THIS IS A TEST SITE
Mental health concerns in the context of faith:
A Muslim Perspective
Meet Sara:
Sara is a Muslim, she has two sisters and a brother, her parents work in management and she often volunteers with tutoring children. Sara lives with a lot of anxiety and suffers from an eating disorder.
Sara moved to this city for a new job about five years ago after her graduation from university. In her previous community she felt welcomed and part of community life. She met regularly with the elders and spiritual leaders in her community to ask questions and receive guidance. She knew that every Friday night she would go to her place of worship and that routine gave her structure to manage her anxiety. None the less she was often plagued by the idea that “why me? why do I have to go through life with so much anxiety?”
She was comfortable enough to share about her eating disorder just with one or two people in the community. They got together on a regular basis for a understanding the meaning of suffering from the Qu’ran and the teachings of the Prophet and even worked out a way according to the faith to manage the days of fasting so that Sara’s eating disorder would not relapse.
Sara remembers this time and shares: “I had friends, I felt loved and accepted, I had hope, my weeks had structure and rhythm, and if the week was hard I knew that I would find comfort on Friday nights. In exploring the meaning of suffering from our religion with support from my friends and family, I found new insights. I had hope. I never felt alone although I spent many hours on my own.”
She also tells her experience with the religious programs in which she would learn a lot from the Qur’an about her suffering. She says that through religious scholars and of the community and personal study of the Qur’an she came to know some very important Quranic verses which explain the philosophy of human suffering and the ways to deal with it. She says “I came to understand a beautiful perspective from the Qur’an that suffering is a part of our life and there actually exists ease and comfort in the deepest level of every suffering and affliction,” as the Qur’an says:
فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْراً
With difficulty is surely ease (Qur’an, 94:5)
Sara shares “this verse helped me a lot to understand that how I should go to deeper levels of my suffering and reach the level of tranquility and comfort within the suffering.” She also says how the Qur’an taught her to continue to struggle for betterment and not to give up hope from in the mercy and blessings of God. She says she also learned from the Qur’an how to use suffering for her purification and refinement of heart and to see her suffering in the light of the spiritual reward of the Day of Judgment.
When Sarah moved to this city, the first thing was to search and find members of her group, because she knew of the support of the Muslim community and the importance of belonging to the brotherhood and sisterhood. Because of her anxiety she can be a bit abrupt and short in temper, and also her physical appearance makes people uncomfortable because she is so extremely thin. She came to perform her prayers and ended up all by herself the entire time. This added to her feelings of anxiety and stress so the one interaction that she did have on that occasion ended up being harsh and abrupt. All people could see was that she was a strange woman with a problem. Had they stopped for a moment they would have noticed her true identity, that she was their Muslim sister.
Sara now shares: “I have been living here for five years now. For a long time I had no friends in my community, just acquaintances. People talked to me but no one got close. I was not able to go to congregational prayers regularly because instead of helping me with my anxiety they made me more anxious.”
Sara says: “I often used to think to myself why this community so different from my previous community? When I read the Qur’an, Qur’an clearly emphasizes on the help to the needy and distressed people,” as the Qur’an says:
وَ تَعاوَنُوا عَلَى الْبِرِّ وَ التَّقْوى وَ لا تَعاوَنُوا عَلَى الْإِثْمِ وَ الْعُدْوان
And help one another in goodness and piety and
do not help one another in sin and aggression (Qur’an 5:2)
She took a bold step, “when I saw the verse of the Qur’an in which Jesus Christ says, “And God has made me blessed wherever I may be” (Qur’an 19:31), I got the message that if Jesus was made blessed it means people are always getting benefit from him and he is not harmful to anyone. So I met with the religious scholars and spiritual consultants of the community and requested them to nurture the people and let the people know the importance of helping those who are suffering and passing through difficult situations in their lives. Then I noticed that this issue was brought up and discussed in the religious programs and then I begin to see that it actually started to have an effect on the people of my community. I noticed that their behaviour towards me and others was changing.”
Sara says that she holds the hope that after a certain period of time she her community members will become close to her and offer help.
Click here for resources for wellness and recovery in the context of spirituality:
http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/visions/wellness-vol7/spirituality-a-resource-for-wellness-and-recovery
