Psychoreligio-Spiritual Dimension of and Cultural Misperception on Sadness: Implication for Mental Health Anti-Stigma Promotion

Abstract

Introduction: Sadness is globally regarded as an undesirable emotion. Islamically speaking, there is a misperception where it is latently ingrained as a proscribed emotion. Ironically, it was purposely mentioned in the Qur’anic verse that narrated the historical moment right before the first humans in Islam: Adam and his wife, Eve (Ḥawwā’) were Ordained by Allah to descend on the Earth (Q2: 38). This study supports Islamically integrated psychotherapeutic mental health service to Muslims. It answers the call of underrepresented by academics of Islamic Studies in Islamicizing Psychology, as it is a social duty (farḍ al-kifāyah) to add up resource to Islamic psychotherapeutic practice. Methods: Since it is dealing with the Holy Qur’an, the Qur’anic Thematic Exegetical Analysis (al-Tafsīr al-Mawḍuᶜi) method was applied to verify whether it is proscribed as widely accepted. The selected keyword: ‘sadness’ (Ar. Al-ḥuzn) were searched throughout the Holy Qur’an. Methodically, the proscribed rulings usually originated from negating expression linguistically: the don’ts. So, only the Qur’anic verse with the word ‘lā’ were selected for analysis. Their English translation was from ‘The Qur’an: A New Translation - Oxford World’s Classic (2nd ed.)’ by Prof. Dr. Muhammad Abdel Saied Abdel Haleem, and exegesis was extracted from the Al-Qurtubi’s Exegesis (Tafsīr al-Qurtubī). Results: The analysis showed that there are two (2) categories of the negative expression: (1) denial: “you will not be continuously sad” and (2) negative imperative: “do not be sad!”. The first category does not proscribe rulings jurisprudentially, but the second category does fundamentally. But when adjusted with the style of language used (al-uslūb) and the context of each Qur’anic verse; there is no straightforward proscriptive ruling for being sad. Instead, every verse is persuasively comforting like in a counselling. Conclusion: Therefore, interwoven understanding should be bridged among the linguistics and translation of the Arabic language, Qur’anic revealed knowledge for Islamic preaching, healthcare practice and the laity’s common perception and experience of sadness in reality to eliminate the misperception of the negative imperative: ‘do not be sad!’. It should be straightened to prevent it being a source for negative religious coping because it is a strong predictor of negative health outcomes.