Medicine, materialism and the spiritual dimension

Introduction

Belief in the unseen belongs to our understanding of creation. Seeking medical knowledge also means asking carefully what an observation establishes and where an interpretation begins. In the debate over jinn and illness, these questions matter: an explanation of the brain, an argument about the soul and a diagnosis of an individual are different kinds of claims.

This episode follows the discussion of Jerry Marzinsky and distressing voices. Ahmad Dadoosh reports both supportive messages and strong criticism, including from Muslim clinicians. He sets aside a detailed examination of evidence for possession to ask why some doctors resist spiritual explanations. The chapter is therefore principally an argument about methods and assumptions, with personal observations about professional culture.^[1]

A public disagreement about diagnosis

The Al Jazeera interview

Dadoosh begins with an Al Jazeera Clinic interview featuring psychiatrist Muhammad Ali Siddiq. The programme aired on 25 April 2018; the accompanying article appears under a 26 April URL. It attributes experiences such as voices, disordered speech and feelings of persecution to schizophrenia, warns that a possession interpretation can delay care, and urges professional assessment. The article also describes environmental and inherited risk factors.^[2]

Dadoosh objects to the certainty with which a spiritual interpretation is rejected. In his reading, the interview moves from a physician's account of symptoms to a broader exclusion of spiritual causes, while leaving little room for a distinction between legitimate ruqyah and fraudulent practice. That is his criticism of the interview's framing; medical qualifications alone do not tell us everything a person believes or has studied.^[3]

He also challenges the explanation of unusual strength during agitation. However, his examples of extraordinary strength have no named case records or controlled measurements in this episode. They cannot establish a supernatural cause merely by being striking accounts.^[4]

Similar experiences and their interpretation

A second Al Jazeera article, updated on 19 April 2023, repeats Siddiq's comments and describes feelings that thoughts or movements are being controlled. It also discusses unusual visual experiences. Its wording acknowledges the force of the experience for the person hearing voices; it does not simply accuse patients of inventing stories.^[5]

Dadoosh connects such reports with accounts from ruqyah, shamanism and psychedelic experiences. He interprets recurring descriptions as evidence of encounters with the same external beings. That conclusion is his proposed explanation; a resemblance between reports does not by itself distinguish their possible causes.^[6]

The later article's reference to research from 2010 can be traced through its Healthline link to Suprakash Chaudhury's Hallucinations: Clinical aspects and management. This is a literature review covering several clinical settings and experiences among people without a psychiatric disorder. Its abstract does not establish the existence of the beings perceived. The full review and the studies behind the specific visual descriptions still require inspection.^[7]

The episode explicitly says not to stop medication or avoid doctors. Dadoosh wants readers to leave room for spiritual care alongside treatment. His proposed account of how these interact remains distinct from demonstrated treatment effects.^[8]

The methodological problem of materialism

Explaining a process and asking about its purpose

Dadoosh distinguishes an empirical method from a complete philosophy of existence. His example is rain: investigating condensation and precipitation answers questions about a physical process, while asking about Allah's wisdom addresses a different question. He accepts the value of studying mechanisms, but objects when the success of that study is taken to mean that nothing beyond matter exists.^[9]

This distinction is central to his argument. A method can limit itself to testable explanations without every practitioner sharing the same view of ultimate reality. Conversely, someone making a spiritual claim must still explain what supports that particular claim. A limit on one method does not automatically settle the question in favour of another explanation.^[10]

Science and philosophical conclusions

The episode uses Stephen Hawking's discussion of free will as an example of a scientist entering philosophical debate. The original PBS transcript for Genius, “Why Are We Here?”, does discuss determinism, unconscious brain activity and the possibility that free will is illusory. It also presents qualifications and objections. Dadoosh's objection is to treating a conclusion about human agency as if it followed without further argument from observing the brain.^[11]

He also refers readers to his earlier programmes on scientific revolutions and theories of religion. He argues that religious life and human consciousness cannot be exhausted by the methods used to describe physical processes. His much broader claim that materialist theories of religion have all failed would require a separate survey; the episode does not provide one here.^[12]

Evolution and the limits of explanation

Adaptation and ultimate purpose

Dadoosh accepts studying observable adaptation and antibiotic resistance. His disagreement concerns extending biological explanations into an assertion that life has no Creator or ultimate purpose. He asks why survival and reproduction should be treated as sufficient answers to every question about life.^[13]

The scientific account should also be described accurately. The National Academies' discussion distinguishes undirected biological changes from evolution as a whole: natural selection is not simply random. This corrects the episode's compressed description without settling its separate theological questions about purpose.^[14]

Applied to medicine, the presenter's argument is that identifying trauma, inherited vulnerability or a brain process does not answer every metaphysical question. But those findings can still matter greatly for care. NIMH describes psychosis as having multiple possible contributors and causes, including illness, sleep deprivation and some substances or medicines. Assessment is needed to distinguish them; experiencing psychosis does not automatically mean schizophrenia.^[15]

The unseen and the burden of evidence

Dadoosh asks whether a physician can exclude a cause that the physician's methods cannot directly observe. He then returns to Marzinsky's accounts of hostile voices and their reported response to spiritual practices. These accounts supply the evidence he finds persuasive, but this episode does not present a controlled comparison establishing their explanation.^[16]

He illustrates concealment with a thought associated with Charles Baudelaire: the devil's most effective deception is to persuade people that he does not exist. The idea appears in Le Joueur généreux, where the devil recalls a preacher's warning. It is a literary illustration, not a hadith or a medical finding.^[17]

Dadoosh also recounts a period of religious doubt in his twenties, during which troubling thoughts intensified in prayer. He interprets that experience through waswasah, satanic whispering, and credits Allah's help and continued worship with his recovery. His personal account should not be converted into a retrospective psychiatric diagnosis. Nor should his wider use of waswasah erase the distinctions between ordinary intrusive thoughts, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and psychosis.^[18][19]

The history of scientific ideas

The episode questions the assumption that early modern science began with uniformly atheist thinkers. Newton's own General Scholium provides a clear example: it discusses an intelligent divine ruler while also explaining the evidential approach of experimental philosophy. This supports distinguishing Newton's religious commitments from a simple picture of universal materialism; it does not establish the episode's further allegations of concealed satanic allegiance.^[20]

Dadoosh next invokes Auguste Comte and Max Weber in describing a historical movement away from spiritual explanations. Comte's own first lecture names theological, metaphysical and positive stages. That is more precise than the episode's religious–magical–natural shorthand. Weber's notion of disenchantment is also mentioned, but the particular passage and evaluative wording attributed to him remain to be checked.^[21][22]

Psychological and institutional pressures

Training, belonging and disagreement

The last section turns to why people can find it difficult to question a professional framework. Dadoosh points to years of demanding training, respect for teachers, attachment to colleagues and the practical successes of medicine. He compares this with the way religious communities shape their members' assumptions. These are proposed explanations of resistance, not demonstrated motives of particular doctors.^[23]

He explicitly avoids applying his account to every clinician and acknowledges medicine's substantial benefits. His criticism concerns what he sees as an unjustified claim to explain the whole person. Disagreement should therefore address the actual argument and conduct of a practitioner, rather than treating medical expertise as evidence of unbelief or dishonesty.^[24]

Professional psychiatric guidance itself leaves space for faith. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says that spiritual concerns should be taken seriously, describes prayer and religious support within care, and allows involvement of a person's faith leader. That is an important qualification to a picture of medicine as uniformly opposed to religion. Such support is not an endorsement of every proposed spiritual diagnosis.^[25]

Fraud, experience and the limits of a practice

Dadoosh acknowledges fraud and mistakes among spiritual practitioners. He reports an unnamed therapist's very high estimate of dishonesty, but questions its basis. The percentage is an impression in a private conversation, not a measured prevalence. His response is to distinguish trustworthy religious care from exploitation rather than to assume that every practitioner is reliable.^[26]

He also distinguishes scriptural examples from later practical experience. The report of Uthman ibn Abi al-As describes the Prophet ﷺ addressing what troubled him during prayer. The account of a Companion reciting al-Fatihah for a bitten or stung chief records healing and the Prophet's approval. These reports have their own contexts; they do not authenticate every later diagnostic claim or technique.^[27][28]

The episode places considerable weight on a practitioner's faith and experience. That should not become a judgment that a suffering person is spiritually deficient. Its reports of recovery among people of different beliefs remain accounts without the individual records needed to assess diagnosis, concurrent treatment and outcome.^[29]

Caring for the whole person

Dadoosh calls for Muslim scholarship and medical research able to take spiritual questions seriously. He recommends combining trusted ruqyah with medical treatment, while also alleging that commercial and professional pressures can obstruct alternatives. The episode supplies no documentary case establishing a coordinated suppression campaign, so those allegations remain unverified.^[30][31]

The patient's needs should remain central. Prayer and support can accompany professional care without making a voice, a fear or a practitioner's impression proof of possession. Medical care is also broader than medication alone: NIMH describes psychotherapy, family support and help with work or education, with recovery possible. Treatment decisions, including changes to medicine, belong in discussion with the treating clinician.^[15][25]

References