South Asian Muslim Research Articles

Cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis can be adapted for minority ethnic groups: A randomised controlled trial

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is recommended in treatment guidelines for psychotic symptoms (NICE, 2009) but clients from some minority groups have been shown to have higher dropout rates and poorer outcomes. A recent qualitative study in ethnic minority groups concluded that CBT would be acceptable and may be more effective if it was culturally adapted to meet their needs (Rathod et al., 2010). AimThis study assessed the effectiveness of a culturally adapted CBT for psychosis (CaCBTp) in Black British, African Caribbean/Black African and South Asian Muslim participants. MethodA randomised controlled trial was conducted in two centres in the UK (n=35) in participants with a diagnosis of a disorder from the schizophrenia group. Assessments were conducted at three time points: baseline, post-therapy and at 6months follow-up, using the Comprehensive Psychopathological Rating Scale (CPRS) and Insight Scale. Outcomes on specific subscales of CPRS were also evaluated. Participants in the treatment arm completed the Patient Experience Questionnaire (PEQ) to measure satisfaction with therapy. Assessors blind to randomisation and treatment allocation conducted administration of outcome measures. In total, n=33 participants were randomly allocated to CaCBTp arm (n=16) and treatment as usual (TAU) arm (n=17) after (n=2) participants were excluded. CaCBTp participants were offered 16 sessions of CaCBTp with trained therapists and the TAU arm continued with their standard treatment. ResultsAnalysis was based on the principles of intention to treat (ITT). This was further supplemented with secondary sensitivity analyses. Post-treatment, the intervention group showed statistically significant reductions in symptomatology on overall CPRS scores, CaCBTp Mean (SD)=16.23 (10.77), TAU=18.60 (14.84); p=0.047,with a difference in change of 11.31 (95% CI:0. 14 to 22.49); Schizophrenia change: CaCBTp=3.46 (3.37); TAU=4.78 (5.33) diff 4.62 (95% CI: 0.68 to 9.17); p=0.047 and positive symptoms (delusions; p=0.035, and hallucinations; p=0.056). At 6months follow-up, MADRAS change=5.6 (95% CI: 2.92 to 7.60); p<0.001. Adjustment was made for age, gender and antipsychotic medication. Overall satisfaction was significantly correlated with the number of sessions attended (r=0.563; p=0.003). ConclusionParticipants in the CaCBTp group achieved statistically significant results post-treatment compared to those in the TAU group with some gains maintained at follow-up. High levels of satisfaction with the CaCBTp were reported.

Understanding faith considerations when caring for bereaved Muslims

Ethnic and religious pluralism are now key features of most Western societies, with Muslims representing the largest religious minority group. Although Muslims are ethnically, culturally and linguistically heterogeneous, they share common core beliefs these centring on the unity of Allah (God) and the message sent to mankind in The Holy Qur'an. A key theme running through The Qur'an is the contrast between the transitory nature of this world and the permanent abode of the Akhirah (Hereafter). Bereavement represents a significant life event, often resulting in major social, psychological and spiritual transitions.1 In this paper, we consider core Muslim beliefs in relation to death and bereavement, and draw on these beliefs and teachings, the limited available empirical data on the subject and our personal experiences to reflect on possible implications for care, particularly in relation to patients being managed in Western secular care contexts (see Box 1 for further details). Box 1 Methodology Sources of information We searched Medline in September 2012 for relevant articles regardless of language and date of publication using a combination of the following search terms: bereavement, death, dying, grief, Muslim and Islam. Bibliographies of identified articles and personal libraries were screened. We drew on our research data-sets, particularly the study ‘Developing services to meet the end-of-life care needs of South Asian Sikh and Muslim patients and their families in Scotland’ and an ongoing Danish study on ethnicity, migration and cancer care.2 Our own experiences of witnessing and caring for bereaved individuals were an additional source of information. These experiences are based on research among, as well as personal relations to, bereaved Muslims and the healthcare professionals caring for them.

Patient centred care in diabetology: an Islamic perspective from South Asia

Patient centred care (PCC) is a healthcare model which is sensitive towards the patients’ preferences, needs and values. Interest in the use of PCC in diabetology has heightened recently. There is a special need of the usage of PCC in Muslim communities. Six out of the ten countries with the highest prevalence of diabetes are Muslim majority countries. There are several religious and sociocultural issues specific to South Asian Muslim societies that merit the need of individualization of care for people with diabetes. Several such issues are presented in this article, along with recommendations for tackling them.

Strategies of Authority in Muslim South Asia in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

AbstractStarting from the position that authority is constantly a work in progress, this paper examines authority in Muslim South Asia at a time when Muslims felt the challenge of rule by another civilization. It examines the strategies in sustaining their authority: of religious leaders, of Unani hakims and of literary leaders. In all three areas there is a rejection of the Persianate Mughal past and an embracing of Arab models, of the Prophetic model, and in various ways a drawing on British models and British authority. The paper also looks at the strategies of the rulers noting, amongst other things, how the British drew heavily on Mughal models just as Indian Muslims were letting them go, and how, since independence, Muslim rulers have drawn on a mixture of Western, Arab and Prophetic sources. There is also a running discussion throughout the paper of the revolutionary shift towards rooting authority in society at large, and the development of techniques to do so.

Marginalisation of Muslim Writers in South Asian Literature: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s English Works

This article argues that there appears to be a pattern of disregarding the literary contributions of South Asian Muslim writers who produced English texts on a variety of topics. It then mainly contextualises Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s English works in the tradition of South Asian writing in English to identify a continuous trend of undervaluing Muslim literary contributions in English in the region. The article thus argues for a re-assessment of the evaluation of this literary tradition, so that the many forgotten South Asian Muslim writers in English, including Rokeya, regain their long overdue recognition.

Subject Positioning, Fear, and Insecurity in South Asian Muslim Communities in the War on Terror Context

Cette étude porte sur la position de sujet de personnes appartenant à des communautés musulmanes du sud asiatique vivant à Montréal, dans le contexte de la guerre au terrorisme prévalant au Canada, après le 11 septembre 2001. En se fondant sur les résultats de plusieurs études en population générale, il démontre comment le climat de peur et de suspicion associé à la sécurisation accrue, façonne la vie et les stratégies quotidiennes des répondants de ces communautés. La surveillance à laquelle font face les personnes de ces communautés est associée avec une internalisation de peurs qui joue un rôle de régulateur dans la représentation que les sujets ont d'eux‐mêmes, de leurs relations avec leur propre communauté et de leur appartenance à la société canadienne.

Karin Zitzewitz. Review of "Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia" by Iftikhar Dadi.

Karin Zitzewitz. Review of "Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia" by Iftikhar Dadi.

Graduating towards marriage? Attitudes towards marriage and relationships among university-educated British Muslim women

This paper examines educated British South Asian Muslim women's conceptualisations, experiences of, and attitudes towards relationships and contemporary Muslim matrimonial practices, and notions of love and ‘Islamic’ or ‘halal’ relationships. Following a brief critique of representations of ‘arranged marriages’, this paper explores the shift from parentally arranged matrimonial matches to the highly individualised and commercialised matrimonial events that now characterise the British Muslim matrimonial scene. The paper highlights tensions between beliefs that the possession of a degree for Muslim women confers greater choice in matrimony and is thus highly beneficial in order to ‘secure’ an appropriate matrimonial match, and lived realities around difficulties in meeting suitable partners as factors such as increased age or being ‘over-qualified’ become significant. I argue that static terminologies such as ‘arranged marriage’ are no longer useful when describing processes of social change that are fluid and subject to continual negotiation and renegotiation and are contingent instead, upon localised, personalised, religious and transnational interpretations and influences.

Literary Paradigms in the Conception of South Asian Muslim Identity: Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Hasan Askari

Literature has always played a synthesizing role in the history of Islam. The same can be said for the Urdu language and literature. Urdu was produced as a result of the mingling of Arabo-Persian-Turkish language with the indigenous languages and cultures primarily of north India. However, the Urdu language became politicized in British India first by the colonizers and then by the nationalists who insisted on giving it a specific Muslim identity distinct from Hindi. More complicated was the position of Urdu within the unity of Indian literature. After the creation of Pakistan, the dilemma for Urdu writers was how to construct a Pakistani literature that would be different from Indian Urdu. Farooqi’s essay asks the following questions: How would cultural identities be reflected in the new literature? Would Urdu in Pakistan shed the Indic part of its identity and become simply a language of Islam? Muhammad Hasan Askari, Urdu’s premier literary critic, maintained that there was a difference between Islamic and Muslim culture: Muslim culture was Islam plus local culture.

Returns on education amongst men in England and Wales: The impact of residential segregation and ethno-religious background

Individuals’ occupational and educational attainment is influenced by their ethnicity, religion and colour in the UK and elsewhere. In this paper, we analyse the impact of ethnicity, religion and colour along with residential segregation11By residential segregation we mean here the level of residential concentration of all non-white groups counted together and our threshold for segregation 20% is much lower than that in much of the literature, namely 20% of members of non-white minorities resident in an area. and socio-economic deprivation on returns to education for men in England and Wales. We analyse the 2001 UK census data by employing multi-level logistic regression models. It is found that non-White groups including Christian Black-African, UK born Sikh-Indians and South Asian Muslims are found to suffer an ethnic penalty compared to Christian White-British. While there is evidence to suggest that Muslim men may experience a greater penalty compared to some non-Whites other non-Muslim groups too face ethno-religious penalties, sometimes even more severely such as in the case of Christian Black-Africans. Socio-economic difficulties faced by ethnic minorities are also linked to spatial segregation only when associated with high levels of area deprivation. This suggests that what matters may not be segregation per se, but whether or not it is associated with deprivation.

Citing as a Site: Translation and circulation in Muslim South and Southeast Asia

AbstractNetworks of travel and trade have often been viewed as central to understanding interactions among Muslims across South and Southeast Asia. In this paper I suggest that we consider language and literature as an additional type of network, one that provided a powerful site of contact and exchange facilitated by, and drawing on, citation. I draw on textual sources written in Javanese, Malay, and Tamil between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries to argue that among Muslim communities in South and Southeast Asia, practices of reading, learning, translating, adapting, and transmitting contributed to the shaping of a cosmopolitan sphere that was both closely connected with the broader, universal Muslim community and rooted in local identities. I consider a series of ‘citation sites’ in an attempt to explore one among many modes of inter-Asian connections, highlighting how citations, simple or brief as they may often seem, are sites of shared memories, history, and narrative traditions and, in the case of Islamic literature, also sites of a common bond to a cosmopolitan and sanctified Arabic.

South Asian consensus statement on women's health and Ramadan.

Fasting during Ramadan, the holy month of Islam, is mandatory for all healthy adult Muslims. It is estimated that there are 1.1-1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, comprising 18-25% of the world population. About 62% of the world's Muslim population resides in Asia. Women comprise approximately 50% of this population. There is great religious fervor and enthusiasm in the majority of Muslims the world over for observing the religious fasting. Many of the Muslim women perhaps due to the family and societal pressures or lack of proper information hesitate and fail to avail themselves of the generous provisions of temporary or permanent exemptions from fasting available in Islam. It is therefore important that medical professionals as well as the general population be aware of potential risks that may be associated with fasting during Ramadan. This familiarity and knowledge is as important in South Asia and the Middle East as it is in Europe, North America, New Zealand, and Australia. There has not yet been any statement of consensus regarding women's health issues during Ramadan, namely menstruation, sexual obligations of married life, pregnancy, and lactation. This document aims to put forward some of the general guidelines for these issues especially for the South Asian Muslim women.

Perceptions of the processes of radicalisation and de-radicalisation among British South Asian Muslims in a post-industrial city

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study exploring the perceptions of British South Asian Muslims in relation to the pathways towards radicalisation and the challenges of community leadership in relation to de-radicalisation. The study is based on in-depth interviews, using an ethnographic methodological framework, with a purposive sample of 30 Muslim men and women, including senior political figures, community leaders, religious figures and young Muslims (aged 18–25) from across the city of Birmingham, UK. The fieldwork was carried out between September 2005 and May 2007. Respondents reflected a general perspective that regards social exclusion, Islamophobia, lack of effective theological and political leadership, regressive anti-terror law and geo-political events as principal factors in the radicalisation and the de-radicalisation of British Muslims. These findings provide important insights into Muslims in Britain in relation to questions of ‘radicalism’ and politics, and they have specific implications for research, policy and practice in this area.

Reconfiguring South Asian Islam: From the 18th to the 19th Century

Distinctive shifts in the character of South Asian Islamic culture took place between eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article tracks these changes through two notable examples, Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786) and Hajji Imdad Allah Muhajir Makki (d. 1899). Analysis of writings by and about these two figures demonstrates shifting models of what it meant to be a South Asian Muslim intellectual. The confident cosmopolitanism of Bilgrami, on the cusp of the British colonial conquest, yields to a much more defensive posture in Hajji Imdad Allah, who was indeed engaged in resistance against the ultimately victorious British rule. Loss of traditional Muslim patronage coincided with the decline of philosophical traditions and interest in Hindu culture, along with the rise of the scriptural reformism typified by the Deoband school, which addressed a broader Muslim public. The relatively short time during which these changes occurred emphasizes the significant cultural gap between the pre- and post-colonial periods of South Asian Islam.

Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia. By Iftikhar Dadi. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. xv, 312 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia. By Iftikhar Dadi. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. xv, 312 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

Privacy and security in the digital age: contemporary challenges and future directions

Privacy is at the core of civil rights from which all other human rights and freedoms flow. Since the twentieth century, and particularly since 9/11, rapid deployment of information and surveillance technologies in the name of national security has grave implications for individual privacy and human rights. This article reviews major strands in contemporary privacy-security debate, while critiquing existing conceptualisations of privacy that are inadequate in the context of multifaceted and ubiquitous surveillance technologies post 9/11. Further, this paper contends most privacy-security debate overlooks unequal consequences for targeted populations (e.g. people of Middle Eastern, Arab or South Asian descent and Muslims). Finally, the paper emphasises the need for more accountability on part of the watchers and more expansive notions of privacy and security to uphold the well-being of individuals, society and democracy.

How to support a patient with Type 2 diabetes who is determined to undertake a period of religious fasting

ISSN 1758-1907 10.2217/DMT.11.41 © 2011 Future Medicine Ltd Diabetes Manage. (2011) 1(5), 467–469 If you practice in a country with a large multiethnic population their cultural and religious needs may put you in a situation where you need to address the issues around religious fasting by your patient with diabetes. Fasting during the month of Ramadan is an essential article of faith of the Muslims and forms one of the five pillars of Islam. Recent data suggest that there are approximately 2.8 million Muslims living in the UK [101] and approximately 80% of those people with diabetes fast for at least 15 days [1]. Diabetes affects around a quarter of the UK Muslim population [2], which gives a rough estimate of around half a million Muslim people with diabetes who may fast during the month of Ramadan. Putting this in perspective this is nearly double the number of people with Type 1 diabetes in the UK. Muslims are not the only community in the UK that undertakes religious fasting; Hindus also undertake religious fasting on a fairly regular basis. This may include a weekly fast on particular days and during religious festivals such as Karva Chauth. Jewish people fast during the festival of Yom Kippur and Christians from the East may undertake fasting d uring the Lent period. We practice in an area with a very high South Asian Muslim population; and hence we have to deal with this issue on a frequent basis. The practice we have established is based on five principles:

Multilingual Development in Children with Autism: Perspectives of South Asian Muslim Immigrant Parents on Raising a Child with a Communicative Disorder in Multilingual Contexts

This study examined the perceptions of three Muslim families on multilingual development in their children with autism. Findings indicate that the families' goal of maintaining normalcy in their children's life could not be attained without immersion in multiple languages. They believe that immersion in multilingual contexts helped their children acquire and expand their linguistic repertoire and enriched their familial and social relationships. Parents experienced hardships with professionals in receiving support in maintaining native-language use at home. Children who demonstrated language impairments during initial ethnographic observations showed significant progress in their multiple-language development toward the end of the study.

Integration, minorities and the rhetoric of civilization: the case of British Pakistani Muslims in the UK and Malay Muslims in Singapore

This article discusses, through a comparative approach, the experience of young Muslims in Singapore and the UK as far as integration is concerned. The paper suggests that one of the main issues faced by young Muslims, in both countries, is how they are represented and understood. Indeed, British South Asian Muslims as well as Malay Muslim Singaporeans are still living in a dynamic of postcolonialism. The heritage of British colonialism still, although latently, works through the creation of categories and classifications of how identity should be defined. In both the cases of British South Asian Muslims and Singaporean Malay Muslims, there is often an unspoken request for the imagined ethnic minority to mimic the ‘achiever’ majority. It is in this dynamic that we can recognize what I have called a ‘rhetoric of civilization’.

FC20-05 - Developing culturally sensitive cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis for ethnic minority patients

IntroductionStudies of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for psychosis demonstrate that African-Caribbean and Black African patients have higher dropout rates and poor outcomes from treatment (Rathod et al., 2005).Aims &amp; objectivesThe main aim of the study was to produce a culturally sensitive adaption of an existing CBT manual for therapists working with patients with psychosis from specified ethinic minority communities (African-Caribbean, Black-African/Black British, and South Asian Muslims). This will be based on gaining understanding of the way members (lay and service users) of these minority communities view psychosis, its origin, and management including their cultural influences, values and attitudes.MethodThis qualitative study consisted of individual semi-structured interviews with patients with psychosis (n = 15); focus groups with lay members from selected ethnic communities (n = 52); focus groups or semi-structured interviews with CBT therapists (n = 22) and mental health practitioners who work with patients from the ethnic communities (n = 25). Data was analysed thematically using evolving themes and content analysis. NVivo 8 was used to manage and explore data.ResultsRespondent groups agreed that CBT would be an acceptable treatment if culturally adapted. This would incorporate culturally-based patient health beliefs, attributions concerning psychosis, attention to help seeking pathways and technical adjustments.ConclusionsWhile individualization of therapy is generally accepted as a principle, in practice, therapists require an understanding of patient-related factors that are culturally bound and influence the way the patient perceives or responds to therapy.