A Handbook of Spiritual Medicine

Author: Ibn Daud
Publisher: Ibn Daud Books
Pages: 278
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-83804-921-8

About the Book:
Spiritual wellbeing is paramount. Just as you seek the best medical treatment to avoid illnesses and improve your physical health and wellbeing, whether that be paracetamol to treat a mere headache or something more substantial like chemotherapy to treat cancer, your soul can also suffer from spiritual illnesses such as ghadab (anger),  riya (showing off), takabbur (pride and arrogance), hasad (envy), lack of shukr (ingratitude), hubb al-jah (love of fame), hubb al-mal (love of wealth), and the like.
Spiritual health is fundamentally different however, and in some respects more important. Why is this? The detrimental consequences of a physical illness will come to an end upon death; whereas, the evil result of a spiritual illness will begin upon death, and will last for eternity.

• 26 DISEASES & THEIR DEFINITIONS
  Defining a disease at the start of each chapter helps the reader understand and recognize its characteristics

• 250+ SIGNS & SYMPTOMS
  Highlighting how signs and symptoms of a spiritual disease manage to creep up on a person

• TREE DIAGRAM
  An easy to reference contents page so that you can see at a glance the signs and symptoms, remedies and exceptions associated with each disease of the heart

• TRAFFIC LIGHT APPROACH
  An easy to reference Red-Amber-Green system makes it easy to identify maladies of the heart (red), potential remedies (green), and possible exceptions (amber) across each disease

• SOCIAL MEDIA
  The real and potential negative impact that social media has on our spiritual growth, compared with ways that its influence can be harnessed for benefit

• 7 STEP CYCLE OF SELF-PURIFICATION
  A detailed explanation of each step of the continual cycle of self-improvement, so that you can create your own personalised programme to improve your spiritual health

• TABULAR DESIGN
  Presenting spiritual information in a clear and structured format that makes it easy to reference, understand and therefore implement

• 500+ ACADEMIC & PRACTICAL REMEDIES
  Apply the ‘academic’ or conceptual remedies, in terms of better understanding your faith and refining your perspective, and begin to turn things around by putting practical day-to-day actions in place

• 1000+ REFERENCES
  References have been fully verified by qualified scholars using ‘The Clear Qur’ān’ translation and authentic Prophetic narrations, alongside beneficial advice from the most famous works of Imām Al-Ghazālī (RA)

About the Author:
Being a British-born Muslim, I have been a seeker of faith from my adolescent years. The son of Pakistani immigrants, my upbringing came from steadfast parents who led by example. We had no access to an Islamic school growing up in the seventies and eighties in Britain. We were blessed that we learnt the practice of faith through their actions. Their generosity of heart, compassion for those less fortunate, and raising us to be confident in our Muslim identity served as the backdrop to our upbringing.

Once I left home to attend university, the negotiation of my identity as a person of faith with the distractions of youth in the new surroundings was sometimes challenging, but I got through the four-year minefield with the help of a book called, “Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart” by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson. It was this text that was the inspiration, in my mind, to one day create a ‘guidebook’ of sorts that would focus on self-purification. I thought to myself that it would be practical to have a pocket book that addressed the maladies of the human spiritual condition and offered up the remedies too. This idea lay dormant for a decade or more as life rolled surely along, and I adapted to professional life as an IT consultant, deciding to marry and settle down.

In my forties and a family man, there came a more ardent desire to create a handbook that would help people overcome the boundaries to living their best. But it had to be something accessible, easy to pick up during our busy lives in this modern, high-tech era. I needed to address the struggles and insecurities we all face and offer the antidotes to those ailments, using evidence from the Qurān and authentic ahādīth (Prophetic sayings). The result was a spiritual guide to the self, a handbook of tazkiyah, or self- purification that will, I hope, prove accessible to people of all ages and denominations. Not being a scholar or a professional writer, the journey of self-publishing was an enlightening one and I’m indebted to the kind people who guided me along the way. Who knows, I may even continue the journey with a sequel one day, Lord willing.

-Ibn Daud (Jamal Parekh)