So the marriage has broken up, and you’re feeling down.  Or you’re into a lot of self-defeating behavior. Or, or…. In any case, some kind of counseling seems to be in order.  If you are a Muslim, does that have any implications for the sort of help you should get?  David Hodge and Aneesah Nadir think that it might.  They tell why and how in an article in the January issue of the journal Social Work.  My copy just arrived, having been lost in the mail and sent to a wrong address.

Hodge has made a name for himself in social work circles by addressing how, in his view, social workers are failing to accept the religious perspectives of people who are on the conservative end of the theological continuum.  They both teach at Arizona State University.  Nadir is president of the Islamic Social Services Association.

In looking at how to accommodate Muslims in a counseling relationship, the two social workers are careful to note that Muslims are not all the same.  They come from very different cultures and the salience of Muslim culture and religion varies, just as these things vary for people of other religions. Let me give an example.

I attended a dinner meeting of the Canadian Islamic Congress, and before dinner was served most of the men retreated to another room to perform one of the five daily prayers.  My tablemate remained seated with me.  “I’m secular,” he explained.  In any case, the focus in the Social Work article is on people who more closely identify with Islam.

The authors say that psychoanalytic approaches are not apt to be recommended, as Muslims tend not to be so individualistic as we Westerners are and hence less inward-looking.  So what of group therapy?  Here also there are problems, especially in the presence of others of the opposite sex, where sharing intricate matters may be extremely awkward.  To make group therapy more useful, the authors cite writers who speak of Muslim-only single-sex groups. 

When individual or family therapy is the mode of treatment, they suggest that it is often helpful to include members of the extended family.  But the approaches that the authors find most generally promising are strength-based treatment and cognitive therapy.  In strength-based treatment the focus is on the here-and-now.  It looks at what there is in the present situation and in what the person has to offer to deal with the problem. The authors give most of their attention to another modality, cognitive therapy in its various forms. 

Cognitive therapy is, in their words, “based on reason, logical discussion, and education in a consultative manner” and involves helping the client “to identify irrational beliefs or disordered thinking that underlies unproductive behaviors” and then replacing them appropriately.  The professors suggest a cognitive approach that uses an Islamicized version of propositions.  To illustrate, let’s take a proposition in secular form and then again modified.  Here goes.

Secular: Because I often make myself undisciplined and self-defeating by demanding that I absolutely must have immediate gratifications, I can’t give up my short-range “needs” — look for the pleasure of today and tomorrow — and seek life satisfactions in a disciplined way.

Islamicized: Allah gave us free will, including the ability to control our nafs (self).  In addition, Allah has also given us many opportunities to practice self-control through fasting during Ramadan and weekly sunna fasting on Mondays and Thursdays.  These are ways, with the help of Allah, we can enhance our self-discipline and change for the better.

Hodge and Nadir cite studies claiming a measure of success in using modified propositions with Muslim and other different religious perspectives.