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The Islamic Medicine Research Program

(IMRP):
Reflections and Proposals

…natural medicines made out of herbs and plants will always be the best
and slowly, very slowly, Europeans and Western societies are coming back
to the wisdom of using natural medicines. 1

1. Introduction

Islamic Medicine, at core, is like what can be called an Integrative Medical Conceptual
Framework (IMCF), or an Integrative Medical Principle (IMP), allowing it to
systemically identify, appropriate and incorporate into its own medical theory, therapeutic
framework and clinical practice, what is proven to be experientially and empirically
good in all medical systems, modern or ancient, without compromising its own vision
of what it means to be human and to be healthy. An important objective of this
Colloquium is to flesh out this conceptualization in further detail in a way that people
in the medical profession can find to be conceptually and empirically generative and
fruitful, for our re-engagement with our own 1,500 year medical tradition has to be
programmatic toward making it a living civilizational reality again. This means we are
not all interested in Islamic Medicine as a cultural curiousity out of a vague sense of
nostalgia for a past grandeur. Rather we are interested in Islamic Medicine as, to
paraphrase Fulder, “one of the most sophisticated medical systems known to man.

1
Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani al-Naqshabandi, Natural Medicines (London: TaHa, 1992), page facing
inside front cover.
The Islamic methods of treating the healthy to prevent sickness and of treating the
sick to reestablish their health, and its extraordinary skill in the use of subtle
therapeutic techniques are so precisely those needed by us at this time that they
must gradually alter the way we understand and practice medicine today.” 2
The Islamic Medicine Research Program (IMRP) envisioned along these lines
will lead to a revival of Islamic Medicine in the present context that can provide a
conceptually rich and yet practical medical alternative to modern, western medicine; in
effect a parallel medical paradigm or counter medical system that engages and
interacts closely with the modern system and yet remain autonomous and self-
sustaining, with a great potential to critically and proactively identify, appropriate and
integrate positive aspects of the modern system into its own holistic vision and
practice of preserving health and overall well-being, rather than focusing on “fighting”
any particular disease symptom or pathologic agent per se.
Research into Islamic Medicine is not only medical, empirical or clinical, but
also philosophical, historical and cross-cultural (e.g., as in ethnomedicine and
comparative medicine), for there is so much of time-tested traditional medical
methods, therapies, remedies and ideas that have been lost to our collective
intellectual and cultural memory due to systemic, reductionistic medical westernization,
and hence, for the Islamic Medicine Research Program (IMRP) to move forward,
historical and cross-cultural research is also important. This does not mean that all
doctors and medical academics and professionals have to do the actual arduous
textual and field research, but that all of them should be aware of such research as
has been, is being and shall be done, know how to access it and render it
accessible to other practitioners and to their students and patients, and to the lay
public in general. But at the very least, all medical colleges, faculties or departments
dedicated to the revival and enhancement of Islamic Medicine must each have a
center or unit devoted to research in the philosophical, historical, indigenous and
cross-cultural aspects of medicine, or at the very, very least in order to save costs
and conserve intellectual and academic resources, a number of independent colleges
can network together as partners to contribute to the setting up of a common

2
Stephen Fulder, The Tao of Medicine (Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1987). He was referring
to traditional Chinese medicine, but the import of his words are equally applicable to Islamic Medicine.
research center, which in turn can be linked to similar research centers and networks
in other countries.
Islamic Medicine is basically Natural or Fitrah Medicine (al-Tibb al-Fitri) which
is centred on a sophisticated philosophical, spiritual and empirical psychology of the
self-body dual nature of the human being, in which the physical body is seen as
serving the spiritual (or true) self, while critically drawing its medical content from the
ancient medical traditions of diverse cultures, Greek, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Arabian
and Chinese, as well as adding on these accumulated medical wisdom from the
medical traditions of the Prophet himself ( al-Tibb al-Nabawi), sallallahu ‘alayhi
wasallam, all within an overarching integrative conceptual framework, which is the
Worldview of Islam (ru’yat al-Islam lil-wujud). As Dr. Rehan Zaidi of Sunnipath
Academy puts it:
One commonality between the Eastern medical
traditions and Prophetic medicine is their concept of
holism, a view documented well over 1,000 years
ago explaining the value of the mind-body-spirit
connection—discussions modern science seriously
begun to explore only in the past 20 years. There
are also many other similarities the Prophet's
medicine has with the Eastern medical systems, such
as Chinese Medicine. Both these systems place
emphasis on procedures such as cupping, herbal
therapy, and dietary modification, with fundamental
reliance on prevention, balance, and non-physical
forces such as energy and prayer.3

This colloquium (or “speaking together”= muhadathah, mukalamah) draws on


this time-tested, cosmopolitan heritage and invites the relevant parties to revive it in
the context of a contemporary conceptual, rational and empirical Islamic Medicine
Research Program (IMRP), one major component of which is a systemic evidence-
based reinvestigation of the clinical practices, remedies and therapies documented in
the classical Islamic medical texts, including Tibb Nabawi texts, and another of which

3
Personal correspondence, February 2010.
is a systemic critical survey of contemporary medical approaches from East & West,
including indigenous ethnomedical textual and oral traditions which are found to be in
accord for the most part with Islamic medical philosophy and axiology, such as
naturopathy, homeopathy, kampo, ayurveda, acupuncture, chiqong,
food/dietary/nutritional therapy, sleep therapy, traditional Malay and Malay-Islamc
remedies and therapies, including even aspects of modern western secular allopathic
and technological approaches that can be critically integrated into the Islamic Medicine
conceptual and operational framework.

2. Why must we go back to tradition?

Verily in their (hi)stories is a lesson for people who reflect. 4

What has been said in the introduction above assumes that there is a big, systemic
problem in modern medicine, for if everything is all right for the most part with the
mainstream system, there shouldn’t be any need to look for alternatives, much less to
develop or re-develop counter-systems called by various names, natural medicine,
complimentary medicine, traditional medicine, alternative medicine, indigenous medicine
and the like---why go back to the past when the present is so good already and
the future even better ? The answer is simply that modern western medical bandwagon
is in a very bad shape, and the sooner we get of it the better it will be for our
physical and spiritual health. Moreover, this answer finds insider support from Dr.
Mahler, a former Director General of the World Health organization:

4
Surah Yusuf.
Most of the world’s medical schools prepare doctors,
not to take care of the health of the people, but
instead of a medical practice that is blind to anything
but disease and the technology for dealing with it; a
technology involving astronomical and ever-increasing
prices directed towards fewer and fewer people who
are often selected not so much by social class or
wealth as by medical technology itself, and frequently
focused on persons in the final stages of life….The
medical empire and its closely related aggressive
industry of diagnostic and therapeutic weapons
sometimes appear more of a threat than a
contribution to health….the very attempt to diagnose
and treat one ill may produce another, be it through
side effects or iatrogenesis….5

Hence another major component of the Islamic Medicine Research Program


(IMRP) is to demonstrate that there is indeed an examined basis to the assumption
of serious shortcomings in the mainstream modern western allopathic medical system.
At the very least such a demonstration will render modern medical education less
dogmatic and more self-critical and produces doctors who are also wise thinkers rather
than mere technicians beholden more to the financial health of the pharmaceutical
corporations than to the medical health of their patients. At the most, we can all
begin to realize that (i) there can be more than one way to tackle any particular
medical challenge, (ii) that medicine as a successful theoretical and empirical science
is something that predates the modern allopathic system by at least 5,000 years, that
(iii) modern western civilization does not have a monopoly on medical techniques and
wisdom, that (iv) older civilizations can still have much to offer in terms of
experientially grounded medical practice and sound medical philosophies and theories,
and hence that (v) therapeutic diversity is possible, desirable and realizable.
In short, this systemic rethinking of the modern allopathic paradigm will consist
of basically (i) a negative critique that exposes its mortal shortcomings, and (ii) a

5
Cited in Fulder, Tao of Medicine, 33.
positive critique that offers a counter paradigm or paradigms capable of generating
alternative and better therapeutic approaches that are capable of overcome each of
those shortcomings as well as enhancing overall wellbeing.

3. Natural Medicine in the Light of Some Current Rethinkings in Modern Medicine 6

Just as modern western secular agriculture grows toxic foodstuffs by poisoning the
earth, so similarly we find modern western medicine manufacturing (fabricating,
concocting) dangerous synthetic drugs derived through the drug “research” method of
torturing animals (e.g., vivisection) in order to poison the human body (e.g.,
chemotherapy) and still these chemically synthesized drugs are called medicine! 7
Vivisection (the very term means “to cut alive”) is the way modern,
business-driven medicine tortures live animals to test drugs in order to cure humanity
of their ever lengthening list of old and new diseases. 8 As a method of medical
research it is relatively new (a hundred or so years’ old) and peculiar to modern
western medical culture. Quite apart from the extrinsic question of ethics in respect
thereof, there is also a more fundamental intrinsic question, namely the question of
the scientific integrity (or cognitive value) of the underlying, largely unexamined
assumption of a significant degree of biological and physiological similarity between
laboratory test animals and human beings justifying extrapolations of clinical results
from one to the other. The IMRP for Muslim medical researchers in this regard will
be to find systemic alternatives of unquestioned scientific and ethical integrity to
vivisection, including valid alternatives critically sourced from presently marginalized

6
For an Islamic, Sufi point of view and some practical remedies, see Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani,
Natural Medicines (London: TaHa, 1992).
7
For some critiques, see Pietro Croce, Vivisection or Science: An Investigation into Testing Drugs and
Safeguarding Health (London: Zed Books); Ray Greek, Golden Goose and Sacred Cows; Stephen
Fulder, The Tao of Medicine: Oriental Remedies and the Pharmocology of Harmony (Rochester,
Vermont: Destiny Books, 1987).
8
Pietro Croce, Vivisection or Science: An Investigation into Testing Drugs and Safeguarding Health
(London: Zed Books, 1999), reviewed by Adi Setia in Islam & Science, vol. 3 no. 1 (Summer
2005), 87—90; cf. Moneim A. Fadali, Animal Experimentation: A Harvest of Shame (Los Angeles:
Hidden Springs Press, 1997), and Ray Greek, Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of
Experimenting on Animals (London: Continuum International, 2000). An informative, eye-opening
monograph on the the proper treatment of animals according to the traditional Islamic sources is, Al-
Hafiz B. A. Masri, Animals in Islam (Petersfield, Hants:Athene Trust, 1989).
western and eastern sources which could be incorporated into the IMRP. Some of
these alternatives can be gleaned by relooking into the well documented but largely
neglected vast medical corpus of the very successful one thousand years’ old Islamic
cosmopolitan medical tradition.9
In many ways, the modern age is the age of Violent Agriculture 10 and Violent
Medicine. In many ways Modernity is Violenity. As a matter of fact, the dangerous
drugs industry is closely intertwined with the toxic chemical industry. Take the infamous
drug thalidomide for instance which was chemically synthesized and then tested on life
mice (and systematically torturing them in the process of course), and then
pronounced safe for human consumption as sleeping pill for pregnant women which
then resulted in very many THOUSANDS of foetal deformities. Despite this well-
documented fact of systemic medico-commercial negligence, incompetence and
irresponsibility, the same basic method of drug research, regulation and marketing
continues to be perpetuated, resulting in the present problematic case of, say, the
drug Vioxx.11 Even aspirin, arguably the most common over-the-counter drug has its
own very problematic problems. For Muslim doctors and medical researchers who care
about the Islamic Medicine and Islamization of Medicine, it should be pertinent here
for them to note that the great Ibn Sina a thousand years ago has already proscribed
the practice of experimenting drugs meant for humans on animals. He says, “The
experimentation must be done with the human body, for testing a drug on a lion or a
horse might not prove anything about its effect on man.” 12 Both the scientific and
ethical crisis of modern medicine is well captured by Dr. Stephen Fulder when he
notes that:

The drugs we now use have been found to be generally


harmful and in many cases of questionable benefit. They

9
A good starting for delving into the operative context of the Islamic medical tradition is Fazlur
Rahman, Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition: Change and Identity (Chicago: Kazi
Publications, 1998); cf. Franz Rosenthal, Science and Medicine in Islam: A Collection of Essays
(Aldershot: Variorum, 1991).
10
Vandana Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution ; Manu L. Kothari and Lopa A. Metha, “Violence in
Modern Medicine,” in Ashis Nandy, ed., Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity
(Delhi: Oxford U. Press, 1990), 167—210.
11
Vioxx.
12
See the detailed Wikipedia article on him (“Avicenna”) with detailed documentation.
are tens of thousands of different drugs on the market
now, such a confusing plethora that the World Health
Organization recently prepared a model list of essential
drugs for Third World countries, and found that only 2 per
cent of the total of drugs sold were really necessary….A
recent Wall Street survey showed that less than 1 per cent
of the drugs which were currently on trial promised
important therapeutic gains….The doctors seem befuddled by
ever more pressure. ‘Doctors are pushed around and bullied
and bribed by the drug industry. They have undoubtedly
lost control of their own profession and must consequently
be held responsible for all the disasters and errors which
bad prescribing produces.13

The big question, in my view, in regard to all these medical problematics, is this:

If a medicinal remedy or drug is taken according to


the doctor’s instructions and yet causes debilitating
even life threatening side-effects, then can it truly be
of real therapeutic value? Can it even be called
medicine when the process of attacking the disease,
illness or pathogenic agent results in the eventual
destruction of the very body of the patient whose
health that medicine was supposed to safeguard in
the first place?14

To quote Dr. Fulder again:

The extent to which the health of man is


compromised by drugs is never fully appreciated. The
care of patients suffering from the harmful effects of

13
Fulder, Tao of Medicine, 35—36.
14
My formulation of the issue.
drugs is now put at around 3000 million dollars
annually in the United States alone. One study
calculated that some 15 per cent of old people are
admitted to hospital as a direct result of the
consumption of drugs. We hear of the most dramatic
cases such as thalidomide, the sleeping pill which
caused foetal deformities….Depression, for example,
is a form of drug side-effect produced by almost
every kind of drug known….Salicylic acid was one of
the first pure chemicals to be isolated and taken
medicinally. Now acetyl salicylic acid, or aspirin, is
the most widely used drug in the world. Fifteen
thousand million tablets were consumed in 1976 in
the United States. Yet evidence is only now
emerging of gastric damage and possible infertility as
a result of aspirin use. Pregnant women taking
aspirin may have smaller babies, more complications
and stillbirths, and their babies’ health may be
affected. In many cases, drug side-effects only
appear after years of use and what was once an
ultra-safe drugs turn into a gradually damaging one. 15

Mind you, Dr. Fulder was writing this over almost 30 years ago but anyone
who follows the issue will know that the situation has only become worse. But then
one might say that Dr. Fulder is writing from the perspective of one already somewhat
disillusioned with modern western medicine and biased toward what he calls “the
pharmacology of harmony” he found in traditional Chinese medicine. However, such an
evaluation cannot be applied to the case of Dr. Eugene D. Robin, a thoroughly
mainstream physician and medical scientist, who penned an “eye-opening” critical
analysis of the mainstream medical system and deplored its tendency toward “making
patients out of normal human beings.” His appendix on “Recommendations for

15
Fulder, Tao of Medicine, 36—37. For more on the serious side-effects of modern chemosynthetic
drugs, see
Changing the Medical Systems” is still worth studying, though while he advocated
reform from within the mainstream medical box, we would say that the real reform
and solution lies in reviving and enhancing the natural medicine box in order to work
within it and thereby allowing us to escape from the intellectual and cultural pathology
of a “medicine in a Cul-de-sac.”16
As a result of these and other acute problems with modern medicine (e.g.,
prohibitive expense due to over commercialization and a research culture pulled by the
short term profit factor rather than long term public interest, etc.), there is a robustly
growing movement in both the West and the East back to various forms of traditional
and contemporary natural medical and pharmachological system such as herbalism, 17
homeopathy, naturopathy, ayurveda, acupuncture, chiqong, Islamic Unani medicine
(Avicennan medicine),18 traditional Malay-Islamic medicine, 19 indigenous Orang Asli
medicine, Japanese kampo medicine, and so on and so forth, many of which can be
systematically and critically integrated into a contemporary revival of Islamic Medicine,
based on a critical evidence-based (rather than profit-based) research framework.
This would be a central aspect of Islamization of Medicine in practice, and to achieve
this we need to formulate in detail a comprehensive IMRP (Islamic Medicine Research
Program) and to found medical research institutes, centres, universities and colleges
to implement it in the general, long term public interest and not narrow short term
commercial interest.

4. Toward a Market Welfare Economic and Business Model for Natural Medicine

16
Fulder, Tao of Medicine, 30—52.
17
Eg., Ross Trattler, Better Health through Natural Healing: How to Get Well without Drugs or Surgery
(Hinkler, 2001);
18
Mohd. Hilmi b. Abdullah, Teori-Teori Asas Perubatan Ibnu Sina (Kota Baru: Pustaka Hilmi, 2005);
idem, Rawatan Umum dalam Perubatan Ibnu Sina (Kota Baru: Pustaka Hilmi, 2007);
19
Roland Werner, Royal Healer: The Legacy of Nik Abdul Rahman bin Hj. Nik Dir of Kelantan (Kuala
Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 2002); idem, Medicines in Malay Villages (Kuala Lumpur:
University of Malaya Press, 2002); Musa Nordin, The Forgotten Jungle Medicine of Taman Negara
Pahang (Penang: Malaysian Phamarceutical Society, 2007); Anisah Barakbah, Ensiklopedia Perbidanan
Melayu (Kuala Lumpur: Utusan, 2007); Harun Mat Piah, Kitab Tib, Ilmu Perubatan Melayu (Kuala
Lumpur: Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia, 2006); Ab. Razak Ab. Karim, Analisis Bahasa dalam Kitab
Tib Potianak (Kuala Lumpur: DBP, 2006); Noraida Arifin, Penyembuhan Semula Jadi dengan Herba
(Kuala Lumpur: PTS, 2007).
The underlying ethos of natural medicine is one of public service rather than private
profit, and hence thinkers and practitioners of natural medicine will also have to
consider an alternative business or economic model (other than the current neoliberal
capitalist model) for reviving, enhancing and sustaining it over the long term. The
focus is more on individual and social wellbeing rather than strictly financial or
monetary returns to a private “health” corporation bottom line. The alternative
economic model I propose here is what can be called the Islamic gift economy
(iqtisad infaqi) model or Islamic market welfare model, which in the history of Islamic
Civilization was systemically realized in the august institution of waqf (private charitable
endowments in the public interest). Perhaps on another occasion we may have an
opportunity to flesh out in some detail the application of the gift economy model or
market welfare model for financing natural medicine education, research and practice in
the public interest.

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