it's an important conversation.
We're talking all this talk about holistic well
-being well let's talk about the realities of
so many people in our community.
When we think about our community both young
and old certainly after the pandemic it really
showed itself but it was probably always there.
This concept of loneliness which people talk about
feeling empty or alone or unwanted or they
are craving human contact but the state of
our minds sometimes can create these barriers of
having meaningful connections to other people but so
can our realities in the way our communities
are and our families are.
There are many elderly individuals who say nobody
checks on me I feel incredibly lonely.
I don't have a support system my kids
and they're very happy that their kids are
out kind of doing the next thing in
their stages next stages of life but there's
no real kind of connecting back to the
elders.
Also you have young people who feel like
yes there's people all around but I could
be in a room full of people and
still feel very lonely because there isn't a
sense of connection the way it used to
be and our screens have replaced falsely replaced
so much of this but the reality is
none of this is real none of it
is real right it seems real the pictures
on instagram sure look real but you don't
understand subhanallah and for those of you on
social media and I am and I have
to be dragged on but that's okay I'm
there now but it's very much an educational
channel alhamdulillah but very often what people would
say is it all looks so good people's
lives their happiness even the food they're posting
it all looks good but is it actually
how much of that is edited how much
of that is only the happy moments what
about all the other grieving and sad moments
they don't necessarily make their way on there
right things are not exactly what they seem
so you have almost so many of us
who live in like a virtual bubble so
often and I worry about this concept of
loneliness even within our own community because if
you look at the broader American statistics you're
going to see there's a lot of loneliness
there too right if you're looking at more
than a quarter of the population is having
and saying that they have an issue of
loneliness we as muslims are not immune to
this just by the fact that we are
a muslim this is our conversation around the
very difficult topics of suicide too we're not
immune just because we call ourselves muslim what
makes us immune as muslims is actually practicing
the religion of islam the way it's meant
to be practiced and this is a religious
this is a religion of an ummah there
is a communal aspect and so for example
this very full room do you all know
each other do you there must be faces
here that you've never seen before please take
a moment and say salam to the sister
or brother sister sister brother brothers sitting to
the right of you and saying to the
left of you please take a moment and
say salam I do this in my halakha
all the time please please take a moment
take a moment say salams please please ask
their name what neighborhood do you live in
mic check one two one two up there
too get to know each other say salam
okay guys how do you get this better
yeah salam alaikum okay we can do this
after inshallah continuation inshallah I know I know
it disrupted the flow what is it one
two eyes on me I don't know I'm
not a teacher I disrupted the flow specifically
to do this I do this at my
halakha all the time I don't want people
to leave the room until they've actually said
salam to a few people that they have
never seen before never met before because you'll
be amazed even in a halakha that's regular
and people come every week and so on
they still don't know each other subhanallah so
it's this kind of thing where it's like
unless you go out of your way to
say salam and have a cheery enough face
that someone wants to approach say salam to
you mashallah right but open a reality you
have like give salam this is one of
the commandments of our deen right and so
this idea of we can and have the
ability within islam to break concepts like loneliness
and of course loneliness also then leads to
depression and anxieties and grief and all the
rest of it and the reason we like
I was saying when you practice islam as
a sound yes then it becomes protective to
all kinds of issues but when it's not
practiced as islam then of course we're immune
to the same things that any other community
is immune to does that make sense and
this is what our research of my lab
is showing as well so often so you
have everything from psychological issues I mentioned depression
and anxiety and so on but you also
have things related to physical and somatic issues
meaning like heart problems and other issues that
are happening literally changing that because a person
who's so grieved and in the last few
days I've heard story after story after story
of a person who had such immense amount
of stress in their life and then ended
up dying right and somebody can't say oh
they died because of the stress it's not
exactly that way but you can say that
you know you could give a biological explanation
say their immune system went down they were
more susceptible to illness the illness eventually caused
the death right when you have immense levels
of stress it can actually lead to all
kinds of other issues and despair so we
want to look at this this perception of
loneliness is important because earlier today I mentioned
to you something about the prophet sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam and that is his time spent
in ghar hira and so somebody's going to
say well that was isolation what's the issue
and what's the difference between that and between
this kind of isolation that's problematic I'll tell
you what the difference is what the prophet
was doing in ghar hira this moments of
quiet solitude contemplation is a time with his
lord he spent this time in worship he
spent this time thinking contemplating doing dhikr and
remembrance of god after he becomes a prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam now this action that
he used to do in ghar hira becomes
codified as one of his sunnahs one of
his most confirmed sunnahs sunnah muakkadah that he
never left what is that called ah i'tikaf
yes it was called i'tikaf and there's a
version where we can explain what khalwa is
in just a moment it's very important to
understand that this is a form of ibadah
of worship i'tikaf and for the men this
must be in the masjid such as the
prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he's on
his in the mountain when he's on his
in the cave right this we call it
khalwa meaning also a spiritual seclusion or a
spiritual isolation just like i'tikaf it's a spiritual
isolation but must be done in the masjid
can I ask how many of you have
done i'tikaf okay we got a couple hands
I'm looking at the woman here got a
couple of hands oh next time I come
we're going to get the whole room raising
their hands here's why here's why because the
prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam had this confirmed
sunnah that he would never leave and it
is true that he would do this most
often in when in ramadan but when else
did the prophet do i'tikaf does anyone know
someone says in the mosque it is in
the mosque at night it could be at
night could also be in the daytime when
else when also the prophet do i'tikaf other
than ramadan last third of the night so
the answer is any and all time can
be i'tikaf there's actually no specific designated times
for i'tikaf there are preferred times like you
said the last third of the night or
certain times of the week like Thursday night
into Friday or you finish praying fajr and
you're waiting for the sun to rise to
pray duha in that period of time or
between maghrib and isha because there's only about
an hour between them a good time for
i'tikaf right or khalwah and for the woman
here you can do i'tikaf there's differences of
opinion it could be in the masjid or
it could be in your own home which
I think is incredibly empowering and part of
my personal daily practice because otherwise I don't
think I could have gotten through this last
year folks we're in the middle of a
genocide like how do you how do you
function how do you function other than to
be able to do the things that our
prophet saw us and taught us to do
take pause and when we say pause it's
not the kind of loneliness that actually hurts
you it's the kind of isolation that helps
you to just pause and to be with
your lord this life is so fast paced
I'm from Silicon Valley right from California it
is so fast paced life is just fast
over there I don't know exactly what it's
like here but it's probably fast it's probably
fast you can confirm okay thank you for
confirming it is fast and if you don't
literally carve out the time for your own
sanity and well-being it'll just life will
just run over you essentially and this is
what the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was
doing in his busiest moments even with little
kids around and people say how do I
do that because they don't break your i'tikaf
they come into your space that's fine it
doesn't do anything right but if you can
find some moments of silence this would be
even more precious and I'll just share something
my own spiritual teacher shared and was very
useful to me they would often say pick
the hours that nobody needs you nobody needs
you at four and five in the morning
necessarily inshallah right basically that's a headshot time
nobody needs you in the middle of the
night necessarily even for just a half hour
the reason I share this is because people
say what are the solutions what are the
antidotes I'm interested in the prophetic solutions I'm
interested in the proof that we get directly
from the sunnah because if you have these
things implemented in your life and then there's
still issues then we can talk about other
solutions but let's get these solutions in our
life first and anybody who feels really overwhelmed
by what I just said woman for the
ladies in the room and I won't go
into lots of depth in this because that's
like a whole lecture in itself but I'll
say this much I'll say this much because
you can do i'tikaf at home as a
woman you literally designate one spot in your
home a part of your room a section
of your room it's where your prayer rug
probably is right now in your house right
that becomes your masjid and all it is
is intention aniyah no way to i'tikaf I
intend i'tikaf this is my masjid and you
enter into that prayer rug area of a
space it's very small right and because you're
going to pray there anyway your five daily
prayers you just sit there do your 33s
right just just sit for a couple of
minutes and reconnect before you get back up
and deal with life again it is incredible
what it does and then if you have
the time to add some extra things in
there like tafakkur contemplation right meditative contemplation tazakkur
right doing vikr and remembrance of allah tadabbur
pondering the meanings of the quran and the
meanings of life in general just five minutes
ten minutes 15 minutes it is incredible how
life-changing and altering this practice can be
and for the men this is what you
do here in the masjid or if you'd
like to do so under a tree go
for it that's your khalwa under the tree
just like the prophet was in his cave
of hira I say this because again you
and I know these stories we've heard these
stories we repeat the sita we teach our
kids these stories but does it actually enter
our own lives and so in counseling when
I'm talking to my patients and they're telling
me it's so intense I'm so overwhelmed there's
so much stress so much stress they say
okay all right let's break this down let's
break it down and then I ask what
are your coping mechanisms you know what I
get often when they finally are ready to
tell the truth it takes a little while
but when we finally are able to be
true with you one another you know what
I get a lot of yeah actually I
was just binging netflix a lot of binging
netflix or I'm just doom scrolling or I'm
just on instagram forever and ever like it's
just you know and some of it is
funny sometimes you need a comic relief and
you're like sending this thing off to your
friend your spouse you're like did you see
this ha ha ha you know okay fine
fine a little bit of that is fine
but eventually it needs to also be something
that you truly can fill your cup with
you draw a source of support our teachers
would call to you're literally a well of
nur of light and you don't know when
you're going to need that light for dark
and dreary days ahead you don't know what
days ahead are dark and dreary and so
you need that support every so often it's
literally built into our tradition and yet subhanallah
how often do we practice it I asked
a room full of probably a few hundred
people here about how many of us do
tahajjud with any sense of regularity and there
is maybe six hands do you see what
I'm saying yeah come on in come on
in mashallah there's space come on in move
up sisters there's some folks stuck outside thank
you thank you and so I was saying
earlier that the issues here in the U
.S. are very similar to what you have
in the general society when you look at
the American Muslim community your numbers in terms
of anxieties and depressions and other things are
subhanallah the same it's not that we have
more than other people's depressions or anxieties but
we also don't have less than them which
I think is an important point so let's
define this word anxiety that we keep saying
right what is the word anxiety mean textbook
definition it's a feeling of fear of dread
of uneasiness yet allah describes this in the
quran for anybody who's like I don't know
Dr. Rania you keep talking about all these
mental health words and you're trying to say
they're in the islam I hope I've made
a good enough case so far but you
want to you want a stronger case tell
me tell me please where in the quran
does allah subhanahu wa ta'ala literally say
that he's created human beings anxious I
love this room you have people who like
have the ayah ready to go excellent say
it again for me I heard it over
here on this side please you've heard this
verse before yes allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
literally says that he has created the human
being in an anxious state so tell me
again that anxiety doesn't exist here's why I'm
not trying to make this case that's not
already made in islam and in the and
in our seerah around issues of mental condition
mental health conditions it's there allah says he
created humans anxious but he's also given us
solutions and antidotes of what to do he's
also explained to us that all emotions he's
created all emotions and there's no such thing
as good emotions and bad emotions we label
them we say anxiety bad depression bad right
in reality he created everything he created sadness
and depression he created anxiety and grief but
he's also created happiness and joy right people
are starting to imagine the inside out characters
yeah he created all of them the reality
is these are all a creation of allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala without any label on
them not some are good and some are
bad they're all his creation and we're meant
to do we're meant to work through many
of these so let me explain to you
some of the anxiety disorders that you might
find today if you open up psychology textbooks
you have something called generalized anxiety disorder and
what normally that refers to in the way
i explain it to my patients is think
of your life as buckets different buckets of
things life your your family life you have
finances maybe your schooling or your job maybe
you have things related to your um home
you know just different things right different buckets
of life and if you find yourself anxious
in each of these different buckets of life
you probably have more of a generalized anxiety
condition some people don't have that what they
have is a social anxiety they just get
tongue tied and they can't seem to connect
with other people or don't want to or
feel very anxious even though they desire a
connection with people they can't actually connect with
them all the way through some people have
phobias these are irrational fears of things you've
met them i know you have because i
certainly have i have members of my family
if they see a spider they are outside
the door screaming their head off but but
then there are other things where somebody will
say if they're up on an elevator going
really high or on a cliff or on
something literally they feel their toes tingling like
there is a serious fear of height right
or fears of bridges or some other fears
that people may have by the way all
of these are very treatable i promise you
they really are treatable fourth is a post
-traumatic stress disorder which usually is said as
ptsd and this is usually after a trauma
has happened and then a person re-experiences
things every time they're re-triggered by it
they're reminded by it so this a smell
or a color or a situation or a
person will remind them of something that happened
from that traumatic incident and it's like they're
back there again right and it's very it
takes up so much energy and time and
it's very hard for so many people and
then there's obsessive compulsive disorder which is this
really its own category but it is this
it's the um ocd basically obsessions and compulsions
around things that again are irrational a person
knows that this is not what they they
know they shouldn't give into this but they
can't help themselves from doing so and sometimes
it takes up a lot of time and
energy from a person's life these are all
highly highly treatable and i say this to
you and if i had more time i'd
go into a whole discussion on the history
of some of these i've written papers on
this whole discussion of like ocd was discovered
by a muslim people in the ninth century
right i have this whole discussion and some
of the discoveries we found where he's describing
essentially the waswasa but not the regular waswasa
all of us in this room have because
allah created everybody with a certain level of
waswasa and you say but some people have
more than that and it becomes a clinical
level that needs to be dealt with some
people have phobias which are just so intense
that have to be dealt with and they're
treatable subhanallah and i encourage you if you
or your family members have any of these
conditions to know that help is there start
with start right here with sister sue she's
like hi i'm here but you have a
entire counseling center here part of the masjid
yeah actually yes alhamdulillah and mashallah adam center
has had a counseling program and a mental
health program since 2015 we currently have 21
mental health providers working in the program and
that includes uh psychiatrists psychologists uh social workers
uh licensed professional counselors coaches we even have
an equine therapist that can help yes mashallah
we even have an equine therapist so uh
that helps with post-traumatic stress disorder as
well as anxiety and you get to go
out to the farm and yes uh with
the horse yes and yes equine is horses
sorry and so um alhamdulillah we're trying to
be really innovative and try different ways on
healing traumas and healing mental health issues yes
allah bless you the reason i think that's
so important to know that the local resources
you have right here i'm very honored to
be your guest tonight and to kind of
be sharing with you this but you have
gems and resources right here at your fingertips
please make use of them inshallah and i'm
sure that if referrals are needed beyond what
you can give that you offer these too
but this is a great place to start
to get started 21 therapists that's a lot
of color that's a that's a whole clinic
in itself i'm going to take questions at
the end inshallah i know there's a few
different hands but there's a few things i
was asked to present on so inshallah let
me get through those and we'll talk in
the depression is the other one that i
wanted to make sure we touched on today
and i shared with you a lot about
the prophet and his the year of sadness
the year of grief and i want to
explain here because somebody actually asked me one
time and they came they came up and
they said okay you talked about that but
are you trying to say that the prophet
was depressed and i said i have no
um no what's the word i am not
permitted to superimpose something onto the prophet that
i don't have knowledge of exactly what this
would have been called that's not my place
however what i can tell you is from
the symptoms that we can see when he's
being described as isolating being sad not wanting
to go out to the community very often
in that period of time that really intense
period for him right where the sahaba wanted
to intervene these are symptoms that you see
in a clinical depression but i'm not here
to say the prophet had a depression what
i am here to say is depression is
a real thing and it is dealt with
in our tradition and so how do you
define it in the textbook it's defined as
a common and serious mental health condition that
negatively affects how you feel think act and
perceive the world usually people that have this
have fatigue or lack of energy difficulty concentrating
difficulty making decisions a change in their appetite
and change in their sleeping patterns they feel
sometimes hopeless or worthless and there may even
be self-harm as in to say a
person may think to themselves life isn't worth
living anymore this is when it gets very
serious and none of this should be taken
lightly these are big red flags being waved
right where you if this is you or
your child or your loved one in your
family when it gets to a point like
this this is where we must intervene we
must and you know why we must intervene
because allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told us
especially with that very last sentence right there
he's very clearly told us to save a
life is as though you've saved all of
humanity and to take a life is as
though you have yes thank you taking all
of humanity and the reason why i think
this is very important to say is because
sometimes especially when it's our friends and our
family members just like the family of prophet
yaqub we get tired with them we get
annoyed with them too and we just say
snap out of it already get out of
your bed already go do something already or
we we kind of guilt trip them a
little bit more and we might say things
like just pray if you pray enough this
will go away that's not part of our
tradition you know why it's not part of
our tradition because we don't have proof in
the seerah that that's what the prophet sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam said nor anyone that he's
trained like his life you know what she
used to do she used to make a
dish called talbina which was made of milk
barley and honey and she would go give
it to people when they were depressed when
they were experiencing grief when a woman had
postpartum depression after delivering a baby anybody who
was feeling this kind of down emotions this
is who she would give talbina for and
somebody said oh my goodness we should bring
back talbina sure it is in there it's
part of the tibb al-nabawi right that
we understand but you know what's more interesting
to me than that it's the fact that
when they asked her oh aisha who taught
you to do this she said the prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and you know what's
interesting and i say this all the time
to my students what's in the hadith is
just as important as what is not in
the hadith she's commanded or taught by the
prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when someone's depressed
go give them something right this is a
physical a food a physical thing that you
take for an emotional problem so later when
we which i'm not going to spend too
much time on this so people don't like
boo me out of the masjid but it's
no different with medications this is a physical
thing taken for an emotional problem also also
what's in the hadith is just as important
what's not in the hadith you don't see
the hadith saying where the prophet sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam says to her take talbina and
then go tell them to go pray more
tell them to go make dua more tell
them they should have better iman we have
none of those statements from the prophet sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam yeah how do how often
do we hear this from each other yeah
oh i did it plant in here i
say this to you with all earnestness because
in the line of work that i do
one of the things that the end of
the line the thing that we try to
avoid the most is getting all the way
to a point where a person starts to
feel that their life is no longer worth
living and this should not get to this
far along before this big huge red flag
that's in front of us it has to
be you know nipped in the bun much
earlier on and the way we do this
is not by shaming and guilt tripping and
kind of laying it on thick right the
way we do this is going to get
the help of people and if you're saying
to yourself but this is a family issue
we don't want people to know about our
issues in our family or people might say
but if i take my daughter to counseling
and people know that she's in therapy she'll
now be unmarriageable or they might say if
my kid who's dealing with some academic stresses
and stuff and now they're sending him to
the school counselor or they're in college so
they're being sent to the or going to
the school psychologist that this somehow is going
to be a shame on us as a
family and usually young people they need permission
from their parents and often when i talk
to young people and i'm on a college
campus that's i'm at stanford i'm with college
students all week long and when i ask
them why aren't you getting the help that
you need like you know you need this
and they're of a generation where mental health
is now something acceptable so i'm like come
on let's you know go get the help
my parent won't sign off on it why
they're worried i'm not going to be able
to get married in the future they're worried
to look back at our family they're worried
about this they're worried about that they're worried
about the secrets of the family being exposed
but you know what allah subhanahu ta'ala
says in the quran because people think that
they can take care of all of this
within their own household without having to go
out to people who are not part of
the family but you know what allah subhanahu
ta'ala says he says and ask the
people of knowledge if you don't know and
unless you've studied 15 years how many years
did you study 11 please don't answer on
something that you don't have expertise on you
don't take your car to the plumber and
you don't call your mechanic when your sink
is backed up it's somehow here when it
comes to mental health conditions there are these
people that have trained for years and years
and years and years to figure out how
to hear diagnose treat and help and yet
we kind of say oh i could do
this myself no really you can't but what
you can do is start to know what
the red flags are so that you're able
to identify that and then help bridge your
loved one to support and care does this
make sense yes a couple more things here
in america three in 10 adults are usually
diagnosed with depression at some point in their
lives this is why the definition said it's
a common condition right and it's existing across
all cultures including muslim communities and but very
often here it's unreported or lack of reporting
due to stigma but i want to remind
us i want to remind us that even
though the numbers are much higher now after
the pandemic we have solutions here as a
umma that cares for one another that makes
dua for one another that helps one another
and that encourages one another for support and
help that is so incredibly important and i
can't tell you how important it is to
understand the concept of the umma one part
one part of it hurts the whole body
hurts right we understand this in the context
of philistine we were all celebrating with syria
like there is a sense of things that
are happening you all of us feel it
at once right at the same time when
we're hurting we also need to understand that
all of us are hurting we have a
collective duty to help in this concept and
so i'd like to talk a little bit
about a couple more examples to really bring
it home and soon we can break in
terms of taking some questions inshallah say the
younus is a story that you also know
in the quran it's a common one and
one that we sometimes remind one another when
people feel trapped when they feel like they
can't get out of a situation that's very
difficult he was definitely either in a whale
or some some of the scholars say a
big fish and was in complete darkness in
complete despair and he was upset with his
community so he storms off right and in
the midst of the night they say three
zoloma zoloma three darknesses right in the dark
of the night the dark of the ocean
the dark of the belly of the whale
right he's kind of trapped in this very
very dark uh slimy disgusting kind of situation
yes and sometimes you find yourself in such
situations too but it isn't until this is
what the surah this is what's so beautiful
about it when you see how it's how
the how what what he calls out and
he says does anyone have this memorized what
does he call out to allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala and says it's beautiful and this
is so important because if you look at
break down the three parts of what he
says he first acknowledges the greatness of allah
there's only one god glory be to you
in me i was from the wall i
mean i was one of the wrongdoers this
is very important because it's a self-acknowledgement
that i overstepped that i did something i
shouldn't have in his case he stormed off
and as a prophet he needed to care
for his community and continue with the dawah
naka frustrated with them right but once he
made his toba once he acknowledged his own
wrongdoing and he relies on allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala what happens oh he's out right
from the belly of the whale and he's
able to and when he goes back to
his community most prophets most prophets in the
quran don't have a happy ending with their
communities they don't believe in them but say
in the yunus's situation they actually do they
accept the message and that's very important by
the time he gets back to them you
find that they've actually right are now obeying
allah subhanahu wa ta'ala it's a powerful
thing because sometimes you feel in this sense
of tightness and sometimes you might even feel
rejected by allah subhanahu wa ta'ala i
see this in counseling every so often someone
says you know such and such and such
happened in my life or xyz trauma happened
in my life and i i don't feel
connected anymore i feel like i can't pray
anymore i don't know if god is hearing
me anymore i don't know if god loves
me anymore there's all these like discussions that
happen and i remind us it's no different
than what's saying the yunus was feeling in
that belly of the whale but there are
ways out of it too and our tradition
our islam our heritage says to us we
must we must be able to get out
of this and help one another out of
this as well and so this idea and
if you don't have this um memorize please
memorize it it's as well and i think
it's a beautiful one that to rely on
whenever you're feeling kind of that stuck but
remember repentance is an important part of this
too and what it demonstrates this entire story
is that you can have moments of isolation
and sometimes in those moments of isolation you
end up with a lot of strength that
solace or that connection with allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala it actually increases your faith that
every test test or difficulty is actually something
that is meant to be a bad thing
sometimes you take regular stones and you tumble
them and they become gems anybody play with
that when they were younger the stone tumbler
see i'm talking about oh you're gonna have
to go look this up sorry anybody the
new people the new the new generation's like
we don't know what you're talking about take
a look look up stone tumbler not right
now later and you see like you take
these stones from your street backyard whatever and
you put them through this tumbler right and
they come out really shiny and that's exactly
what the dunya is like allah tumbles us
upon allah with all of our difficulties that
were meant to actually be right it refines
us it hones us it makes us somebody
something that is actually worthy and beautiful so
don't consider that every difficulty is actually supposed
to be a bad thing and i want
to end on this concept of stigma and
this is where i want to kind of
bring all the pieces of our discussion together
because this question right here is the one
i get very often everything you said dr
rania is fine okay fine fine fine but
you i bet you can't prove to me
that the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam went to
a therapist so why should i okay i
accept your challenge we were talking about in
the beginning of the lecture today we talked
about a lot of hit up and we
talked about the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam when
he received revelation in a lot how he
had no idea what this was right this
supernatural force that is squeezing you tight and
telling you to read and you don't you're
you don't know to read right and it's
so scary and we talked about how he
was terrified and he runs down that mountain
and he goes to the hands into the
arms of sayyida khadija radiallahu anha now what
does she say to him when he describes
what happens to him he's describing describing what
happens to him and she doesn't know either
she doesn't understand what this was either what
does she say to him does anyone know
that allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala will not forsake
you he will not harm you you're a
good person you take care of your family
you take care of your community you take
care of the orphans right she lists all
these examples of how he's a good man
but she also doesn't know what this thing
is called or what happened to him and
the prophet saying i think i'm going crazy
i think i'm possessed i think something came
over me so what does she say to
him she says i don't know either but
i can take you to someone who knows
and who does she take him to we
know the stories we know the stories but
have we connected the dots yes her cousin
waraka her cousin waraka is also her teacher
he's a monotheist he never believes in the
like the people of the time who believe
in multiple gods he reads all the scriptures
of the people before him the christians and
the jews he's familiar and he knows that
there's a prophecy coming he actually knows that
a prophet is coming and so when she
takes him and the prophet agrees to go
with her and she takes him to waraka
they describe what happens to the prophet and
what does waraka say this is the namus
this is basically jibreel the archangel gabriel coming
to give you the message this is the
message of islam what you've just experienced is
revelation you are a prophet of god and
then he says to him there's going to
come a day that your people are going
to persecute you they're going to try to
kill you they're going to drive you out
of your land and then he says and
i wish i was young enough to be
there to support you when such a day
comes and the prophet's amazed me he's a
sadiq and amin he is the trustworthy the
one who everybody loves and cherishes they're going
to drive him out so he foretells what's
coming to him and he explains to him
this is the archangel jibreel and he gives
him comfort and he explains to him this
is not a bad thing you're not going
crazy you're not possessed this is what's happening
he names it what does a therapist do
what does a therapist do see sometimes we
fear the unknown we're scared of what we
don't know so we avoid it but what
is therapy at the end of the day
do they make decisions for you no they're
not allowed to do they are they directive
as in to say do they answer questions
and say do this and don't do that
nope that's not how therapy works what does
therapy do what do therapists do they listen
to you they hear you out they identify
some of the issues that are there because
sometimes when it's happening to you it's very
different than when you say it to another
person who's not a friend or family member
they're just a neutral person that you don't
know but they're trained they have a trained
ear they've read all the books like waraka
and they have a sense of what you're
about to describe to them they're able to
kind of tease apart what is this and
what is not this this is not this
this is this right and they help guide
you on the path help you to make
your own decisions on things this is the
point of therapy they can help understand identify
even diagnose and they can send you to
where you need to be sent as in
to say referrals to a person who can
further help you if you need further help
so the prophet agreed to go to waraka
he agreed to see someone else who had
more knowledge than him that takes humility that
takes somebody who's willing to say somebody else
knows better than i do or more at
least than i do and took the step
to seek out help the reason i say
that to you is because so often people
will be so quick to say this isn't
part of our tradition but actually it's very
much part of our tradition and it's right
there in the seat of the prophet it's
part of our discussion it's part of our
heritage and so i want to tell you
when people then ask me and say fine
he saw but did he tell his sahaba
to go to therapy and you know my
answer to that is he was amongst them
and if you or i lived at the
time of the prophet we didn't need a
therapist we had the best of all teachers
and guides right there to assist us but
you know what else you and i are
not living at the time of the prophet
and at this point in time we do
need the guides and the help that can
actually assist us and if i had more
time today which i don't i would have
explained to you there's i'm going to come
to the stigma in a minute but i
would have explained to you a little bit
more related to the heritage of islam and
a lot of the research and the work
that we've been doing that actually shows that
not only did the early muslim societies understand
mental health they also created treatments for them
such as why would you have a ninth
century scholar who's discovered the first ever to
figure out what ocd is and to describe
to you talk therapy nope not a white
thing if anything we should start calling it
a muslim thing and literally describes to you
how it is you use talk therapy to
heal a person who's going through obsessions or
phobias or anxieties furthermore when we look at
the muslim hospitals and this is my newest
book that comes out next month inshallah it's
on the topic of the muslim hospitals the
madestans named after we named the organization after
these hospitals because what we found in them
which was incredible was just like the other
societies had hospitals too the muslims are not
the first to create a hospital but they
are definitely to our knowledge and our research
the first to put in psychiatry or mental
health into their hospitals and that's powerful because
if you have societies and there were societies
before us the greeks and the romans the
chinese and the indians you have all these
other civilizations before the muslims the persians but
you don't have any proof that they actually
took mental health or psychiatry medicalized into their
hospital systems before the muslims and when they
did that it wasn't haphazard and it wasn't
just some medical advancement it was a direct
commandment from the quran and from the sunnah
and from our islamic tradition and you know
my proof to that because in the in
the maqasad of sharia in basically the principles
of what makes up our sharia our deen
there are multiple things that you have to
preserve and one of them is the preservation
of the intellect and so the people in
the islamic societies when they saw that people
some people were suffering from this well this
is a commandment we must do something about
it no different than the preservation of one's
lineage the preservations of one's wealth the preservation
of one's name and so on and so
forth right same thing and that's where the
last of this discussion that i'm going to
have here is on stigma and really making
sure that we kind of elbow out the
concept of stigma in these communities this beautiful
community for tobacco law i hope inshallah that
we can get past these stigmas such as
the community stigma where people say look these
issues are taboo whether we're talking about alcohol
or whether we're talking about drugs or whether
we're talking about suicide i hope inshallah and
honestly i always say this not even i
this is my first visit here may allah
bless you all but imam majid i've known
for years subhanallah and i would always say
this and i say this on all the
stages of isnas and the iknas and the
so on and i always say the first
imam that got up on a member where's
your member right there so behind me it's
behind me okay the first imam that got
up on a member and started talking mental
health in a masjid was imam majid i
know he's your own community imam and so
you may not realize that but as far
as the american muslim scene goes that's a
big deal happened in your masjid so if
anybody should be running support groups and help
and so on for all different types of
issues it should be this masjid first it's
always been a model subhanallah may allah bless
you all relationship stigma to stop saying to
one another things like oh they're going to
therapy therefore they're crazy or i don't know
if i'm going to propose to that family
their kid is seeing a therapist this kind
of very stigmatizing language that really hurts everybody
i had a patient one time and she
had a lot of trauma and it took
her a very long time to finally come
to care like professional care and i asked
her i said what why did you why
did it take you so many years even
though you knew you had this trauma why
did it take you so long to see
somebody for help and she said you know
why and she tells me the story she
says one time i was visiting my friends
you know like social gathering just as people
visit each other and she said i took
my plate of food and i went to
go sit down and i'm sitting next to
two women who had their plates of food
already and they're just talking they're just chit
-chatting and she overhears them has nothing to
do with her she just overhears them one
say to the other one oh did you
hear about so-and-so she's seeing a
therapist and the other lady goes oh that's
terrible she must be crazy you know something
like that and so this my my person
my patient right this is years later right
this is years earlier this story is happening
she just hears these two ladies talks in
such stigmatizing language she says to herself i
will never see a therapist if that's how
they're going to talk about me behind my
back years before she came to therapy and
it took a long time to work through
the traumas but alhamdulillah she's doing excellent now
but just to say words hurt people they
harm people they may even get to a
point where they may really even take a
life of a person words are stigmatizing and
they are incredibly powerful so please be careful
with your words this is part of our
amanah amongst one another right the trust allah
has given us and then the individual level
of stigma sometimes it's not coming from the
community or from your family but it's coming
from you within yourself you are saying to
yourself i can do this by myself i
can pick my own self up i don't
need the help of anybody else but if
our own prophets agreed to for help and
understanding of what this all was how are
we not have the humility to say i
need some help too and maybe somebody knows
better than i do do you see what
i'm saying i hope this helps us a
little bit inshallah i'm going to just show
you this the very high level cost of
stigma you see it in multiple levels on
the community level on a relationship level on
an individual level there are multiple places where
stigma really hurts us as a community so
please please be take care of this as
much as you can amanah wise inshallah to
allah i there was one last part of
this conversation we do have a few minutes
left i can go through it are you
guys okay with that there's just a little
bit more here on the fourth section of
this and just touching briefly a little bit
on the islamic concepts from our own history
and heritage because i don't want you to
think everything i shared here was just theory
and research but actually there is a lot
of direct explanation within our muslim heritage and
community how many of you guys heard this
before mental health can be cured spiritually only
and this is the kind of attitude that
reinforces that stigma that i was talking about
but you don't see this from our scholars
you see that the scholars actually did what
you have scholars of medicine scholars of philosophy
scholars of spirituality scholars of ethics who all
contributed to that concept of the in one
naps or the knowledge of the self what
the muslims used to call psychology and you
see multiple scholars that i won't go into
a lot of depth with other than to
say there's many of them you have razi
for example who we just finished writing a
paper a few years back it's published in
the harvard review of psychiatry that actually brings
and gives the razi back his proper place
to say this is the first time we
see a physician who understands psychiatry he had
he was a director of an entire hospital
that had a psychiatric ward in them imadistan
that had a psychiatric ward in it and
one of the things that's amazing about razi
is not only did he and by the
way all the hospitals were free of charge
in the muslim world because they used the
endowments but more than that when razi discharged
his patients particularly his psychiatric patients from his
hospital he actually gave them money and you
know why he gave them money because he
wanted them to reintegrate back into their society
with dignity three gold dinars that's a lot
of money at that time two of the
gold dinars worked specifically for food clothing shelters
so they didn't have to ask anybody for
help and the third of the gold dinars
he says so they can invest it into
a business so that they can become self
-sufficient on their own the foresight of our
scholars and the foresight of this beautiful tradition
of islam so this is what we published
about and we gave him credit back that
was taken away of something called psychiatric aftercare
you have imam gazali which many of you
have heard this name before and the incredible
amount of work that he's done in understanding
the inner sciences how do you heal yourself
from the inside out you open up today's
manuals on psychiatry we call the dsm where
we diagnose conditions as clinicians and you'll find
depression and anxiety and you'll find trauma and
ocd and phobias and all the rest that
i mentioned but you know what you're not
going to find that's very important envy greed
vanity arrogance love of leadership love of the
limelight and so on and so on and
so on basically or the diseases of the
heart we as muslims believe that these are
just as important to treat as depression anxiety
trauma ocd we need a more much more
comprehensive dsm i'm being very serious and you
have the scholars who study this who broke
it down and said here is the illness
and here is the treatment such as gazali
or you have belghi the one i was
telling you about that i've done a lot
of writing on a number of papers on
belghi specifically explaining that he was the first
to our knowledge in the ninth century to
figure out things like ocd and phobias alhamdulillah
these are now published in high level academic
journals and the reason that this is important
is because people like belghi talk about cognitive
and behavioral therapy that you might think this
is a modern day treatment but he's writing
in the ninth century folks he's writing a
millennium before western psychology even comes into effect
and he talks about navigating anxieties or shifting
or reframing your cognitions away from things like
anxiety this is a whole conversation itself so
i'm not going to belabor it here but
just explaining to you that within our dean
you have the concept of regulating emotions you
have the concept of dealing with the conditions
that you have this is part of our
tradition the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam did not
shy away from dealing with any of these
aspects and we want to end here by
saying we also don't want to equate mental
health with just spirituality you need spirituality that
biopsychosocial spiritual model we talked about at the
beginning but at the same time you don't
want to say everything is spiritual because that's
simply not the case the balanced approach is
what we're looking for and what i'm hoping
for here and lastly i would say to
you and i'm going to just try to
get to the last part of this over
here this take a look at this see
what works for you for some people it's
going to be spiritual for some people it's
going to be the quran and the you
know the kid and the so on the
atzikaf we talked about earlier but for other
people it is taking the walk it is
socializing it is hugging the tree and no
i'm and yes i actually did say the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam when they moved his
mimbar the tree that he used to lean
on when they moved the place of the
mimbar he heard it cry and he went
to soothe it and he hugged it so
you can make the intention and so lastly
in just saying this um i have this
banner here of madestan i'll end here just
by saying this is an organization that's meant
for um really explaining muslim mental health the
clinical part of it is based in california
until you guys make dua for us and
we're able to expand more inshallah to ana
but for now that's where the clinical part
is but the educational part of the organization
is open to all of you so please
do scan the qr code there are monthly
learning circles and healing circles that we do
that are meant for you and your family
to understand more about mental health in islam
if this was interesting today this whole conversation
was of interest to you or you want
to share it with other people please have
them join the mailing list from madestan or
our instagram page or whatever it may be
so that you can join they're free and
they're open and they're by zoom their webinars
so please join them as much as you're
able to to understand more about mental health
from an islamic lens so i'll keep that
for you inshallah to ana and or it's
on this thing now the last thing i
do and this is the professor in me
do the last question i have for you
is do muslims muslims do not get depressed
and if they do they just need to
pray more what is your multiple choice answer
i'm not going to leave you without asking
testing you if you've been listening this whole
time what's your answer all of the above
and that is accurate so thank you so
very much for your attention may allah accept
from all of you and us oh
oh
oh
is
Come to prayer Come to prayer
Come to success Come
to success There is no god but Allah
Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest
I bear witness that there is no god
but Allah I bear witness that Muhammad is
the messenger of Allah Come to prayer, come
to success The prayer has been established, the
prayer has been established Allah is the greatest,
Allah is the greatest There is no god
but Allah It
is You we worship and You we ask
for help Guide us to the straight path
The path of those You have blessed Not
of those who have incurred Your wrath nor
of those who have gone astray Allah
is the light of the heavens and the
earth The likeness of its light is like
a lamp with a lamp in it The
lamp is in glass The glass is like
a pearly star lit from
a blessed olive
tree, neither east nor west Its oil almost
illuminates even if it is not touched by
fire Light upon light Allah guides to His
light whom He wills And Allah presents examples
for the people, and Allah is Knowing of
all things In houses, Allah has commanded that
they be raised and that His name be
mentioned therein He glorifies Him therein in the
morning and in the evening Men who are
not distracted by trade or selling from the
remembrance of Allah and the establishment of prayer
and the giving of alms They fear a
day when hearts and eyes will turn in
it That Allah may reward them for the
best of what they have done and increase
them from His bounty And Allah provides for
whom He wills without reckoning Allah is the
Greatest Allah listens
to those who praise Him In
the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the
Most Merciful All praise is due to Allah,
Lord of the worlds, the Most Gracious, the
Most Merciful King of the Day of Judgment
It is You we worship and You we
ask for help Guide us to the straight
path The path of those on whom You
have bestowed Your Grace Not of those who
have incurred Your Wrath nor of those who
have gone astray He
is Allah, there is no god but Him,
the Knower of the unseen and the seen
He is the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
He is Allah, there is no god but
Him, the King The King, the Holy, the
Peaceful, the Believer, the Great, the Mighty, the
Great, the Magnificent Glory be to Allah above
what they associate with Him He is Allah,
the Creator, the Inventor, the Shaper The Shaper,
to Him is the best name To Him
is all that is in the heavens and
the earth glorified And He is the Mighty,
the Wise Allah is the Greatest Allah
listens to those who praise Him Allah
listens to those who praise Him Allah
listens to those who praise Him May
the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be
upon you May the peace, mercy, and blessings
of Allah be upon you Insha
'Allah we make dua for him and all
our brothers and sisters who are sick Dr.
Jonathan Brown will be the keynote speaker Right
here in Adam Center Right after Maghrib prayer
But please you have to RSVP tonight Because
we have to know the dinner And plan
the dinner for you So please RSVP There
are signs in the hallway You just scan
the QR code and sign up Or here
in the screen And there is more announcement
here About the follow up of the program
May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah
be upon you May
the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be
upon you With sister Fatima Wright Who is
New York Times editor As well as the
director of the film itself And then after
Maghrib We have the certificate program Graduation for
Qutuba MashaAllah We have a lot of graduates
And we need to honor them So please
try to show up as best as you
can There is always events in the masjid
But tomorrow is a very special event Also
I believe Dr. Rania Awad Said she would
answer some questions After the prayer So Downstairs
In the community hall May the peace, mercy,
and blessings of Allah be upon you
My apologies, the Q&A session with Dr.
Rania Is going to be here in the
masjid And then it's going to be followed
by Ummah Tea Downstairs in the community hall
May the peace,
mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon you
We have a sister that needs a ride
To Alexandria Columbia Pike If you can please
If you are headed that direction If you
can please give her a ride She is
at the front desk If you can please
give her a ride to Columbia Pike, Alexandria
Thank you Assalamu
Alaikum Again there is a sister at the
front desk That needs a ride To Columbia
Pike, Alexandria I mean Sorry Arlington, Columbia Pike
Arlington, Columbia Pike If you can please give
her a ride there She is at the
front desk right now Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu
Alaikum Again please If there is anybody heading
to Arlington, Columbia Pike There is a sister
at the front desk that needs a ride
there If you can please give her a
ride Thank you Wait
Dr. Rania Awad's event Has been moved downstairs
She will be speaking at Ummati and then
at the end she will have her Q
&A Assalamu Alaikum Q
&A Q&A Q&A Q
&A Q&A Q&A Q
&A Q&A Q&A Q&A Q
&A Q&A Q&A Q&A Q
&A Q&A Q&A Q&A