mental health & psychology
-
Meaning Behind Life’s Trials, Tragedies & Suffering
Life is never without its ups and downs, its triumphs and tears, its joys and sorrows. In the Qur’an we read the following: We will surely test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property and lives and trade. But give glad-tidings to the patient who, when struck by some misfortune, say: “We belong to God, and to… Continue reading
-
Going In Sorrow, But Not in Grief: Islam, Tolkien & Dying Well
It was the summer of 1979 that I visited the local Harrow Green library to borrow Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Around about four years earlier, over the course of a few months in morning assemblies, the head teacher of my primary school, one silver haired Mr. Smith, read to us Tolkien’s The Hobbit. I was expecting… Continue reading
-
Know Your Soul, Grow Your Soul
Many verses in the Qur’an extol the significance of the soul or nafs. In one celebrated passage, it states: By the soul and Him that formed it, then inspired it with its wickedness and God-fearingness. He is truly successful who purifies it, and he is indeed ruined who corrupts it. [Q.91:7-10] The Qur’an also offers… Continue reading
-
The Modern Pursuit of Happiness
“Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” seems to best express the only kind of happiness modern man has made available to himself; and we know where such gross hedonism leads to. Our current culture of greed, of instant-gratification and of turbo-consumerism may deliver us short term ‘highs’, the momentary ‘buzz’, but these… Continue reading
-
Don’t Confuse Being Patient With Being Complacent!
Shakespeare put these words in the mouth of one of his most complicated characters, Iago, in the tragedy of Othello: ‘How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees? ‘ Indeed! In Islam’s teachings, patience, or sabr, is one of the great demands required of each and every believer. The… Continue reading