Category: Islamic Medicine

Mind the Duck

4/10/2022

The aftermath of the pandemic with all the fears and uncertainty it created left us with many challenges and many balls to juggle. Many of us are struggling to pay the bills, make ends meet, care for loved ones, and care for ourselves… And, as we are caught up in this daily grind, we’re also caught in what Rumi calls an eagerness/ urgency mentality that drives us to keep running and pushing and striving further and further.

Rumi calls this human disposition “the Duck of Eagerness” بطة الحرص and warns us that if we leave this Duck roaming around freely, it will take over our life turning the good qualities of eagerness and urgency into an extreme of greed and anxiety.

Here is how he describes this Duck:

The Duck is eagerness, for his bill is always in the ground
Looking for what is buried in abundance or scarcity
His gullet doesn’t stop for a single moment;
The only command he is willing to hear from God is “Eat!”
He is like a thief breaking into a house
And very quickly filling his bag
Cramming in it what is worthy and what is worthless
Pearls and chickpeas alike
He sees his time as limited
and opportunities scarce.
Fear overwhelms him
So he puts everything under his armpit in haste.

But, a true believer - filled with trust-
Conducts his affairs in leisurely manner.
He feels safe
He knows that he won’t miss anything;
And he feels secure from other competitors,
As he perceived the King’s justice.
No wonder he doesn’t hurry
He is calm
At peace that his appointed fortune won’t miss him
Hence he has deliberation, patience, and forbearance
He is content, altruistic, and pure at heart.

Rumi describes this Duck Disposition as greed; and advises us:
“The shackles of greed, on your hands and neck now break
New fortune then, from heaven you can take.”

To be honest, I never thought of eagerness as greed. In our fast-paced world, eagerness, urgency and haste are considered as positive qualities. But, looking more closely, the Duck Disposition generates a scarcity mentality, a fear-based attitude, a FOMO exaggerated by the endless social media posts and flashy ads. We end up insecure, impatient, overwhelmed, feeling unsafe and unsettled, running around, missing all the daily beauty and joys sent our way.

It is time mind the duck! Don’t let it take over your life…

Traditional Wisdom of the month

Rumi gives the simile:

“an armed frightened horseman rode ahead
Into a forest on a thoroughbred.
An archer standing there saw him and drew
His bow in fear, not knowing what to do.
He aimed to shoot, the rider shouted out:
‘I’m weak - don’t let my huge frame make you doubt!”

Rumi then explains:

“Your weapons are your trickery and plots-
They’ve wounded your own soul by taking shots.
Since from those tricks you’ve gained naught in the end,
Abandon them, so God good luck might send!”

Sometimes we hold on to our anxieties and fears unconsciously imagining that they are the shield and weapons that keep us safe, keep us in control, not realizing that they are doing us more harm than good.

As Elizabeth Gilbert puts it, “you are afraid to surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control, all you had was anxiety.”

Our fears and anxiety, our Duck Disposition are the weapons that we desperately hold on to as they give us the illusion that we are in control. But, those “weapons” are in fact what is shielding us from a joyful, peaceful life.

What are your weapons and shields that give you the illusion that you are in control?
What is your Duck busy snatching, missing the beauty and harmony of its surrounding?
How can you mind the Duck?

Body Whisper: Chronic Fatigue & Fibromyalgia

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Did I really forgive?

18/5/2022

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Forgiveness is an elusive concept. You think you’ve already forgiven and put the past behind you only to find the ugly face of anger, rancor, and hurt suddenly peek through the curtains of your life out of nowhere disturbing your peace and scaring the heck out of you.
Caroline Myss says, “the capacity to forgive is nothing less than the acceptance of a higher principle of Divine justice rather than earthly justice, as the organizing element behind the events of your life.” Forgiveness, she adds, “requires you to surrender your ego’s need to have life fall into place around your personal version of justice.”
No wonder forgiveness is so hard. It does not follow any logic or reason. Trying to rationalize it could be ultimately frustrating because we are applying our humanly limited version of logic in a futile attempt to manage our fears and pains. We are trying to control the chaos of our life, or rather what we perceive as chaos and randomness.
We will never find logical explanations for all the circumstances of our life, good or bad. Through his poetry, Rumi teaches us not to try to understand. Whatever meaning, reason, or conclusion we draw are but tiny pieces of threads in the big fabric of reality. Life is much more complex. Rumi advises:
“Please don’t request what you can’t tolerate
A blade of straw can’t hold a mountain weight.” (140)

And,
“If you stop reading from your own small view
The phoenix will grant kingdom then to you.” (1098)

To forgive, Myss teaches, we need to “defy gravity, to transcend the limitations of the reasoning mind and connect with an inner realm of mystical truth.”
Forgiveness defies reason as it defies gravity. It defies the clinging of the soul to explanation, order, structure, logic. It defies the gravitation towards a physical, inflexible, rigid realm and instead levitates us towards a heavenly mystical higher truth.

It is not easy… To forgive is to let go of a solid ground that might have supported us while we were trying to make sense of our life and existence; to let go of a familiar structure that held us as we navigated our way through life’s scary maze and wilderness. To forgive is to let go of the ant view and instead, fly high to see with an eagle eye...To see the bigger picture, the whole panorama, and realize that it is not about them… this is my story… my path… my journey; and all the challenges, troughs, snarls, and tangles are but lessons perfectly designed to help me build more resolve and strength, to help me advance on the Path and fly higher.

“Forgiveness, Myss says, is an act of release, surrendering the need for an explanation[…] forgiveness is your release from the hell of wanting to know what cannot be known.”

Myss sees that failing to surrender is a lack of humility as we cling to the illusion that we “can prevent God from creating chaos in [our] life.” “Certainly, you will never uncover an explanation that actually heals the full measure of your pain, because reason simply can’t penetrate the heart and soul that deeply.”

As Rumi says,
“The One from whom all benefits arise
Can surely see what you’ve seen with your eyes!
A million benefits are here and all
Compared with that one are extremely small.” (1531)
فكيف لا يرى ذلك الذي تتولد منه الفوائد ذلك الذي صار مرئيا لنا؟
وهناك مئات الآلاف من الفوائد كل منها تعد الفوائد التي ندركها بالنسبة لها قليلة القيمة

“If all Divine wisdom should be known to [the human being] at once, the benefits in it would leave him unable to act and the infinite wisdom of God would obliterate his comprehension. He would not be able to cope.” This is why God says, “We only send it down in a fixed measure” (Q. 15: 21) وَمَا نُنَزِّلُهُۥٓ إِلَّا بِقَدَرٍۢ مَّعْلُومٍۢ

Healing, teaches Myss, “represents a cleansing of the ego that liberates the embittered self. In its place emerges an inner truth that assures you that nothing was a mistake or an accident.”
“To surrender runs counter to all your instincts of protection, grounded as they are in your need for personal safety.” “Surrender represents […] a supreme act of faith that states, with God, all things are possible […] you leave it to God to chart the course of possibilities.”

Forgiveness is surrendering the ego… And, surrender is the ultimate test in humility. You acknowledge and assume your position as God’s servant عبدالله, you stop fighting for control or entitlement, you do the work and retreat in the shade, releasing the results, knowing and believing deep in your heart that the perfect plan is already in effect.

In Rumi’s words,

“The waves of peace collide with wonderous might,
Uprooting from men’s breasts all hate and spite” (2590)

“At one stage on this path snake venom changes
To wholesome food - it’s God who rearranges…
Things harmful to the soul in that pure sphere
Can be remedy where they are down here:
Unripe grapes are too sour for us to eat
But when those same grapes ripen, they taste sweet.” (2610-2614)

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Islamic Roots of Modern Pharmacology

3/10/2021

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Around the 8th century, one man took it upon himself to dig deeper into this amazing world of chemistry. A long forgotten historical figure, Khaled Ibn Yazeed came from the house of the Umayyad Caliphate. It was very unusual for a man in his social and economical stature to adopt such an unrecognized profession. However, his decision was a turning point in the history of chemistry.

Just as the Greeks and Romans had acquired their learning from ancient Egyptian and Sumerian breakthroughs, Ibn Yazeed started his journey by translating Greek and Roman references in the field. He studied chemical reactions and started his pioneering experimentations in synthesizing drugs and remedies. Ibn Yazeed set the foundation upon which chemistry and pharmacy could be studied which was later built upon by his successor Jabir Ibn Hayyan.

By the beginning of the 9th century, thanks to these two pioneers, pharmacy became a well-established independent profession with well regulated rules and laws. Pharmacists were knowledgeable about drug use, compounding, preparation, and dispensing. They mastered dosage adjustment, drug interaction, and prevention of drug adulteration.
Muslim physicians further developed the field of pharmacy. Famous physicians like Al-Razi (Razes), Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Al-Kindi, contributed much in the advancement of this field of science. Being the most knowledgeable about body ailments and diseases, physicians were the most suited to develop and prescribe the cure. They combined their knowledge about medicine with herbal remedies, chemistry, and philosophy to develop an amazing body of work describing disease diagnosis, description of appropriate remedies, and the required dosages. Some of many outstanding references in pharmacology at the time and for centauries to come include:

Al-Biruni’s book, The Book of Pharmacology,
Al-Zahrawy’s 30 volumes Al-Tasrif (Dispensing),
Al-Razi’s Al-Hawi (The Comprehensive Book on Medicine) and The Secret in Chemistry,
Al-Mansur Muwaffaq’s The Foundations of the True Properties of Remedies,
Ibn al-Wafid’s work, The Book of Simple Drugs,

Building upon the work of these Muslim scientists, modern Western World has founded its pharmaceutical knowledge.

The most important aspect of Muslims’ development to the pharmaceutical profession, though, was their honoring of the Islamic teachings while still basing their knowledge and studies on scientific experimentations and practical experiences. Additionally, they honored the whole human being, body and soul, and sincerely and ethically pursued their mission in easing people’s pain and relieving their sufferings. Physicians, like Al-Razi, advocated resorting to diet and herbs for treatment before referring to chemical drugs. His one-of-a-kind book, Tibb Al-Fuqara’a (Medicine of the Poor), described ways of treating diseases using affordable foods and herbs rather than expensive preparations and formulations.

While delving into this great history, I can’t help but feel awed by such wisdom and knowledge. And, I can’t also help but wonder when the achievements of modern-day Muslims will match that great era of human advancement.

_______________________________
References:
As-Sergany, R.. Khaled Ibn Yazeed. Retrieved from: www.islamstory.com. 2008.
As-Sergany, R.. [Science and the building of nations- in Arabic]. Egypt: Iqraa. 2007.
Al-Hassani, S. (Editor). 1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World. UK: Foundation for Science Technology and civilization. 2006.
National Library of Medicine. Islamic Culture and the Medical Arts: Prophetic medicine. April 5, 1998. Retrieved June 6, 2007.

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October: Breast Cancer Awareness Month

2/10/2021

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Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women and the second cause of cancer death after lung cancer. Recent genetic research points at breast cancer genes that, if present, increases the the risk of breast cancer. These studies show susceptibility, but do not explain how many women carrying those genes never develop breast cancer nor do they demonstrate how many women lacking the genes end up developing the disease. According to Dr. Lipton, the internationally recognized cell biologist and author of Biology of Belief, 95% of cancers are not caused by genetic inheritance. Environmental conditions and energetic makeup are major cause of cancer development. When cells are subjected to unfavorable environmental conditions (including toxins, nutritional deficiencies, emotional traumas, abuse…), they can’t perform optimally which may trigger those genes. If environmental conditions are under control (i.e. physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing) the genes won’t be triggered and the disease is never manifested.

Listen to your Body Whispers®

Breast cancer is associated with the heart chakra, our fourth energy centre. Breast cancer sufferers usually have a history of repressed love, mothering too much or too little, losing a loved one or being betrayed by a loved one. In most cases, they have a history of over nurturing others while neglecting or rather denying their own needs for love and care. Our body sends us messages… If we keep ignoring them, they keep getting louder and louder until the Whispers turn into screams…

Some time ago, I met a lovely 30-year-old lady who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. I was with her as she navigated the chaos of emotions: fear, helplessness, anger, depression… and as she suffered the pain of surgery, and the side effects of radiation and chemo. It was hard… extremely hard.
Yet, one day, she came back to see me. It was almost a year after her treatment has concluded. I will never forget her words: “you know, this cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was asleep and it woke me up.” She related how her illness gave her time to reflect on her life, her beliefs, and her values. She changed and she grew… And now, she was helping women on the same journey to navigate the pain and chaos of their illness and restore their life starting by the most important step: Awakening & Awareness.

Al-Harawy (d. 1089 C.E.), the Muslim scholar and Sufi mystic, described human beings as travelers on a life-long journey towards knowing God. His hundred-station journey starts with the most critical step: Awakening, which involves self-awareness and deep self-reflection. According to Al-Harawy, awakening initiates a life-long venture towards a sound heart, the center of human intellect that guides the way to the Straight Path.

How often does our life pass us by and go totally unnoticed? How often do we run on autopilot unaware and tumbling out of balance? Sometimes when we’re caught up in life challenges and pains, we miss those simple moments of awareness. Living our life with awareness allows us the opportunity to reflect on our trials and wounds. We do not bypass our pains, we do not deny our depression or brush away our fears; on the contrary, we learn to acknowledge our feelings; to savor every second of our life with its joys and sorrow, ups and downs; to live our life with gratitude and awe.

St. Teresa of Avila teaches “[God’s] voice reaches us through words spoken by good people, through listening to spiritual talks, and reading sacred literature. God calls to us in countless little ways all the time. Through illness and suffering and through sorrow He calls to us. Through a truth glimpsed fleetingly in a state of prayer He calls to us. No matter how half-hearted such insights may be, God rejoices whenever we learn what He is trying to teach us […] The important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens you to love.”

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We Need A Paradigm Shift

28/9/2021

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October is the Islamic Heritage Month in Canada… I want to take this opportunity to talk about a worldview that Muslim scientists have adopted during the Islamic Golden Age (roughly from the 7th to the 13th Century) and that we are definitely missing in our current approach to life…

Traditional Islamic teaching differentiates between two types of knowledge, transmitted (naqlī) and intellectual (ʿaqlī) knowledge. The transmitted knowledge is the one we acquire from books or through teachers, while intellectual knowledge is the knowledge that we find by digging within our souls to reach for the Truth, and which can only be reached through training the intellect and purifying the heart.[1] Accordingly, there are two basic paths of acquiring knowledge, following authority (taqlīd) and verification (taḥqīq). In practice, transmitted and intellectual knowledge, and taqlīd and taḥqīq, should always be interweaved yet it is usually the intellectual science that builds on the transmitted one. For Muslim scientists in the Islamic Golden Age, intellectual understanding has been regarded as an advanced level whereas transmitted science is an essential foundation and scaffolding that initiates and sustains intellectual inquiry.

If we apply this to our modern-day healthcare and medical practice, intellectual knowledge would be the skills and wisdom of the practitioner. It is the heart-based, dynamic, and ever-unfolding truth that depends on the practitioner’s expertise as well as on the client’s needs, hopes, and context. This intellectual knowledge could be reached not only through the sound training and transmitted learning, that is to say, through the evidence-based research, the body of knowledge, and accumulated data from previous teachers, researchers, experts and authorities (in both the conventional medicine and traditional fields), but also through the inner work (the purification of the heart) that the practitioner needs to perform. Science, from a traditional Islamic perspective, has one goal: to draw us closer to the Truth, to God.

But, this is not the case anymore… in our modern-day, we relinquished the pursuit for the essence, for the Truth and became content with the physical matter, with what we can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell… what we can sense: what you see is what you get, basically. We forgot that the first page of our Sacred Book praises the believers for being “those who believe in the unseen (al-ghayb),” (Q. 2: 3). We dismissed this ghayb (unseen) for the “certainty” of conventional scientific dogma. But, what we failed to acknowledge is that there is no certainty in scientific dogma – there are theories, hypotheses, and speculations many of which do not hold the test of time and crumble under the weight of new scientific discoveries,[2] the weight of new idols that we choose to worship.

Let’s be clear here. I am in no way against science. I am a scientist, a pharmacist who researched and taught pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical medications, biochemistry, and body metabolism for years; and who is still fascinated by science and chemistry. Yet, for me, these are tools not a destination. Professor Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in physiology/ medicine in 1937, wrote in his autobiography,
“I wanted to understand life but found the complexity of physiology overwhelming. So I shifted to pharmacology. This, I found, did not relieve the difficulty. So, I went into bacteriology, but found bacteria too complex, too. I shifted on, to physicochemistry and then to chemistry, that is, to molecules, the smallest units in those days. Ten years ago I found molecules too complex and shifted to electrons, hoping to have reached bottom. But Nature has no bottom. If Nature puts two things together she produces something new with new qualities, which cannot be expressed in terms of qualities of the components. When going from electrons and protons to atoms, from here to molecules, molecular aggregates, etc., up to the cell or the whole animal, at every level we find something new, a new breathtaking vista. So now, at 68, I am to work my way up again following electrons in their motion through more extensive systems, hoping to arrive, someday, at an understanding of the cellular level of organization.”[3]

For all traditional cultures, science has always been a tool that helps human beings in their pursuit for the Truth, for the Sacred. Somehow, in our modern world, we managed to turn this tool into a tyrant whose only goal is to conquer the world and subdue nature. When I decided to study pharmacy, years ago, I was fascinated by my grandmother’s pantry full of home remedies for every conceivable illness; I loved herbs and was enchanted by their natural powers of healing… I was disillusioned… the way pharmacists and modern-day conventional scientists approach herbs robs them of their soul, of their essence, and reduces them into Latin names and chemical formulas. We extract the one ingredient that “science” proves to be effective and discard the remaining of the herb considering it useless. But, who are we to judge?

There are some therapeutic classes that we can only find in traditional herbal medicine like:

Adaptogens: These are herbs that help the body adapt to whatever stressful condition it faces;
Alteratives: These are herbs that alter unfavorable conditions in the body whether by increasing or decreasing certain functions.

Terms like these teach us that herbs have some form of inherent intelligence, they have an inherent wisdom that is lost when we extract only one ingredient that we think is the active one -or even worse, when we try to replicate the chemical formula of this ingredient and synthesize it in our labs from coal tar and crude oil by-products that have nothing to do with the original herb- and stuff it into tablets or capsules expecting it to perform its magic.
Years back, when scientists discovered the calming effect of Kava Kava, a herb used by Native Americans for anxiety, they did what they do best – reduced it into one chemical ingredient they thought responsible for the pharmaceutical action: Kavalactones. The Kavalactones were extracted, purified, refined, stuffed into capsules, and mass-marketed. Soon enough, cases of liver failure started to be reported… It did not make sense; Native Americans have been using this herb for centuries with no reported side effects… It turned out that God who created the Kava lactones, also created another ingredient in the same plant, a powerful antioxidant that helps the liver detoxify and break down the lactones once their job is done. When we reduced the plant to only the anti-anxiety chemical, our body failed to eliminate it so it accumulated in the liver and caused more harm than good.
Reductionist Newtonian physics works just fine with technology and machines, but it stands at a loss before the miracle of our microcosm… Our body is not mere flesh, blood, and bones; our brain cannot be reduced to mere neurons and neurotransmitters; our heart cannot be concluded into a mere pump; and our intellect and consciousness could not be bound by the Cartesian bifurcation.

We Need A Paradigm Shift

We cannot understand and acknowledge our human complexity without integrating science and theology, physics and metaphysics. And, if we are to effectively integrate them, we need a paradigm shift. In the modern Western biomedical model, the scientific research is still based on and undergirded by the Cartesian-Newtonian dualistic, linear, and reductionist approach to life. This view “not only presents an inaccurate vision of human existence but also contributes to the disease of modern society.”[4]

Nowadays, evidence-based healthcare relies heavily on statistical analysis of collected data. The use of statistics, which began in the 1800s by eugenicists, aimed, and in most cases is still aiming, at establishing the “normal distribution” of human beings in an attempt to reduce deviation from the norm. But who gets to decide what “norm” is? This idea of the norm in itself is a tyranny that ignores many aspects of the human experience.[5] Besides, “the delusion that […] the accumulation of a large number of facts can be of use by itself as a proof of a theory,” is another oversimplification feature of our modern-day scientific inquiries that focus on quantities missing the real essence.[6] Even studies concerning spirituality and health “must conform to the canons of scientific research which focus primarily on the relationship of behavior and outcome,” overlooking:

The multifactorial nature of causation (instead they focus on linear causation);
The interconnectedness of mind, body, and soul (instead they see life through the dualistic Cartesian lens of separation); and
The interrelated holistic nature of life (versus the isolation, compartmentalization, and individualization view of modern thinking).[7]

We need to broaden our understanding of scientific evidence to include metaphysical first principles and include thoughts, feelings, relationships, and a holistic view of life.[8] We need to recollect the scattered pieces of our human existence and reconnect the severed ties between our hearts/ souls and our bodies.

_____________________________
[1] William Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul
[2] Wofgang Smith, Science and Myth.
[3] Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Lost in the 20th century
[4] Epperly, B. G. (2000). Prayer, Process, and the Future of Medicine
[5] Lennard Davis, The Disability Studies Reader
[6] René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity.
[7] Epperly, B. G. (2000). Prayer, Process, and the Future of Medicine. Journal of Religion and Health 39, 23–37.
[8] William Dembski, Intelligent Design.

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Mind the Duck

Body Whisper: Chronic Fatigue & Fibromyalgia

Did I really forgive?

Islamic Roots of Modern Pharmacology

October: Breast Cancer Awareness Month

We Need A Paradigm Shift

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