I read a post by my dear brother Mazen Atassi, a naturopathic doctor in the US, addressing the place of Vitalism in Islam. He took issue with my characterization of Vitalism as a repackaging of pantheism and paganism in Islamic medicine. Although he and I disagree on some fundamental issues, we agree on an essential point: we both care very deeply about the physical and spiritual well-being of the Muslim community. I recognize that what he offers resonates at a deep level with many people who may find what I’ve written on this subject unsettling. It’s for the sake of those people that I’m glad he has a platform and an opportunity to share his perspective on this issue. What I’ve written is not accusing him of consciously repackaging pantheism and paganism, nor should it be used to participate in ill-conceived cancel culture practises. I’ve directed and will continue to direct people his way if I think he can help them given his focus on trauma and psychosomatic treatment.
Let’s start with what Atassi and I agree on. As Muslims, we all believe in the Unseen. We all believe in the Rūḥ. We all believe that there’s more to everything we do than merely the material dimension. These are not points of contention between Muslims practising in mainstream medicine and those in alternative medicine. A conscientious Muslim treads upon the earth with an awareness that their actions have a duality to their impact and consequences; one in this world, and one in the next. The Quran refers to every Muslim as a caliph on this Earth, and we are informed that our actions impact our environment and people:
ظَهَرَ ٱلۡفَسَادُ فِي ٱلۡبَرِّ وَٱلۡبَحۡرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتۡ أَيۡدِي ٱلنَّاسِ لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعۡضَ ٱلَّذِي عَمِلُواْ لَعَلَّهُمۡ يَرۡجِعُونَ
“Corruption has spread on land and sea as a result of what people’s hands have done, so that Allah may cause them to taste ˹the consequences of˺ some of their deeds and perhaps they might return [to the Right Path].” [Quran 30:41]
Crucially, we also agree that we need to treat the whole person. We agree that there’s more to health than the specific medical intervention being used to address an acute or chronic ailment. We agree that we are what we eat. We agree that not enough education on nutrition and gut health is delivered in medical schools or adequately discussed by doctors with their patients as a preventative or curative measure to many diseases, including psychiatric ones before we reach for the scripts. We agree that iatrogenic harm and polypharmacy are problems that need to be addressed and not enough is being done to address them. There’s plenty on which we agree.
The contention I do have though remains unaddressed. It’s very specific and has to do with the metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological claims advanced by Atassi and other Muslims foraying in the alternative medicine space without careful consideration of them. I have concerns with Atassi’s framing of certain concepts, such as the Vital Force, which are derived from historically pre-Islamic sources that are indisputably pagan and pantheistic philosophies, as “Islamic” and using language that takes on their metaphysics, and then in turn reading them back into statements by the Companions of the Beloved ﷺ as if they were speaking about the same thing.
In his post, Atassi presented Vitalism as a competing paradigm against Materialism. I found his framing of Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” peculiar. The argument he put forth was that Vitalism is a competing paradigm with its own assumptions and criteria, and therefore the appeal to evidence coming from experiments and randomized control trials is not appropriate because it takes the discussion to a level below where we need to be. To quote Atassi’s interpretation of Kuhn:
“One of the great insights of the philosopher Thomas Kuhn, explored in his seminal work ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, captures this reality when he says, “The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs.” What he is saying is that at this level of discourse, ‘evidence’, like what is commonly invoked by allopathic-minded people when trying to delegitimize their vitalistic counterparts by demanding biochemical mechanisms of action and double-blind placebo-controlled studies of mechanistic evidence as proofs, is false and improper. It is improper because the very models by which these ‘evidences’ hold meaning are what are being challenged in the first place.”
Atassi seems to miss the point of Kuhn’s observation. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is an anthropological as much as it is a philosophical work. Kuhn brings a magnifying glass to an aspect of scientific change and progress that’s often missed, if not outright dismissed, by ideological materialists, which is that scientists are human beings working in groups and institutions. With that comes the reality of peer pressure, groupthink, and the political power of institutions that give weight to some theories over others. Contrary to the overly simplified view of scientific progress as an accumulative process where scientists are acting like disembodied automatons gathering facts then neatly assimilating them into existing models, the situation is a lot messier. First, which facts one gathers are based on the questions they ask, which are generated from the theoretical constructs they work within. How these questions are answered depends on the available technological tools and experimental designs at their disposal. This is what Kuhn was referring to when he highlighted that scientific data are “theory-laden”. Second, measurement is always fraught with uncertainty, with an annoying margin of error that reminds us we should never speak in absolutes. Third, and this is the crux of Kuhn’s argument that Atassi seems to not fully appreciate, there are always *empirically verified and repeatable* observations that do *not* fit neatly into the dominant paradigm seeking to explain a phenomenon. It’s based on those observations that other theories are proposed as “better” explanations. The theory that better explains *most* of what’s observed and is best *predictive* of what can be observed in certain conditions becomes dominant over time. However, given the powerful social and institutional politics in which science operates, rational discourse is a necessary but not sufficient condition for paradigm shifts, which on the whole happen with generational shifts. Max Planck stated it best in his “Scientific Autobiography and Other Essays”:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
What needs to be emphasized here is that a competing paradigm does not ascend on the basis of rhetoric. It has to show an empirically demonstrable and repeatable ability to explain the phenomena it addresses better than the paradigm it’s challenging, and be measurably predictive to a reasonably successful degree such that regardless of one’s feelings or metaphysical beliefs about it, its impact can’t be denied or explained away with hand waves and armchair philosophy. Hence, Atassi’s use of Kuhn to dismiss the requirement for evidence because we need to first deal with the philosophical and ideological differences between the Vitalistic and mainstream medical paradigms is false and improper. More than that, it’s a distraction and an attempt to absolve himself from directly dealing with the empirical evidence that does not support some alternative medicine concepts he espouses, including homeopathy and host theory of disease. He seems to adopt a type of relativist postmodernism that dismisses objective criteria to evaluate claims because for him what constitutes evidence is completely beholden to the paradigm and all one has to do is reject the paradigm in order for them not to be subjected to the scrutiny of verification. Paradoxically, while rejecting empirical verification of his claims because he rejects the mainstream paradigm, he will at the same time claim his conclusions from within Vitalism’s paradigm are empirically sound and generalizable because they represent reality as such. It’s a case of him wanting to have his cake and eat it too. In my post “Repackaging Pantheism”, I set forth simple criteria that he is yet to contend with:
“…when it comes to the practitioners of alternative medicine who wish to market themselves as practitioners of “Islamic” medicine, it comes down to addressing a simple point: things that exist are either material or immaterial. If they’re material, they must be measurable and objectively verifiable. If they’re immaterial but have a material impact, two conditions must be fulfilled for us to accept their adoption within an Islamic metaphysics of medicine:
1. They’re of the Unseen. Hence, you must produce clear evidence from the Quran and Sunnah for their existence and support for what you’re doing with them in your medical practice. Otherwise, you’re speaking about that which you have no knowledge of
2. If their impact is measurable despite their nature being immaterial and not directly measured, we should be able to empirically verify the impact you claim they have on one’s health outcomes”
Regardless of the explanation Samuel Hahnemann gave for homeopathy or how he came up with the concept in the first place, Atassi has to show us with empirical evidence beyond his subjective assessment of his anecdotal experience that homeopathy works. He has to show us empirically that host theory of disease explains the observations we see in patients better than germ theory does. He has to give us a step-by-step explanation for how he’s working *with* the Vital Force to bring about healing, and to do so with enough detail that allows an independent person without a vested interest in the outcome being supportive of him to attempt and replicate his work, using Atassi’s individualized approach, and to verify the truth value of what he’s claiming. And given that he has redefined the Vital Force in his post as an English term he uses for the Rūḥ, and that the Rūḥ is from the Command of our Lord about which we have been given little knowledge and as far as I’m aware no scholar has dared to say anything other than what Allah ﷻ and the Beloved ﷺ is authentically reported to have said about it, he has to provide us with primary evidence from the Quran and Sunnah supporting his claims that by what he does in his *medical* practice he’s indeed working with the Rūḥ and not against it. A couple of quotes from non-medical authorities and a statement attributed to Alī ibn Abī Tālib are not sufficient.
This brings me to an issue with his citation of Imam al-Ghazālī’s book 21 from the Ihya, “The Marvels of the Heart”. Atassi quotes from the section giving one of the definitions of the Rūḥ but omits a crucial part that I think needed to be included. The relevant section he quoted in his post is the following:
والأطباء إذا أطلقوا لفظ الروح أرادوا به هذا المعنى، وهو بخار لطيف أنضجته حرارة القلب، وليس شرحه من غرضنا، إذا المتعلق له غرض الأطباء الذين يعالجون الأبدان، فأما غرض أطباء الدين المعالجين للقلب حتى ينساق إلى جوار رب العالمين، فليس متعلق بشرح هذه الروح أصلاً
This is the portion Atassi selected from the translation by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad:
“Whenever physicians use the term ‘spirit’ they have in mind this meaning, which is a subtle vapor produced by the heat of the heart… the purpose of physicians of religion who treat the heart that it may be led to the Lord of the worlds has no connection at all with the explanation of this ‘spirit’.”
The full translation of the Arabic without omissions in the English is the following (I’ve included the missing part from Atassi’s quotation in brackets to emphasize it):
“Whenever physicians use the term ‘spirit’ they have in mind this meaning, which is a subtle vapor produced by the heat of the heart. [It is not our purpose to explain the usage of the term since its connections are within the scope of physicians who treat the body] the purpose of physicians of religion who treat the heart that it may be led to the Lord of the worlds has no connection at all with the explanation of this ‘spirit’.”
It’s not clear to me why Atassi omitted the intervening sentence. I think it’s quite a relevant part from the text. In that section, Imam al-Ghazālī is making a distinction between the material and immaterial, relegating the treatment of the material and explanation of how it functions to the relevant experts of that area. It’s therefore inappropriate to cite him as a source of authority to support the appeal to an immaterial force in order for one to dismiss the requirement for empirical verification of their claims about what works in medical treatment and what doesn’t. Moreover, the citation of the Imam al-Ghazālī distracts us from the more important question about the source of the doctrine of Vital Force. In that section of the Ihya, the Imam explores various definitions used by different groups of people and what they refer to in their respective uses. Not only does Atassi not expound on the history of Vitalism as a doctrine and what the non-Muslims who articulated it first were intending by it, he’s yet to provide us with a primary reference in the Quran or Sunnah to justify *his* particular use of the term as he redefined it in the context of medical practice and *his* requirement that it be marshalled into the clinic and used as a means to explain away the lack of empirical evidence for something like homeopathy. Once again, Atassi is talking about an immaterial force within the realm of the Unseen playing an essential role in medical treatment. It’s not only reasonable, but in fact a theological imperative that he provides support for his position from the Quran and mutawātir Hadith if he’s going to propose that this is an imperative belief for a Muslim doctor to uphold.
This discussion brought to my mind Malik Bennabi, the Twentieth Century Algerian philosopher and social commentator who is arguably the ibn Khaldūn of our era. I’ll conclude my reflections on Atassi’s post with the following three selections from Bennabi’s Series on Civilization without additional commentary on my part. I think they’re clear enough:
Bennabi wrote in his book “The Conditions for Renaissance”:
من المعروف أن القرآن الكريم قد أطلق اسم الجاهلية على الفترة التي كانت قبل الإسلام، ولم يشفع لهم شعر رائع، وأدب فذ، من أن يصفهم القرآن بهذا الوصف، لأن التراث الثقافي العربي لم يكن يحوي سوى الديباجة المشرقة، الخالية من كل عنصر ((خلاق)) أو فكر عميق. وإذا كانت الوثنية في نظر الإسلام جاهلية، فإن الجهل في حقيقته وثنية، لأنه يغرس أفكاراً، بل ينصب أصناماً، وهذا هو شأن الجاهلية، فلم يكن من باب الصدفة المحضة أن تكون الشعوب البدائية وثنية ساذجة، ولم يكن عجيباً أيضاً أن مر الشعب العربي بتلك المرحلة، حين شيّد معبداً للأقطاب (الدراويش) المتصرفين في الكون، ومن سنن الله في خلقه أنه عندما تغرب الفكرة يبزغ الصنم، والعكس صحيح أحياناً.
It is known that the Noble Quran gave the term Ignorance to the period before Islam. It did not help them having amazing poetry or unequalled literature from the Quran describing them with that description because the Arab cultural relics contained nothing other than a bright prologue, devoid of every ((creative)) element or deep thought. And if idolatry in the vision of Islam is Ignorance, then ignorance in its reality an idolatry because it implants ideas or, rather, idols. This is the affair of Ignorance. It was not sheer coincidence that primitive societies were naïve paganists, and it was not strange either that the Arab society passed through that stage when it erected a temple for the Mountains (the dervishes) controlling the universe. It is from the patterns of Allah in His creation that when thinking is sundowned the idol rises, and the opposite is true sometimes.
In Bennabi’s “The Problem of Culture” he wrote:
إننا نرى في حياتنا اليومية جانبا كبيرا من (اللافاعلية) في أعمالنا، إذ يذهب جزء كبير منها في العبث وفي المحاولات الهازلة.
What we see in our daily lives is a great deal of (inefficacy) in our work, where a great deal of it is wasted in frivolity and futile attempts.
إن الذي ينقص المسلم ليس منطق الفكرة ولكن منطق العمل والحركة، وهو لا يفكر ليعمل بل ليقول كلاما مجردا، بل إنه أكثر من ذلك يبغض أولئك الذين يفكرون تفكيرا مؤثرا، ويقولون كلاما منطقيا من شأنه أن يتحول إلى عمل ونشاط.
What the Muslim lacks is not the logic of the idea, but the logic of work and action. He does not think to act, but to say mere talk. Even more than that, he hates those who think effective thoughts, and who speak logical statements that can be turned into work and activity.
In “The Problem of Ideas in the Muslim World”, Bennabi related an interesting scene he witnessed in a lecture hall during a pharmacology class:
ولابد في النهاية أن نذكر في هذا الفصل نوعا آخر من الطغيان: طغيان الأفكار – إنه مرض نخبة المجتمع…في البلاد المتخلفة: فإنه ليس العجز عن التكيف وعدم الارتباط بعالم الأفكار المخذولة الذي يأخذ أشكال الطغيان، بل إنه عدم التكيف نفسه. إنها الأفكار المكتسبة عبر الكتب التي تولد الطغيان في مواقف تكون أحيانا (كاريكاتورية)، ففي إحدى المحاضرات عن تركيب الأدوية أجهد الأستاذ نفسه في وصف إحدى النباتات. وبدلا من أن يمد يده ويقطفها من فناء الكلية ليقدمها إلى طلابه، كان يبحث عن شكلها في الكتاب أثناء محاضرته، بينما هي تحت نافذة قاعة التدريس.
Ultimately, we must mention in this section another type of transgression: the transgression of ideas – it is the disease of the elite in society…in regressive societies: it is not the inability to adapt and become attached to the realm of abandoned ideas that takes forms of transgression, but the inadaptability itself. It is the ideas that are gained through books that give birth to the transgressions in situations that are sometimes (comical). In one of the lectures about the make up of drugs, the instructor exhausted himself in describing one of the plants. Instead of extending his hand and picking it from the courtyard of the college to present it to his students, he was looking for its picture in the book during his lecture. Meanwhile, it was below the window outside the lecture hall.
Finally, I wanted to add something as a personal note to all of you reading this. Imam ash-Shāfi’ī said in a famous statement of his:
قولي صواب يحتمل الخطأ، وقول غيري خطأ يحتمل الصواب
“My statement is correct but it’s possible to be wrong, and the statement of the other is wrong but it’s possible to be right.”
This attitude is an important one to have. Never become too attached to what you conclude about a matter because the fact is your knowledge is limited, your experience is limited, your memory is flawed, and you have cognitive and emotional biases that may cloud your judgment. It’s for these reasons we *need* objective criteria by which we decide Truth from falsehoods.
My belief is that Atassi can still be of service by focusing on the practical impact of his treatments without framing them as “Islamic” or the *only* way a Muslim can validly practice medicine. I don’t think it’s helpful for him to brand his work in the realm of medicine and medical treatment in religious terminology. He asks us to study the history of medicine without biases or internal resistance, but I wonder if he’s taking his own advice given what appears to me to be his perennialist reading of it and the relativist attitude he seems to have adopted regarding facts as shown by his dismissal of material evidence against his empirically testable claims and skewed reading of Kuhn to fit his perspective. Indeed, when the facts are overwhelming and can’t be rationalized away, the easier thing to do is to dismiss them.
Where I do think Atassi can speak of an Islamic practice is in the realm of psychology and mental health. Modern psychology is an area where materialist philosophy denies the Fiṭra, reduces the human being into a sophisticated animal driven purely by carnal urges and material pursuits, and operates within a myopic paradigm that we should challenge. As Muslims, we should be supportive of the work being done in Islamic psychology by organizations like Khalil Center and Cambridge Muslim College. Interestingly, in this area we can point to primary evidence from the Quran and Sunnah, as well as a rich history of Muslim scholars writing in this area specifically, and we can apply empirical methods to materially demonstrate the validity of our claims.
إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ خُلِقَ هَلُوعًا
إِذَا مَسَّهُ ٱلشَّرُّ جَزُوعًا
وَإِذَا مَسَّهُ ٱلْخَيْرُ مَنُوعًا
إِلَّا ٱلْمُصَلِّينَ
ٱلَّذِينَ هُمْ عَلَىٰ صَلَاتِهِمْ دَآئِمُونَ
Indeed, humankind was created anxious:
distressed when touched with evil,
and withholding when touched with good—
except those who pray,
consistently performing their prayers [Quran 70:19:23]
سَنُرِيهِمْ ءَايَـٰتِنَا فِى ٱلْـَٔافَاقِ وَفِىٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمْ أَنَّهُ ٱلْحَقُّ ۗ أَوَلَمْ يَكْفِ بِرَبِّكَ أَنَّهُۥ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ شَهِيدٌ
We will show them Our signs in the universe and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that this ˹Quran˺ is the truth. Is it not enough that your Lord is a Witness over all things? [Quran 41:53]
As for myself, I do have a bias and a resistance when it comes to anything being claimed as “Islamic”. It’s that I need to know the origins of claims, especially those of the metaphysical variety, and I will not accept those not directly supported by the Quran and Sunnah.
May Allah ﷻ grant us wisdom and discernment to recognize Truth as Truth, and bless us to follow it, and recognize falsehood as falsehood, and bless us to avoid it.
