Healing from the Quran and Sunnah (part 3) – the holistic approach, ruqya, fasting and moderation

BySaania Bhatti

 

Hospitals – bimaristans

There is another concept which is not directly tibb al-Nabawi, but I think it follows very naturally from this idea of holistic healing, and that is the bimaristan.

Dr Rania Awaad has done a great deal of work recovering the history of these institutions. Bimaristans were hospitals in the Muslim world where physical and mental illnesses could be cared for within the same institution. Some had dedicated provision for people experiencing mental illness, and historical descriptions tell us of environments which made use of light, fresh air, running water and, in some settings, music.

I find that fascinating because the environment itself was seen as part of healing. The surroundings mattered – dignity mattered. Anyone who has spent time in a modern hospital will understand why that interests me. You can be ill, frightened and vulnerable, and then find yourself in a ward where you cannot sleep, the lights are on, alarms are going off, there is very little privacy and you have lost most control over your normal life. Of course, our hospitals provide extraordinary medical care, and I work in the NHS myself, but I think there is something we can learn from the idea that the place in which somebody is treated can either contribute to their sense of wellbeing or make an already difficult experience harder.

Spiritual healing

That brings me back to the spiritual aspect of healing, beginning with Allah as al-Shafi, the Healer.

Everything we have talked about so far is a means. The doctor is a means. The tablet is a means. The therapist, counsellor, operation, diet, acupuncture or other treatment is a means. None of those things possesses healing independently.

The Prophet ﷺ used to make this dua when treating someone who was ill:

أَذْهِبِ الْبَاسَ رَبَّ النَّاسِ، اشْفِ وَأَنْتَ الشَّافِي، لَا شِفَاءَ إِلَّا شِفَاؤُكَ، شِفَاءً لَا يُغَادِرُ سَقَمًا

“Remove the harm, Lord of mankind, and heal, for You are the Healer. There is no healing except Your healing, a healing that leaves no illness behind.”
(Sahih al-Bukhari)

I love this dua because it puts everything back in its proper place. You can take the medicine and see the doctor, but you know Who you are actually asking for the healing.

We will come on to ruqya in more detail, but spiritual healing also includes dhikr, the remembrance of Allah. Allah says:

الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَتَطْمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ ۗ أَلَا بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ

“Those who believe and whose hearts find rest in the remembrance of Allah. Surely, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest.”
(Surah al-Rad, 13:28)

I find dhikr particularly interesting from a medical point of view because so much attention is now being given to mindfulness, meditation and the effect of sustained attention on our mental state. I do not think we need to reduce dhikr to a Muslim version of secular meditation, because it is much more than that. Dhikr has an object: we are remembering Allah. But there is something very relevant here about attention.

Our deen teaches us to live with an awareness of Allah. That is part of taqwa: being conscious of Him in what we do, what we avoid and how we behave. Yet most of us now live in an environment specifically designed to fragment our attention. Our phones flash. Messages arrive. Emails appear. Something is always asking us to look somewhere else. We have become very bad at simply being present.

Dhikr brings the attention back. It interrupts that constant scattering of the mind and brings us back to Allah. There is emerging research looking at Quran recitation and Muslim prayer in relation to anxiety, heart rate and patterns of brain activity associated with relaxation. Some studies have reported interesting findings, but we do not actually need neuroscience to prove that dhikr has value. Allah has already told us that hearts find rest in His remembrance. If science helps us to understand some of what may be happening physiologically, that is interesting, but it is not the foundation of our belief in it.

The same applies to the Quran as a source of healing. There are studies on how Quran recitation changes the molecular structure of water or particular surahs having specific measurable effects on particular psychiatric illnesses. There is also some research into the effects of listening to Quran recitation on anxiety, pain and physiological measures. Allah describes the Quran as shifa.

Surah al-Fatiha in particular has a very clear connection with healing and ruqya. In a famous hadith, one of the Companions recited al-Fatiha over the chief of a tribe who had been bitten or stung, and the man recovered. When they later told the Prophet ﷺ what had happened, he smiled and said:

وَمَا أَدْرَاكَ أَنَّهَا رُقْيَةٌ؟

“How did you know that it is a ruqya?”
(Sahih al-Bukhari)

This is why al-Fatiha has such a strong association with healing in the Islamic tradition and why al-Shifa, “the Healing”, is mentioned among its traditional names.

Surah al-Ikhlas has tremendous virtues, and the Prophet ﷺ would recite al-Ikhlas together with al-Falaq and al-Nas, blow into his hands and wipe them over his body before sleeping. When he became ill, he would recite the Muawwidhat, al-Falaq and al-Nas, over himself.

So these surahs all have a place within prophetic protection and ruqya. Al-Fatiha can be recited over yourself, over somebody who is ill, and as part of ruqya.

Ruqya is healing through recitation of the Quran and prescribed duas. It may be used when somebody is physically unwell, and it is also used for spiritual protection and afflictions such as the evil eye, sihr (black magic) and jinn.

We mentioned the hadith earlier in which a group of Companions stopped near an Arab tribe. The chief of the tribe was bitten or stung by a venomous creature and his people asked whether any of the Companions could treat him. One of them recited Surah al-Fatiha over him, gathered some saliva and lightly spat over the affected area, and the man recovered. The tribe had agreed beforehand to give them a flock of sheep if the treatment worked.

The Companions were unsure whether it was right to accept payment for this, so when they returned to the Prophet ﷺ they told him what had happened. He said:

وَمَا يُدْرِيكَ أَنَّهَا رُقْيَةٌ؟

“How did you know that it is a ruqya?”

He approved what they had done and permitted them to take the payment.
(Sahih al-Bukhari)

So there is a very clear basis for using al-Fatiha as ruqya.

To perform ruqya you can recite al-Fatiha, Ayat al-Kursi, the final verses of Surah al-Baqarah, al-Ikhlas, al-Falaq and al-Nas, together with other verses and duas for healing. It suggests repeating the recitations an odd number of times, such as once, three times or seven times. I would not want people to become anxious about having to follow one exact formula, though. The point is to use what has been authentically transmitted and to turn to Allah with sincerity and trust.

There is also a very specific Sunnah for pain in a particular part of the body. Uthman ibn Abi al-As complained to the Prophet ﷺ about pain he was experiencing, and the Prophet ﷺ told him to place his hand over the painful area and say Bismillah three times, followed seven times by:

أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ وَقُدْرَتِهِ مِنْ شَرِّ مَا أَجِدُ وَأُحَاذِرُ

“I seek refuge in Allah and His power from the evil of what I feel and what I fear.”
(Sahih Muslim)

You can make ruqya if you have flu, a headache, back pain or another illness. You can recite over yourself or someone else. But the important thing is where you believe the healing is coming from. You are taking a means while expecting the cure from Allah. You make dua with hope and a good expectation of Him, while accepting that the outcome belongs to Him.

Food

Whenever I give a lifestyle medicine talk, nutrition is always a hot topic. Food is one of the pleasures of life. It is social, it is enjoyable and it is something we look forward to. For many Muslims, it has almost become our main form of halal entertainment. What shall we do? We go out and eat.

The problem is that we can become slightly obsessed with finding the perfect food. We have “big food” in much the same way that people talk about “big pharma”, but at the other end we also have this idea that one superfood, powder or supplement is somehow going to rescue us from everything else we are doing. We want to believe we can out-supplement our habits. It does not really work like that.

Food matters enormously. It gives us the raw materials our bodies need, and our overall pattern of eating can either support our health or contribute to disease. But I do not like becoming obsessive about individual foods. Allah has given us an extraordinary variety of things to eat, and different foods make sense within different cultures, climates and ways of life.

Before asking exactly what we are eating, I often want people to think about how and when they are eating.

Those things matter as well. Our metabolism and digestive system do not operate identically at every hour of the day. They are influenced by our circadian rhythms, and research into time-restricted eating suggests that the timing of food intake can affect glucose regulation and other aspects of metabolic health. There is some evidence that eating earlier in the day may have metabolic advantages for some people, although the size of the benefit varies and this is not a magic solution in itself.

Modern life makes it very easy to eat almost continuously. We eat late into the evening, snack while watching television, eat because we are tired, then start again first thing in the morning. The gut is never really off duty. That pattern can become part of a much wider problem involving sleep, appetite, weight and metabolic health.

Fasting

The Prophet ﷺ had regular voluntary fasts. He encouraged fasting three days each lunar month, including the White Days, the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth, and there are narrations concerning fasting on Mondays and Thursdays.

There is now enormous interest in intermittent fasting in lifestyle medicine. You will hear about time-restricted eating, the 5:2 diet, alternate-day fasting and prolonged fasting. There is evidence that some forms of intermittent or time-restricted eating can help with weight and certain markers of metabolic health, although the results vary depending on the person, the type of fasting and what they eat during the rest of the day.

You will also hear much more dramatic claims, such as the idea that fasting for three days “resets the immune system”. There is interesting research into prolonged fasting, immune cells, stem-cell pathways and cellular processes such as autophagy, but much of the early work was in animals or in very specific clinical settings.

What I find particularly beautiful is the Prophet’s ﷺ relationship with food when food simply was not there. Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) narrated that he once came to her and asked whether there was anything to eat. When she said there was nothing, he replied:

فَإِنِّي إِذًا صَائِمٌ

“Then I am fasting.”
(Sahih Muslim)

There is another narration from the time of the Battle of the Trench when the Prophet ﷺ had tied a stone to his stomach because of the severity of his hunger. They had gone without food for three days. These are separate incidents, but together they tell us something about his relationship with hunger and discomfort. He did not treat the absence of food as a catastrophe. There was patience and restraint. If there was food, there was gratitude. If there was not, he adapted.

I think there is something quite telling in that for us now because we live in an environment where food is available almost constantly. We are rarely required to sit with hunger. The moment we feel the slightest discomfort, we reach for something.

The Sunnah teaches us a different relationship with appetite. It is not about punishing the body or refusing ourselves every pleasure. It is about learning that we do not have to respond immediately to every urge. Sometimes there is food and sometimes there is not. Sometimes we eat and sometimes we fast. We can be grateful for abundance without becoming controlled by it.

Fasting also teaches self-restraint. What does the Prophet ﷺ tell young people who want to marry but are not yet able to? He tells them to fast.

يَا مَعْشَرَ الشَّبَابِ، مَنِ اسْتَطَاعَ الْبَاءَةَ فَلْيَتَزَوَّجْ، فَإِنَّهُ أَغَضُّ لِلْبَصَرِ، وَأَحْصَنُ لِلْفَرْجِ، وَمَنْ لَمْ يَسْتَطِعْ فَعَلَيْهِ بِالصَّوْمِ، فَإِنَّهُ لَهُ وِجَاءٌ

“O young people, whoever among you is able to marry should marry, for it is more effective in lowering the gaze and guarding chastity. Whoever is not able to do so should fast, for it will be a restraint for him.”
(Sahih al-Bukhari)

So fasting is not only about food. It trains us not to respond immediately to every desire. Appetite and sexual desire are two enormously powerful human drives, and there is something very significant about learning that we can experience an urge without always having to satisfy it.

There is an emerging idea in health research called intermittent living, associated particularly with Dr Leo Pruimboom and the field of clinical psychoneuroimmunology. The basic idea is that modern life has removed many of the short-lived physical challenges human beings once encountered regularly. We are warm all the time, food is constantly available and we can live with very little physical exertion if we choose to.

Pruimboom and colleagues have explored whether controlled exposure to things such as fasting, heat, cold and short periods of hypoxia might produce beneficial adaptive responses in the body. It is an interesting area, but I would stress that much of this is still exploratory. The original paper on “intermittent living” is a hypothesis, not an established treatment programme, but the point is interesting.

Moderation

What interests me is the broader principle, because there is something in it that feels very familiar when we look at the Sunnah. We fast and then we eat. We sleep, but we also get up to pray. We spend time with people, but we also have periods of solitude and reflection. We are not taught to pursue discomfort for its own sake, but neither are we taught that the aim of life is to remain comfortable every moment. There is a rhythm to it.

And when it comes specifically to eating, moderation is really the key. There is a well-known hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ said:

مَا مَلأَ آدَمِيٌّ وِعَاءً شَرًّا مِنْ بَطْنٍ، بِحَسْبِ ابْنِ آدَمَ أُكُلاَتٌ يُقِمْنَ صُلْبَهُ، فَإِنْ كَانَ لَا مَحَالَةَ فَثُلُثٌ لِطَعَامِهِ، وَثُلُثٌ لِشَرَابِهِ، وَثُلُثٌ لِنَفَسِهِ

“A human being fills no vessel worse than his stomach. It is sufficient for the son of Adam to eat a few mouthfuls to keep his back straight. But if he must, then a third for his food, a third for his drink and a third for his breath.”
(Jami al-Tirmidhi)

That does not mean that we all have to survive on three mouthfuls of food. The point is not to stuff ourselves.

A lot of modern eating happens almost unconsciously. We eat at our desks. We graze. We eat in front of a screen and sometimes barely notice how much has gone in. The Prophetic approach is very different. Enjoy your food, but eat with awareness. Be grateful to Allah for it. Remember that there are people who do not have what you have.

Imam al-Ghazali devotes a whole section of the Ihya Ulum al-Din to the etiquette of eating, including the way we behave when we eat with other people. Food is not treated merely as fuel. There is companionship around it, generosity, restraint and consideration for the person sitting beside you.

And we learn these things remarkably early. Think about a child being weaned. Food is one of their first great sensory experiences. They touch it, smell it, squash it, taste it and inevitably put everything in their mouth. It is nourishment, but it is also comfort and exploration.

Then gradually we teach them how to sit with other people. We teach them to wait. We teach them to share. We teach them that the whole plate is not theirs simply because they want it.

The Prophet ﷺ taught Umar ibn Abi Salamah when he was still a child:

يَا غُلَامُ، سَمِّ اللَّهَ، وَكُلْ بِيَمِينِكَ، وَكُلْ مِمَّا يَلِيكَ

“Young boy, mention the name of Allah, eat with your right hand and eat from what is nearest to you.”
(Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim)

There is so much contained in that little instruction. Begin with Allah. Have some manners. Be aware of the people sharing the meal with you.

And when we finish, we say Alhamdulillah. So even something as ordinary as eating becomes connected to worship.

The Prophet ﷺ also said:

إِنَّ الْمُؤْمِنَ يَأْكُلُ فِي مِعًى وَاحِدٍ، وَإِنَّ الْكَافِرَ يَأْكُلُ فِي سَبْعَةِ أَمْعَاءٍ

“The believer eats in one intestine, while the disbeliever eats in seven intestines.”
(Sahih al-Bukhari)

Clearly this is not an anatomical statement. The hadith is drawing our attention to restraint. A believer should not be driven by endless consumption.

If you are eating mindfully, there is only so much room in your stomach. So what are you going to put there? You can fill it with foods that actually nourish you, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and other wholesome foods, alongside the foods that are part of your own culture and family life. Or you can fill most of it with highly processed foods and then wonder why you do not feel particularly well.

I am deliberately not going to get into Mediterranean diets, low-carbohydrate diets and all the competing nutritional arguments today. That is a separate talk. The principle I want to keep coming back to is much simpler: moderation, gratitude and choosing what is wholesome.

Grounding

There is one other thing I wanted to touch on, which is the idea of grounding or earthing, where people claim particular health effects from direct electrical contact between the body and the earth. There are small studies looking at this, but what I am more interested in is something much more ordinary: actually getting down onto the ground.

Traditionally, people often sat on the floor to eat. Imam al-Ghazali mentions food being placed on a cloth on the ground and associates this with simplicity and humility. There is a completely different experience when a group of people sit down together at that level and pass food around. Of course there is nothing wrong with eating at a dining table, and I am not suggesting everybody now needs to get rid of their chairs.

But personally, I find something very settling about lying flat on the floor. Growing up, I used to see my father lie down on the ground because of his back pain and I never really understood it. I have started doing it myself, and I find that I relax. Some of the tension eases because, quite literally, I can stop holding myself up for a moment and let the floor take my weight.

The Prophet ﷺ himself lived with remarkable simplicity. Abdullah ibn Masud (may Allah be pleased with him) described him lying on a reed mat which left marks on his skin. When he was offered something softer, the Prophet ﷺ replied:

مَا أَنَا وَالدُّنْيَا، إِنَّمَا أَنَا وَالدُّنْيَا كَرَاكِبٍ اسْتَظَلَّ تَحْتَ شَجَرَةٍ ثُمَّ رَاحَ وَتَرَكَهَا

“What have I to do with this world? I am in this world like a rider who rests for a while beneath the shade of a tree, then moves on and leaves it.”
(Sunan Ibn Majah)

I would not take from that hadith that sleeping on a hard floor is somehow medically superior to using a mattress. That is not its point. But I do think there is something valuable in the simplicity of the Prophetic lifestyle and in remembering that we do not need to engineer comfort into every moment of our lives.

Even the way we eat can reflect that: sitting together, beginning with Bismillah, using the right hand, sharing what is in front of us and finishing with gratitude.

Delivered by Dr Saania Bhatti to the Al Manaar Convert Club on 11th August 2026.

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