nb: maaf, gelarnya pak Malik Badri sengaja tidak saya tulis dalam kopian makalah ini. ^^
The Islamization of Psychology Its “why”, its “what”, its “how” and its “who”
By: Malik Badri
In
preparing this keynote address, I have deliberately followed a simple
easily comprehendible style that I hope would help to clear up the cloud
of confusion that has fogged the concept of Islamization now for many
years. In doing so I have referred to some illustrative personal experiences from my long years of teaching, researching and Islamizing of psychology. I assure the audience that I am mentioning these personal experiences only to make myself understood. I am already approaching my seventieth birthday and I am no longer the young person competing for academic superiority nor am I the one whose main motive is to seek applaud and aggrandizement. In fact during the last five or six years I have become progressively interested in areas other than psychology. Philosophy, the history of Islamic medicine and Sufism are gradually taking me away from my specialization and I am now being more frequently invited to attend and to read papers in medical conferences in comparison to those in psychology. The paper I am presenting is a summary of a book with the title, ”Out of the lizard’s hole”which I am now writing in answer to my good friends who told me and wrote that, “Malik Badri, in his Dilemma of Muslim psychologists convinced us that we are in a lizard’s hole, but he did not tell us how to get out of it”. Having said that, let us turn to a summary of my paper on the “Why, what, how and who of Islamization”.
years. In doing so I have referred to some illustrative personal experiences from my long years of teaching, researching and Islamizing of psychology. I assure the audience that I am mentioning these personal experiences only to make myself understood. I am already approaching my seventieth birthday and I am no longer the young person competing for academic superiority nor am I the one whose main motive is to seek applaud and aggrandizement. In fact during the last five or six years I have become progressively interested in areas other than psychology. Philosophy, the history of Islamic medicine and Sufism are gradually taking me away from my specialization and I am now being more frequently invited to attend and to read papers in medical conferences in comparison to those in psychology. The paper I am presenting is a summary of a book with the title, ”Out of the lizard’s hole”which I am now writing in answer to my good friends who told me and wrote that, “Malik Badri, in his Dilemma of Muslim psychologists convinced us that we are in a lizard’s hole, but he did not tell us how to get out of it”. Having said that, let us turn to a summary of my paper on the “Why, what, how and who of Islamization”.
The “why of the Islamization of western Psychology
Why
do we need to Islamize modern Western psychology? When I gave my first
public lecture on the Islamization of psychology in the main auditorium
of the University of Jordan in 1965, I was faced with a barrage of
ridiculing questions wondering about the relationship between Islam and
psychology. Some mocking questions and comments were: “Islam is a
religion and psychology is a science”. “Do you speak of Islamic
physiology, fasiqbotany or kafir physics? Then why talk
about Islamic psychotherapy or secular psychology?” “Science struggled
for many years to reach maturity and to rid itself from the captivity of
philosophy and religion; do you want psychological sciences to
backslide to ancient religiosity or to antiquated philosophy?” Some of
my friends in the Department of Psychology, which I headed at the time,
confided to me with sincerity that if I continue to shove Islam into my
specialization, I may eventually lose my respect as a scholar.
After
eleven years I was invited by the Association of Muslim Social
Scientists in America to read a paper on the Islamization of psychology.
That was my famous article “Muslim psychologists in the lizard’s hole”.
I was greatly surprised by the enthusiasm and applaud I got from my
audience, particularly from the American psychologists who converted to
Islam. One of them, Dr. John Sullivan, told me that after the delivery
of my talk he discovered that he had been in a lizard’s hole during all
his career without knowing it and that he decided to resign from his job
as a counselor in a hospital to take up an employment that gave him a
chance to Islamize counseling. He wrote a very good book on Islamic
counseling.
On
my return to Saudi Arabia where I was professor and director of the
psychological clinic of the University of Riyadh, I was asked by the
deputy Rector of the university, Professor al-Nafi’, who was himself a
psychologist, to translate my lizard’s hole lecture into Arabic and to
give it as a public lecture to students, faculty and interested people
from the public. I did so, and as I have expected the 13 Arab faculty
members of the Department of Psychology were very skeptical about my
suggestions on Islamization and they played the old record of psychology
as a science which has nothing to do with religion. Some of them were
very angry at my criticism of Freud. Only one of them, who was a
committed Muslim, told me later that these lecturers depended fully on
psychoanalytic theory and practices in their lectures. If you take away
Freud, he said, they would not know what to teach. In effect they were
receiving their salaries from him! This was of course more than 25 years
ago. Those who loved the lecture were our students and the faculty
members who are not teaching social sciences. The morning after the
lecture I found my colleagues even angrier since students were loudly
asking, “How many lizards do we have in our department”?
Numerous Muslim psychologists have boosted their egos by believing that they arescientists who
will eventually control and predict all forms of human behavior. They
cannot do that now only because psychology is a new young science! In
his excellent book, Altaniheed fita’seel, Dr. Abdullah
al-Subbayih, a young Saudi associate professor of psychology has given
us a very good example of such psychologists. He wrote (p.29) that one
of his Arab colleagues stated strongly that he is not ready to Islamize
psychology to his students until Islamization receives an international
recognition! Here is an Arab professor in 1999 waiting for Western
psychologists to recognize Islamization before he can do so.
If this Arab psychologist were familiar with the modern criticism which Western psychologists level against their specialization, he would have found the international recognition he is looking for. But it is sad to say that many of our Arab and Muslim colleagues read only what is translated to Arabic or to their national language. Much of this literature is out of date and few authors are interested in updating themselves by reading current journals.
These
personal experiences should make us realize that some of our colleagues
who are still dubious about Islamization or who still believe that
psychology is a pure science are probably being’ more Western in their
thought than the Westerners themselves. More Royal than the king as the
saying goes. It is sad to say that Westerners, whether they are Muslim
or not, are more understanding to the efforts aimed at the adaptation of
their psychology to the needs of other cultures than many Arab and
Muslim psychologists.
The climate for Islamization now is very much more conducive than 23 years ago when I wrote The dilemma of Muslim psychologists.
Many Western psychologists are beginning to realize that their field is
largely culture bound and mainly influenced by American psychology and
its emphasis on extrapolating from animal studies and its use of
American students as subjects. Listen for example to the well-known
British psychologist Eysenck as he writes in 1995 in the Journal of World psychology (Vo.1, No.4, p.13):
“Much of our psychology is based on studies of American college students, rats, pigeons, and mentally abnormal groups.. It must be clear that this is not sufficient as a basis for a science claiming universal status.”
Already
French and German psychologists are complaining from this
Americanization of psychology. They feel that the US is the superpower
of psychology and their students are being influenced by the American
culture instead of simply being awarded a degree in psychology. If even
European psychologists are complaining from this
“student-Americanization of psychology”, though their cultures are
identical in most of their major tenets, how can we, Muslim, Asian and
Arab psychologists refuse to Islamize and continue to swallow this
ethnocentric culture bound stuff simply because they are sugar-coated
with ‘science’.
My
statement that those who reject Islamization are more Royal than the
king and that even the West has come to appreciate the need for adapting
psychology for other cultures is supported by an article in the same
issue of the journal of World Psychology. In their well written paper
titled, “But is it a science? traditional and alternative approaches to
social behaviour”, one psychologist from Georgetown University, USA,
Moghaddam, and a second psychologist from Oxford University, England,
Harre’, has this to state. I have put this long quotation from their
article since it says clearly how our mental slavery to “Americanized”
Western psychology can only perpetuate exploitative traditions of
colonialism:
“…the most important factor shaping psychology in the international context continues to be power inequalities between and within nations. The inability of psychology to contribute to Third World development arises in large part from these inequalities… and surely this is an unethical issue. Putative psychological “knowledge” which is of highly questionable reliability and validity even in the Western context is being exported wholesale to Third World societies, as part of a large exchange system ultimately driven by profits. The United States has established itself as the only psychology Superpower.. Psychology continues to be exported from the U.S. to the rest of the world, with little or no serious attention given to the appropriateness of what is being exported-Similarly, Third World psychologists are trained in the U.S. and in other Western countries, without regard to the question of the appropriateness of their training. Indeed, the continued exportation … and inappropriately trained personnel from Western to Third World societies strengthens ties of dependency and continues exploitative traditions established through colonialism” (1995, pp. 53¬54, italics ours).
From
what has been said so far it should be clearly appreciated that without
some form of adaptation, Western psychology can be harmful or at best
it may be of no use to us and to our students. But if we accept
adaptation, does this necessarily mean Islamization? Yes, indeed.
Western psychology itself proclaims that human behavior is the result of
the interaction of three major components: the biological, the
psychological and the socio-cultural. Anyone who cannot see the very
great influence of Islam as a religion and a way of life in shaping the
psychological and socio-cultural aspects of a Muslim is a myopic who
suffers from tunnel vision. In an often quoted research by Professor
Shiabuddin Moghni (I do not have the reference)which he conducted during
a sabbatical in Harvard University, he has shown clearly how Islam as a
worldview and way of life has molded the modal personality of the
Muslim Ummah into a number of dominant personality traits or attributes
which clearly differentiate them from other nations.
The
main attribute or trait is the spiritual dimension. Faith in Allah
Ta’ala and the belief that He is the Creator and sustainer of this
universe from the tiniest sub¬atomic particle to the greatest galaxy in
the heavens. He knows the secrets in the hearts of men and knows what is
beneath the secrets (subconscious). Everything that happens to man must
have ahimah or Divine Wisdom behind it. There is life after this life
and man is accountable for whatever he had done during his brief stay on
earth. These beliefs would make it necessary for any psychologist
working with Muslim subjects to Islamize his work. Western psychology
denies the soul in all its perspectives, whether they are behavioristic,
psychoanalytic, humanistic, biological or cognitive. They are all
erected on a secular worldview. From this perspective it would not be of
much help to Muslims who believe in God and in the spiritual component
in their own creation.
Whenever
a Muslim psychologist taps these spiritual aspects in his patients or
counseled, he would be rewarded with great successes in his work. During
my thirty years of psychotherapeutic practice, I was, with the Grace of
Allah, able to treat many patients through Islamic therapy when other
secular and drug therapies have failed to bring them relief and
tranquillity. In the Khartoum North Clinic for Nervous Disorders, where I
served as a senior psychologist, most of the patients referred to me
were the ‘rejects’ who failed to get any benefit from psychiatric drugs,
ECT and other therapies. Whenever I combined my behavior and cognitive
therapy with Islamic teachings and spiritual sentiments the improvement
in my patients was beyond my expectations.
Before
I conclude this section, I feel I must report an aspect of much
optimism to me. I am very happy to state that the new generation of
Muslim psychologists that I have met in conferences in different parts
of the world, whether in the Arab world, South East Asia, Pakistan,
South Africa, Europe, Australia and America are all very clearly seeing
the need for Islamizing their profession. They can clearly see the “why”
of Islamization but they also want to know about the “how”. Those whom I
have not met or discussed the issue with, continue to write to me. The
sentences that repeat themselves in almost all their letters are that,
“I have completed my higher degree in psychology but I find that my
Western specialization is not helping me with my Muslim subjects. I have
read your little book, “The dilemma of Muslim psychologists” and your
recent book on contemplation. They were an eye opener to me. But do you
know of any other books that specifically teach me how to deal with
Muslim clients? Please advise me about a university or institute where I
can be trained in this field. I am also happy to report that the number
of young Muslim psychologists from different parts of the world who ask
me to be their advisor or co-advisor in writing their masters or Ph.D.
degrees is beyond my time and ability.
The “what” of the Islamization of Western psychology:
Now
that we have dealt with why we should Islamize we come to what parts of
Western psychology we need to urgently Islamize and what parts we do
not need to Islamize. We start first by asking ourselves whether
psychology is really a science in the precise meaning of the term and
hence needs no Islamization or is it a complex mixture of philosophy,
pseudo knowledge, art and a few pockets of exact sciences? I want to
spend some time on this issue since I have been listening to much
criticism of Islamization on the grounds that psychology is a science,
and a science is neutral and has nothing to do with religion. Some of
us, Arab and Muslim psychologists, may still be playing the old record
of telling our students that psychology is a science because it uses the
scientific method in arriving at its theories and practices, and that a
science is really a science not because its specialists push buttons or
use elaborate equipment; a science is simply a science because its
subject matter is derived from empirical observation. I first heard this
statement in 1953 from my American lecturer in my first course of
general psycholo (201) in the American University of Beirut and then I
got tired of hearing it again and again with every course in psychology
and the social sciences. Most Western psychologists however have by now
stopped playing this overused record, but many of our colleagues are
still playing it.
We
must be aware of the fact that all the so called “exact sciences” such
as chemistry and physics have developed so vastly because they deal with
variables that can be strictly controlled. Compare in this respect
between the density and exact temperature of metals, human physical
disorders which are caused by specific chromosomal aberrations, or the
alkalinity of liquids, compare them with some of the psychological
variables we deal with like human anxiety, introversion, arousal or
love. Behavior and mental processes, the claimed territory of modern
psychology, are so complex that psychologists do not even agree about
precise definitions for them. Secondly, sciences like physics and
chemistry and even biology, because of their materialistic nature and
the simplicity of their variables could develop units that facilitated a
logical structure of their disciplines and comparatively much more
exact methods and artifacts of measurements. It also enabled these
sciences to develop holistic all embracing theories such as relativity
in physics and evolution in biology. Without units like the atom in
chemistry and physics, the cell in biology and the gene in genetics
these sciences would not have exploded with creative discoveries and
dazzling inventions that completely changed our lives.
These
fundamental aspects which underlie any real science have provided these
disciplines with the means to logically arrange their subject matter in
a homogenous hierarchical manner in which the facts and theories of one
chapter of a textbook leads logically to the next. The reader cannot
comprehend the material in chapter 2 without first understanding the
content of chapter 1. For example, all books on physiology start with
the cell; a group of similar cells make a tissue; a number of tissues
form an organ; and several organs responsible for a similar function are
classified as a system. The textbook run smoothly from chapter to
chapter as if it were a book of Euclidean geometry.
As
psychologists we must confess that we do not possess and cannot possess
such fundamental concepts, particularly when we are dealing with human
beings. Listen to Denmark and Eisenburg in their very recent study in World Psychology (1995):
“It is simply unfair to place upon psychology the burden of adhering to the same scientific guidelines as, say, physics or chemistry. Psychology deals with people, and unlike the laws of matter which remains basically consistent, people are inconsistent almost by definition. The human mind is the ultimate confounding variable–no matter how subjects cooperate with their experimenter, control over a psychological experiment is severely limited” (p.32).
Accordingly,
we should not fool ourselves by saying that we are a new science and
that it is a matter of time before such units of behavior can be
‘discovered’. Western psychologists have wasted much time looking for
such units and have finally given up the useless search.
We
must confess as psychologists that because of the lack of these
fundamental underlying concepts and the nature of our object of study,
we cannot have a holistic general grand theory. We have a number of
competing theories and practices non of which can produce the evidence
that convinces other competing perspectives about the correctness of its
broad claims. That is why we may find our students at times more
confused when they graduate from us than when they first registered in
our departments. Thomas Kuhn (1970), the famous author of The structure of scientific revolutions and
the philosopher who popularized the concept of “paradigm” is quoted by
Marx and Hillix (1979, p.7) to have stated that “developed sciences had
paradigms but psychology didn’t “. In developed sciences a”paradigm
shift” results in new paradigms overthrowing and replacing old ones; in
psychology and other social sciences new paradigms, if we can call them
so, generate much enthusiasm and lots of followers, but old ones
continue to survive and sometimes to flourish again after the passage of
a few years. That is why contemporary philosophers of psychology are
already voicing their dissatisfied with psychology’s aping of pure
sciences and its inability to help solve human problems. Sigmund Koch
who calls the aping of psychology to Newtonian physics as “The idolatry
of science that is characteristic of our age” goes on to bitterly state:
Whether a ‘science’ or any kind of coherent discipline devoted to the empirical study of man, psychology has been misconceived. Though a massive hundred-year effort to erect a discipline given to the positive study of man has here and there turned up a germane fact, or thrown off a spark of insight,…their sum-total over time is overwhelmingly counterbalanced by the harvest of pseudo-knowledge… I should like to ask what is the meaning of the one hundred-year history of that endeavour since its formal institutionalisation as ‘science’ “(in Brown, 1974, pp. 4¬ 6).
Because
of this natural confusion in our specialization, the subject matter of
our discipline cannot be arranged. in any logical order. Look at any
textbook on general psychology and you will find that each chapter is a
self contained unit which is not built on any previous material and at
times it has no dependency relation with other chapters except the fact
that it discusses a very different aspect of human or animal behavior or
even that it is simply bound up in the same cover of the textbook. The
student can start with any chapter and understand its content without
necessarily referring to earlier material.
Accordingly
one would find different authors following very divergent arrangements
of subject matter in their textbooks. As a young lecturer in psychology I
have always found that to start with biological psychology and
statistics may dishearten the Arts students. Abnormal and social
behavior, though they may be the last chapters of the textbook, can
create more interest. Each lecturer has his way in dealing with this
problem. That is why some psychologists call their discipline a’salad’. I
prefer to call it a passer Malam since a salad can be thought of
in terms of one classification; vegetables. Different components of
salad have a number of common characteristics other than the fact that
they are vegetables. They are rich in vitamins but not in calories and
their water content is high; they all aid digestion by providing
roughage and they have some similarity in their taste. But in a pasar
malam or a Malaysian night market, you cannot group the commodities
under any one label. Clocks next to mutton and cakes next to
undershirts. The only thing in common between them are that they are in
the same wide open space of the market and they are all for sale ! In
this psychological passar malam one psychologist may specialize
in social psychology and actually be very familiar with the works of
sociologists in the sociology department next door but cannot understand
any thing in the paper written by a colleague in his own department who
has conducted a study on, say, ” The medial-temporal-lesions and
retrograde amnesia in monkeys” or “the influence of deoxyribonucleic
acid on mating behavior in rats! “. The social psychologist may send his
research to a journal in psychology, but it may also be published in a
journal of sociology or even anthropology while his colleague, the
specialist in behavior genetics or physiological psychologist, may
publish in journals of psychology or pure genetics or physiology. A
third member of the department of psychology is a statistician who is
not interested in biology or social psychology, or for that matter, any
other branch other than statistical psychology, but both of them
desperately need his help in planning and executing their experimental
studies. To both of them, terms like factor analysis and chi-square are
as clear as Chinese to Arabs.
Still,
other branches of psychology are more of philosophy and armchair
speculations than any social science. Their theories and hypotheses
cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by any empirical observation and
hence they are as far away from science as east from west. Take for
example the whole field of psychoanalysis and its vague concepts such as
“libido”, “oedipal conflict”, castration and “penis envy”. I do not
like to waste space in this paper to discuss the unscientific nature of
psychoanalysis since I have already done so in a previous publication
(Badri, 1978). I will only mention that we are told now by Thornton
(1983) the author of the widely read book, Freud and cocaine: the Freudian fallacy, that
during the entire period in which Freud wrote his major theories he was
miserably addicted to cocaine. Much of the sexual stuff which we teach
to our students as ‘science’ is in fact the incoherent narration of an
ingenious drug addict !
Thus
what is really “exact science” in psychology is in fact mostly limited
to the “no man’s land” with other pure sciences such as biochemistry,
neurology, physiology, genetics and pharmacology. When these sciences
are combined with psychology, we get disciplines like physiological
psychology, neuropsychology, behavior genetics and psychopharmacology.
Some aspects of clinical and medical psychology borrow from medicine and
psychiatry. When we study psychology or teach it to our students we
tend to mix up the exact sciences in psychology with philosophical
issues and culturally bound aspects of Western modernity and the
American way of life. Muslim psychologists, when teaching or training
their students do not differentiate between scientific material
concerning behavior genetics and brain neurotransmitters and theories in
humanistic psychology and psychoanalysis. Some of them do not even care
to do so.
In this respect psychology as a diffused discipline or a pasar malam is
very much like Greek philosophy in the time of the great Muslim scholar
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. It was a conglomerate of sciences such as
astronomy, physics, biology and mathematics, mixed up with metaphysics,
logic, Greek mythology and theology, and other areas of philosophy such
as epistemology and ethics. In Islamizing this, Ghazali meticulously
differentiated in his al-Mungith rninal dalal between the pure
sciences and abstract philosophy such as logic, astronomy and
physiology, and those areas based on Greek mythology and religiously
deviant theology. The first group, al-Ghazali said, need not be
Islamized at all since it has nothing that directly harm or support
Islamic faith. It is the second that should be evaluated and its
fallacies exposed from the Islamic point of view. He also pointed to the
danger of confusing Muslim minds when these two groups of knowledge are
not differentiated. He said that some people who read about the great
achievements of the Greeks in astronomy and in predicting eclipses, may
conclude that all of their deviant thought in their theology must also
be of the same high standard. And that an Islamic “fanatic” who reads
Greek theological aspects of philosophy may make a hasty generalization
of condemning all Greek philosophy as Kufr. Such a person, without
knowing it, may do a lot of damage to the religion he thinks he is
defending. People who knew the contributions of philosophy to science
and who think that this person represents the Islamic point of view may
accuse Islam itself of ignorance and rigid thought. It is of interest to
note that even today there are Muslim authors who attack psychology and
other Western humanities as anti-Islamic and openly advise that their
teaching should be prohibited and deleted from university curricula. I
believe what Ghazali suggested centuries ago is probably the best
approach in deciding what to Islamize and what to accept as it is in
modem Western psychology. We do not need to Islamize psychophysics or
the physiology of sight and hearing and the anatomy of the eye and ear.
Nor do we need to Islamize studies about the role of the brain
neurotransmitter serotonin in our sleep behavior and in adjusting our
body clock, the role of the hormone noradrenalin in setting our energy
level nor the influence of caffeine, alcohol or heroine on the human
nervous system. We do not need to develop our own Islamic statistical
psychology or to raise an ethical battle against neutral theories of
learning. Such areas, as I said are “no man’s land” between psychology
and other exact sciences. But when we come to areas such as the theories
of personality, abnormal psychology, the whole area of humanistic
psychology and its reliance on existential philosophy, psychoanalysis
and most of the schools of psychotherapy and cultural psychology we find
that without Islamization, whether we know it or not, we would be
accepting and teaching anti-Islamic material based on a quasi-religion
of secular humanism. I am using the term quasi-religion to describe the
secular humanism of Western modernity because secularism can be an
anti-religious religion. I have more to say about this in the next
section.
Other
than the “no man’s” branches of pure science and the fields obviously
influenced by modernity’s secular worldview and the American and Western
ways of life, there is a highly neutral big area in Western psychology
that can easily be adapted to Muslims and subjects of third world
countries. For example, the whole area of psychological testing with its
intelligence and achievement tests, personality inventories and even
some projective techniques that are not based on psychoanalytic theory.
Some of the tests used in psychology labs such as those measuring
memory, reaction time of dexterity do not even require much adaptation.
Thus
we do not need to Islamize the Wechler Adult Intelligence Scale or the
Binet, we need to adapt them and to standardize them by develop suitable
norms for our peoples.
We
need to understand the difference between adaptation and Islamization.
All forms of Islamization are adaptations that necessarily include
ideological aspects; however adaptations are only changes to Western
psychological material to make it more suitable for other cultures. All
forms of Islamization are adaptations but not every adaptation an
Islamization.
Before
I conclude this issue of Islamic adaptation, I must draw the attention
of the readers to beware of the misuse of biology and other exact
sciences by Western secularization in propagating its ethical message. I
have discussed this in some detail in my book The AIDS crisis: a natural product of modernity’s sexual revolution. For
example, the Western media created a loud hullabaloo about the
discovery that the cells of the hypothalumus in the brains of
homosexuals were found to be different from of heterosexuals or that a
gene for homosexuality has been found. Unbiased researchers falsified
all of these ‘discoveries’, but the media and some textbooks in our
field fail to report the falsification giving the naive readers the
wrong impression that science has ‘proved’ that homosexuality is
inherited. This can confuse Muslim young learners. They would wonder how
can God punish people for something He has Created in them?! Thus when
deciding on what to Islamize the Muslim scholar should not forget to
scrutinize material based on exact sciences.
In
concluding this section on what to Islamize, it should be obvious to
the reader that we need to Islamize only the areas influenced by Western
secularism and its ungodly worldview and its deviant conceptions about
the nature of man. We are not after an Islamization of everything in
psychology or the Western social sciences. I believe that much confusion
has been eclipsing the face of Islamization because of putting up the
misleading slogan of “The Islamization of knowledge”. No one can claim
to Islamize knowledge in its vast unrestricted form since much of
knowledge is already Islamized. Knowledge from the Holy Qur’an and the
Sunnah of our Blessed Prophet (PBUH) is not only already Islamized, but
without it there would be no Islam.
Some
of my friends who defend the slogan of the Islamization of knowledge
say that from the beginning they had a vision of not limiting their
Islamization to secular Western knowledge. They had also aimed at the
Islamization of Fiqh and Islamic jurisprudence that was originally
developed for Muslim societies of the past centuries thus failing to be
of help in solving the modern problems of contemporary Mulims. To my
mind this kind of argument fails to to differentiate between
Islamization and ijtihad or tajdid. The jurisprudence applied in
early Muslim societies was Islamic and is still Islamic. If certain
aspects of it needs modenization or adaptation, this would not rob it of
its Islamic nature. I believe that because of this confusion a great
Islamic Institution such as IIU which devoted itself to Islamization, is
not yet able to give its faculty a clear understanding of this blessed
endeavor or to produce good Islamized textbooks in the area of the
social sciences.
The “how” of the Islamization of Western psychology:
To
properly Islamize, the Muslim scholar should clearly appreciate the
fact that modern psychology and other social sciences are progenies of
the new secular worlview of Western modernity. Psychology in particular
is the discipline that has given and continue to give the new worlview
its justification and the `priesthood’ of counselors, psychologists and
psychiatrists who preach the doctrines of the new “faith”. Muslim
Islamizers should know that no human society, ancient or modern, can or
could have existed without a common worldview uniting the majority of
its population with respect to major philosophical or religious issues
that give meaning to their very existence. These are critical questions
concerning the nature of man, where he has come from and where he is
going to. Questions relating to the nature of life in this world and
whether there is life after death. Issues about the universe, how it has
come to exist, who is sustaining it and whether it is everlasting or
will perish one day. These are some of the momentous issues that form
the worldview of all societies and govern their ideology and ethical
practices.
To
ask such central questions is deeply rooted in the human fitrah that
God has Created in man’s nature so that he would seek Him and believe in
Him, if he chooses to do so and live happily in this world and the
Hereafter, or to reject Him and become a slave of his shahawat and die
in agony and disbelief. Thus no human culture can avoid dealing with
such major issues. Iii fact, looking for answers to such philosophical
questions starts very early in the life of humans in all lands and
cultures. Prompted by this deep-rooted fitrah four-year-olds all over
the world surprise and amuse their parents with such questions which
parents, particularly in pagan and religiously deviant cultures often
can find no satisfactory replies for.
To
laymen and even to many scholars the term “religion” refers only to a
system of beliefs leading to the worshipping of a supernatural
omnipotent being. Depending on one’s attitude, people who staunchly
adhere to their beliefs with strong devotion may be described as pious,
devout, fanatic or even rigid and unthinking. However, this would
restrict the definition to the major historical religions. I believe
that, from at least the psychological point of view, the term should
have been generalized to include any system of beliefs, spiritual or
otherwise, that gives its devoted followers a worldview or a
semi-religion. Worldviews that answer all the critical questions related
to human life to their followers, offer them meaning for their
existence and give them a strong conviction that their way of life is
the only right one can act as substitute religions.
From
this perspective, secular movements such as nationalism, Marxism and
secularism can be viewed as ‘religions’ that enthuse its ‘pious’
followers to worship their race or their ideology or to worship science
and technology or even to worship themselves and their material
pleasures. Indeed, just as wars and conflicts broke out in the name of
historical religions, the fanatics and devotees in the name of these
quasi-religions waged similar hostilities and armed conflicts. So it is
possible for a person or a group to be religiously irreligious!
It
is only within such a conception of Western secularism that we can
understand the background philosophy of most theories and practices of
modern psychology. They are motivated by a new secular ‘religion’ that
is now strongly preaching its message to ‘convert’ the whole world to
adopt its ideology and its ethical standards. In a nutshell, this is
what ethical globalization is all about. To appreciate the influence of
this secular religion on its adherents one can refer to the conflict and
heated arguments in United Nations Conferences such as the population
conference in Cairo, the China women’s conference and the recent UN
conference on AIDS. All these meetings witnessed fighting and religious
arguments between Muslim and Catholic delegates as opposed to the
fanatics of secular humanism who sought to ‘liberate’ people from the
‘negative’ influence of religion and family traditions in order to
accept the new ethics of globalization.
In
this new quasi-religion of secular humanism the earlier image of man as
a chosen creature bestowed with a Godly spirit has been totally
reversed. Historically, the extreme atrocities of the Catholic Church
with its antagonistic stand against science and scientists, its
inquisitions and burning of millions of innocent women as witches have
been met with retaliatory extreme animosity towards religion. Thus the
new picture of the modern Western man in the age of science has been
transfigured into two seemingly different but really complimentary
forms. One conception demotes man to the level of animals, the other
bestow on him the attributes of a god.
The
secular ‘message’ of denying the soul had its ‘prophets’ who helped
Western modernity to do away with the difference between man and other
animals. Darwin’s evolution, Freud’s psychoanalysis, Watsori s
behaviorism, Konrad Lorenz’s ethology and the sociobiology of Desmond
Morris are some of the major contributions in this endeavor. Modern
social sciences have also played an important role in strengthening the
new faith of ‘animalizing’ man. The denial of the soul has naturally led
to the denial of three other essential aspects concerning the religious
image of man. That he is responsible to God for his moral and religious
duties in this world and that accordingly he has to have a free will
and that there is life after this life for the final judgement. Finally,
being an animal without a soul has helped to popularize the mechanistic
conception of man. This was first postulated by the famous French
philosopher Descartes and has since had its great influence on the
contemporary Western conception of man. The whole school of behaviorism
with its S-R psychology is clearly influenced by this mechanistic
picture of man.
What
was the outcome of all that? The outcome was a denial of God Himself or
at least rendering Him a powerless being. This has naturally led
Western secularism to bestow man with the Divine responsibilities which
previously belonged to God. Behaviorism and other social sciences have
paved the way for secularization by strongly confirming that man’s
ethical behavior is formulated by his environment and culture. And since
there are many different cultures in this world with various ethical
standards, the issue of following any ethical code as the true one with a
capital “T” has been psychologically rejected, or at least greatly
diluted.
In
this ungodly milieu of ethical relativism, the secular society is given
the authority to decide on its own moral code and to use man-made laws
to guarantee that its citizens are socially responsible. Man was thus
crowned as the sole owner of his own life and body. He is free to do
whatever he wants with them. To marry a person with his own sex, to
change his sex and amputate his sex organs, change his God-given
features with plastic surgery, kill himself or assist others to end
their life. Thus I do not think it is possible to Islamize without an
earnest study of the history and philosophy of Western psychology. When
the edifice of this secular humanism is exposed and demolished and an
Islamic conception about man and his existence is erected on its ruins
the “how” of Islamization would be easily fulfilled. The Islamizer would
then develop a heightened sense and clarity of vision by which he can
differentiate between the secular, the neutral and the very useful after
adaptation.
This
in fact is what Western psychologists are doing all the time. They are
more faithful to their secularism than some Muslim psychologists to
Islam ! They have the “secular insight” which enables them to adopt and
adapt useful aspects in some religious practices and then secularize
their spiritual background by devising substitute secular theories. The
useful techniques of meditation, which is actually related to Eastern
religions is now widely used in the West as a secular practice of
transcendental meditation (T.M.). The therapeutic practice has been
robbed of its spiritual component and its mantra to become an American
psychotherapeutic technique.
Even
Freud himself, to my mind, had done exactly the same procedure in
developing his psychoanalytic therapy. He found that troubled
emotionally disturbed and guilty sinners were greatly helped by
confessions they made to a warm friendly and understanding priest who
allowed them to ‘ventilate’ and who guarded their secrets and relieved
their suffering by using spiritual and religious consolation. The
confessions were generally tearful and associated with cathartic
emotional release, so the ‘sessions’ took place in a small isolated part
of the church known as a confessional. The confessor, the priest who
hears the confessions, listens attentively and contemplatively without
looking at the confessing person. When the sinner finishes, the priest
would now use his spiritual methods to ‘heal’ the suffering of the
troubled person. I believe that he has copied exactly the same model,
but instead of a spiritual and religious help Freud subjected the
emotionally disturbed to secular psychoanalytic theory. Islamizers of
Western psychology should have the Islamic commitment and the self
confidence to use the same approach.
But
can we as Arab and Muslim psychologists carry out the burden of
Islamization the way Westerners work for secularization? I believe now
that, had it not been for their lack of knowledge in Islam itself,
Western psychologists who convert to Islam can do a much better job in
this field than we who were born Muslims. Naturally they have better
understanding of their culture, and they are up-to-date with all the new
theories and fads in psychology since they are produced in their native
land. More importantly, the kind of education they receive since early
childhood encourages them to be creative and critical. They would
accordingly have no feelings of conscious or unconscious inferiority
when critiquing big names and central theories in their specialization.
That is why, when some Western psychologists turn to “spiritualism”,
however deviant their beliefs may actually be, they write in such a
convincing and forceful manner that their books become best sellers even
in their secular countries. Take for example the books written by Scott
Peck, particularly The road less traveled: A new psychology of love, traditional values and spiritual growth that
made publishing history by being in the >i>New York Times best
selling list for a record period of ten years. Or read the works of
Herbert Benson, especially his books, Beyond the relaxation response and Timeless healing.
So I believe now that much service can be rendered to the Islamization
of psychology if native Muslim psychologists can, with their knowledge
of the religion, work with Western Muslim converts. This can be one of
the most successful “hows” of Islamization.
One final point in this section on the “how” of Islamization is the dfference between what I call wajib or fardu’ain Islamization and mustahab or nafilah Islamization. In the wajibor
obligatory Islamization, we Islamize because if we do not our clients
will either get very little benefit or no use out of our intervention or
they may even end up worse than their condition before they came to see
us. Whether we believe in Islam as a religion and a worldview or not,
we have to know the Muslims we are helping and take their beliefs into
consideration.
One
of my popular stories that can illustrate this concerns an honest
broad-minded European psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Schmidt, who was, or may
still be, practicing in Brunei. He read a valuable paper on his
innovated techniques of treating drug and alcohol addicts in Brunei. The
paper was read in Amman, Jordan, in 1987 in the Third Pan Arab Congress
on Psychiatry sponsored by the Association of Arab Psychiatrists. He
took a group of addicts to a camp outside the city and subjected them to
a daily rigorous program of physical training and concentrated talks
and video programs. The program started at dawn and finished at bed time
and was heavily saturated with Islamic activities involving prayers,
talks and video shows. After his lecture, one Muslim Arab psychiatrist,
who was one of those who were more “royal than the king”, asked the
European psychiatrist mockingly, “How can you, as a trained scientist,
use religious activities in such a therapeutic endeavor? How can you mix
religion with science?” The Western psychiatrist told the Muslim
‘scientist’ that he had tried all the methods and practices that he had
learned in England but they have failed to change these Muslim addicts
and that the rate of relapses in those who improved was astounding.
“When I introduced the Islamically oriented activities, they healed much
more patients and the relapse rate was much less”. Then he continued to
explain, “I am not a Muslim. I am a Christian but since Islamically
oriented therapies work better for Muslims than secular ones, one should
use them whether one believes in Islam or not “.
This is a wajib Islamization. Its aim is simply to benefit from knowledge about the psychology of Muslims in executing their psychological intervention. The mustahab or
supererogatory or favored Islamization on the other hand is practiced
by committed Muslim psychologists. They are the professionals who have
strong faith and love of Allah Ta’ala and his Prophet (PBUH) and whose
objective is not only to benefit their clients from their expertise but
also to make them better Muslims. They may train them to practice Qiyamulail or
they may read Qur’an to them as a form of Rukiah or do some other
Islamically oriented interventions with what they have learned from
modern psychological theory and practices. Such psychologists would look
at their practice as a form of blessed worshipping of God.
I
believe that much of the confusion concerning Islamization is caused by
mixing up these two approaches that I may call Islamization “A” for the
wajib and Islamization “B” for the mustahab. When psychologists who are
either uncommitted to Islam itself or who do not believe in it as a
religion listen to Islamically devoted psychologists enthusiastically
speaking along the lines of Islamization “B”, they would feel confused
and embarrassed. They get the impression that they are being coerced
into changing their beliefs. They may not openly refuse but they may
sabotage the whole project. On the other hand many scholars devoted to
Islamization “B”, may be feeling that diluting the process of
Islamization to the study of the psychology of Muslims is unacceptable.
They may even criticize those working for Islamization “A” as
compromisers and Westernized!
The “who” of the Islamization of Western psychology:
Now
we come to our last section of the paper in which I would like to
mention some of the most important characteristics of the Islamizer of
psychology. I have already mentioned this in a paper titled, The use and abuse of human sciences in Muslim countries, published as a separate by IIU Press in 1992. I wrote a few pages about this very issue with the sub-title, “Islamizing the Islamizer”, which
at the time became a catch phrase. I believe that very few people in
the audience have copies of this paper and I feel that these pages are
quite pertinent for what I want to say about the “who” of Islamization
and so I will reproduce them hereunder with some adaptations:
The
most important quality of the Islamizer is his or her sincerity. The
depth of Islamic faith and spiritual motivation are the bedrock for this
blessed task. Some of our contemporary pioneer Muslim scholars in the
field of Islamization stress and at times over-stress
intellectualization as the major attribute of an Islamizer. This to my
mind is not fully justified. A half-baked, half-hearted intellectual who
still harbors remnants of pride about being an academician or the one
who had become too ‘scientific’ to offer a strong Islamic statement
without pedantically philosophizing it would not be productive in this
field in spite of his or her recognized contributions in their Western
specialty.
On
the other hand, a devout and selfless Muslim scholar, who is not as
learned in social science as the former, may at times offer a much
better and lasting contribution to Islamization. Indeed, the first
generation of the real pioneers of Islamization include names like
Abul-Al’la al-Mawdudi, Sayid Qutb, Malik Ben Nabi and Said Nursi. Though
non of them was a noted social scientist, their names continue to shine
like unfailing light and their literature reprinted for hundreds of
times in many languages to continue its influence on the Muslim social
scientists and the laity.
Some
of their works and their methodologies may be criticized today by some
of our colleagues. This is probably unfair and ungrateful. One cannot
judge their original literature which was written in some cases more
than 50 years ago with today’s assessment norms. Some of those who level
unsympathetic criticism at them are the very ones who benefited from
their unequalled contributions as young students, to later climb the
stairs of Islamically oriented expertness in their fields. For many
years their works were the only sources on the Islamization of
psychology, education and other social sciences.
When I stress the importance of sincerity, deep faith and taqwa I
obviously do not wish to belittle the weight of high specialization and
intellectual endeavor. The contributions of gifted Islamic giants like
Mawdudi and Qutb is the very rare exception and never the rule. They are
like al-Muhasibi, al-Ghazali and ibniQayyim whose ideas even today,
after the lapse of centuries, can guide Muslim psychologists and
Islamizers. These are the selected beloved slaves of God who are
Bestowed with Divine knowledge.
As
for the rest of us sinners, there is no substitute for a well grounded
postgraduate specialization in our selected Western science. It is
important that the field of Islamization should not be the dustbin of
those who failed to attain academic excellence in their disciplines.
Enthusiastic Islamic rhetoric about Islamizing psychology from a
colleague with shaky academic credentials may only bring about scorn and
refusal from his associates.
It is of interest to mention that in his Almungith minaldalal, Abu
Hamid al-Ghazali strongly stresses this very point. He says that anyone
who wants to expose the deviance and contradictions in any science,
should first study that science until he becomes better than those who
are considered experts in it and comes to know more about its secrets
than them. It is only then, Ghazali says, that scholars and laity can
appreciate his criticism. So before he criticized Greek philosophy,
al¬Ghazali first studied it meticulously and wrote his famous book
Maqasid al falasifah . After he received recognition as the leading
Muslim philosopher of his time, he authored his famous book, Tahafut
al-Falasifah in which he leveled his uncompromising attack on them. This
then should be the second attribute of the Islamizer of psychology.
The
third quality needs no discussion. The Islamizer should definitely be
well read in Islam as a religion and a worldview. This would require him
or her to study the relevant material from Qur’an and its tafsir, the
Sunah and Blessed Hadith, some aspects of Islamic Fiqh particularly
those related to family law, and to relate this to the works of early
Muslim scholars and thinkers particularly in issues related to
psychology.
A
fourth quality is that the Islamizer should be movement oriented and
down to earth in his Islamic studies. He should view Islam as a dynamic
worldview playing its forceful role in the psyche of the individual and
the cultural patterns of the whole society. Without this cogent approach
the Islamization process may be an aloof academic exercise. I can
generally tell with great accuracy whether an Islamization material is
written by a movement oriented or an ‘ivory tower’ social scientist or
psychologist. The former can readily see the danger of secular Western
knowledge and abuse to the ideology of Muslim youth. He can easily
identify himself with them to understand the way they think and can thus
see where the secular danger can be damaging. He can then propose the
counteraction in real life experiences. He writes simply and clearly and
can readily see the practical use of his Western specialization in
helping Muslims. The latter tends to engage in detailed criticisms of
Western abstract theories from philosophical or scientific points of
view, punctuating his hairsplitting discourse with a few rare Islamic
references. He tends to use much jargon and difficult terms, proving to
himself and others his ‘scientific rigor’ and his infinite store of
unfamiliar vocabulary.
The
fifth item concerns the image of the Islamizer about himself and his
abilities. It is sad to see many intelligent and highly trained Muslim
psychologists parroting ethnocentric and absurd Western theories, year
after year, to their students without seriously thinking about
developing their own Islamic theoretical framework. It is unfortunate
that the major contribution of most Arab and Muslim psychologists is the
translation of Western psychology textbooks or Western psychological
tests. When textbooks are supposed to be authored, they are generally
not different from those that are translated. I have seen many books
supposedly authored by Arab psychologists that are translated almost
word for word from a Western source. At times this renders the Arabic
style difficult and incomprehensible. You have to read the English text
to know what the Arab psychologist wanted to say !
Translated
psychological tests also exhibit this phenomenon of unthinking copying.
I know of one psychologist who translated the Eysenck Personality
Inventory for subjects in a Muslim country known for its very hot
climate. As is known, the EPI is a test that measures neuroticism and
introversion. It is composed of some 60 questions to be answered by a
“yes” or “no”. For his English subjects living in fogy cold England,
Eysenck put the question, “Do you sweat a lot?” to measure emotionality.
Our Muslim psychologist translated the question as it is. In his very
hot country both psychologist and subjects are wet with profuse sweating
all the time!
Another
Arab psychologist who translated the MMPI to Saudi subjects, put the
same question used by the authors of the test to detect the lie factor.
If you ask an American whether he observes the rules of etiquette when
eating alone in the house the way he observes them when he is eating out
and he says “yes” then most probably he is telling a lie. At home he
may pick up a piece of roast beef from the refrigerator with his
fingers, in the restaurant he will politely use his fork and knife. A
Saudi on the other would use his fingers whether he is at home or in a
restaurant. If he says “yes” to this question he is telling the truth
but the tester will consider it a lie.
These
are minor examples, but what I am sad about is that I have lived with
big names in Western psychology such as Wolpe in the States and Vic
Meyer, Miller Mair, Arther Crisp, Meredith and Philip Vernon in the UK. I
have also lived and known big names in psychology in the Muslim world
such Abdal Aziz al-Kausy, Shihabudin Mughni, Afaq Ansari, Abu Hatab,
Uthman and Raffa’i. Most of the Westerners were definitely less
impressive to me than the Easterners. I wonder why then our contribution
is far less than our abilities. Non of us has come up with an
Islamically oriented theory or a new famous test or a new kind of
psychological therapy that excels and becomes the therapy of choice in
all parts of the Muslim world? I do not think the main reason is that we
are very busy or we lack facilities. I believe that the reason is lack
self confidence and the courage to come up with something new.
The
last attribute is the ability to creatively integrate. An Islamizer may
have a good standard in his Western specialization, sincerity and good
knowledge of Islam and self confidence. However, he learned since his
school days to put different forms of knowledge in water-tight
compartments in his mind. Such a psychologist may not be able to succeed
as an Islamizer. Islamization is a process that requires intelligence
and a creative ability in conceptualization from different disciplines.
This is a rare gift. We should earnestly look for young psychologists
who are bestowed with this gift.
References
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (n.d.). The savior from going astray. (in Arabic) Al-munqith minaldalal. Cairo: Dar al-Ma’arif.
Badri, malik(1978). The dilemma of Muslim psychologists. London: M.W.H,
____________(2000). The AIDS crisis: a natural product of modernity’s sexual revolution.Kuala Lumpur: Medeena Books.
Benson, H. (1996). Timeless healing. London: Simon & schuster.
____________(1984). Beyond the relaxation response. New York: Times Books.
Brown, S.C. ed. (1979) Philosophy of psychology. London: The Macmillan Press.
Denmark, F. L. and Eiseburg (1995). Should we throw away the baby with the bathwater? World Psychology, 1 (4): 31-36.
Eysenck, H.J. (1995). Cross-cultural psychology and the unification of psychology. World Psychology. 1 (4): 11-30.
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago University of Chicago Press.
Marx, M. & Hillix, W. (1979). Systems and theories in psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill Series in Psychology. Moghaddad, F. & Harre’, R. (1995). But is it science? Traditional and alternative approaches to the study of social behaviour. World Psychology. 1 (4):47-78.
Peck, M.S. (1990). The road less travelled. London: Arrow Books.
Thornton, E. M. (1983). Freud and cocaine: The Freudian fallacy. London: Blond & Briggs Publishers.
No comments:
Post a Comment