Health And Well-being In Islamic Societies : Background, Research, And Applications

The central question asked in this book is whether religious involvement is related
to better health in Muslims. We seek to examine and understand the relationships
between Islam and health from a historical, theological, and scientifi c perspective,
based in part on what we know about religion and health in Christian populations.
There are many books that compare Christianity and Islam in various ways, although
few provide a balanced evenhanded approach that we seek to do here. There is usu-
ally an unspoken agenda by the authors that favors one religion over the other. To
our knowledge, no attempt has yet been made to understand the important contribu-
tions that Muslim beliefs and practices make to health and well-being in Islamic
societies, or explain why and how such infl uences occur. We—a Christian (or fol-
lower of Jesus) and a Muslim (or follower of the Prophet Muhammad)—seek to do
this by directly examining the fi ndings from research on religion and health in
Muslim populations, and comparing the results to those from a much larger research
literature in Christian populations. We take particular care in documenting the infor-
mation presented here with citations from original sources, i.e., reputable English
translations of the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Bible, and writings of recognized
religious and health experts familiar with these sources. When discussing the
research, we focus on original quantitative research reports published in mainstream
peer-reviewed health journals. Our goal is to objectively present the beliefs and
practices of these two great monotheistic religions and determine their relationships
with health, while showing the utmost respect for both traditions.

Source: Abstract