Quranic Texts and Hadiths to Clear Misconceptions in Encouraging Breast Cancer Screening Among Muslim Women

Abstract

Breast cancer (BC) among women is the most prevalent cancer globally. Muslim women tend to have a poorer survival rate compared to other ethnicities due to late detection and late stage of BC detection. Factors cited for maladaptation of BC screening include religiosity, spirituality, fatalistic beliefs and or misconceptions. Late detection and advanced stages of BC can lead to poor prognosis and issues of morbidity, mortality and cost of treatment. As such, promoting the behavioural adoption of BC screening for early detection of BC is pertinent. This study focuses on extracting related religious texts from the Quran, hadiths and fatwas to clear the misconceptions and encourage BC screening among Muslim women. The discussion utilising Quranic verses and prophetic hadiths to clear the misconceptions will focus on five themes; socio-ethical misconceptions, cultural and religious beliefs, cultural and religious barriers, stigma and fear of BC, obtained from our previous systematic review. The systematic review was conducted on related studies published globally over the past ten years. The search strategy was performed through four databases namely PubMed, Cochrane Library, Scopus and Science Direct. Resources for related Quranic verses, hadiths and fatwas were obtained from electronic databases including sunnah.com, surah.my and islamweb.net using search keywords. The discussion of the related religious texts to clear the misconceptions can provide legal guidance within the shari’ah in paving the way for Muslim women to adopt BC screening practices for early detection of BC.