The Secretary and Director of Research of PISANG, Ms Nor Azian Ab. Rahman, presented a poster presentation at the 8th Muslim Mental Health Conference in Dearborn, USA from 17th to 20th March 2016. The conference was attended by academicians, psychologists, psychiatrists and other professionals in the mental health sector. There was great interest in the poster presentation and a full paper is planned in the near future. The paper will be written by Dr Zul Azlin Razali (Psychiatrist and Senior Medical Lecture, Islamic Science University of Malaysia), Nor Azian Ab Rahman (Graduate Research Assistant, Institute of Malay World and Civilization, National University of Malaysia) and Prof. Dr Supyan Hussin (Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, National University of Malaysia).
Ruqyah as a complementary therapy has many success stories and these need to be published in academic journal. This is also in line with one of the objectives of the formation of PISANG. We have our own internal research and are also collaborating with other academicians and professionals to speed up the process of promoting ruqyah as a mainstream complementary therapy through academic and scientific research. At present, there are many variants of ruqyah and nobody can be sure of what therapy they will get when the step into a ruqyah therapy centre. Ruqyah means “incantation” and ruqyah therapy is any therapy using incantations that are shari’ah-compliant.
Just like “talking therapy” has many variants, “ruqyah therapy” also has many variants. We are hopeful that current research on ruqyah therapy will lead to the development of one or more variants of ruqyah therapy that is evidenced-based.
