Prayer and Healing in Islam

In Islam, as well as in other faiths, prayers are a great means of support and hope in the face of afflictions. In the past, all medical practitioners used to have the inscription: Huwa al-Shafi, in Arabic script on their prescriptions. This practice can still be found in some Muslim countries where some doctors also write: ‘to diagnose as best as is my duty and to suggest the best medicine but the cure is in the hands of God.’ There are many authentic traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) which emphasize praying for the sick by those who visit them and also prayers which the sick themselves can say on a regular basis.

In the book under review, the author who teaches at the department of Religion and Theology at Monash University, Australia, has compiled the 25 remedies for the sick prescribed by the famous spiritual leader of Turkey Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, one of which I feel is the most important one:

You, who are unhappy in your sickness, persevere instead. Your illness is not a loss for you, but a gain, a sort of cure. For life departs like capital. If it yields no fruits, it is wasted. And if it passes in ease and heedlessness, it is short; bringing almost no profit. Illness makes that capital of yours yield huge profits. Moreover, it prevents your life from being short, it holds it back, lengthening or expanding it, so that it may depart after yielding its fruits. Indicating the fact that life lengthens through illness, this proverb is much renowned and widely circulated: “The time of disaster is very long, the time of enjoyment very short.