A
47-year-old housewife who recently started using Islamic medicine emerged
tearfully from an exorcism, speaking of newfound tranquillity after a turbulent
period. Also, her abdominal pains are finally easing.
Suratmi, who suffers from an ovarian cyst, has
been taking a mix of herbal medicine harking back to the dawn of Islam, as well
as undergoing exorcisms at a clinic in Jakarta.
She is among a growing number of Muslims in
Southeast Asia turning away from Western medical care in favour of al-Tibb
al-Nawabi, or Medicine of the Prophet, a loosely defined discipline based on
the Quran and other Islamic texts and traditional herbal remedies.
"I heard that so many people have been
healed, so I hope Allah can help me. I followed His path here," said
Suratmi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
The Islamic medicine trend is often associated
with fundamentalists who charge that Western, chemically laced prescriptions
aim to poison Muslims or defile them with insulin and other medicines made from
pigs. Members of terrorist groups have been involved in Islamic medicine as
healers and sellers, while some clinics are used as recruiting grounds for
Islamist causes.
But the bulk of those seeking out Islamic
clinics, hospitals and pharmacies, appear to be moderate Muslims, reflecting a
rise in Islamic consciousness worldwide.
"Islamic medicine carries a cachet that,
by taking it, you are reinforcing your faith - and the profits go to
Muslims," says Sidney Jones, an expert on Islam in Southeast Asia with the
International Crisis Group.
Islamic medicine, toiletries and beauty
products have become a big business with a customer base in Southeast Asia
alone of roughly 250 million Muslims.
The industry's advertising is as gimmicky as
any in the West.
Capitalising on the popularity of US President
Barack Obama, who spent four of his childhood years in Indonesia, one company
produces a popular anti-stress concoction called Obahama - in a corruption of
an Indonesian phrase for herbal medicine.
Siwak-F, also exported to the Middle East, is
hailed as "toothpaste just like the Prophet used to use."
The industry also is going high-tech.
Malaysia's Petronas University of Technology
is developing an application for mobile devices to query what Islamic remedies
are recommended for anything from toothaches to depression, says Hanita Daud,
one of the developers.
Like much of Islamic medicine, it's grounded
on the saying that "Allah did not create a disease for which he did not
also create a cure." This is taken from Prophet Mohammed's teachings known
as hadiths, which along with the Quran make frequent references to diseases,
remedies and healthy living.
What is termed classical Islamic medicine
developed in medieval times when it far outshone that in Christian Europe, and
exerted a significant influence on it.
Practitioners say many ingredients in today's
treatments were used in Mohammed's time, including honey, olive oil, bee
pollen, dates and black caraway - which one ad claims is "a cure for every
disease but death."
In Indonesia, traditional medicine really took
off after a government promotional campaign in 2009, says Brury Machendra,
owner of the Insani Herbal Clinic in suburban Jakarta where Suratmi and up to
400 other patients per month seek treatment.
Only one such clinic existed in the Depok
suburb two years ago, but now there are 20, with 70 others waiting for
government permits.
Machendra, who also is secretary-general of
the Traditional Herbal Medicine Association of Indonesia, says most Indonesian
Muslims don't doubt conventional medicine. But he says Indonesia's health
services are so poor and expensive that many people seek out alternatives.
His clinic offers herbal medicine, a
bloodletting treatment known as bekam and exorcisms in which a white-gloved
therapist places a hand on a patient's head while chanting verses from the
Quran.
An exorcism costs about $12, while Machendra's
government-certified herbal products such as the anticancer BioCarnoma and
anti-diabetes BioGlukol go for no more than $5 for 60 capsules.
He acknowledges that clinics such as his
benefit from traditional Muslim rules forbidding certain ingredients and that
many fundamentalists "tell people not to go to infidel doctors and say
that buying Western medicine is forbidden."
Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked militant
network that is essentially banned in Indonesia, is believed to have links to
some herbal manufacturers and operate many of the country's Islamic medicine
clinics, International Crisis Group says.
But Jones says the clinics are aimed more at
building solidarity among Islamists rather than recruiting militants.
Some doctors are trying to bring Muslim
elements into the Western tradition.
"We practice evidence-based medicine but
we incorporate the spiritual for both our patients and staff," says Dr
Ishak Mas'ud, director of Al Islam hospital in the Malaysian capital of Kuala
Lumpur.
This approach, he says, allows such normally
taboo practices as abortions and pig heart transplants if these can save lives.
"I don't agree with some clinics which
say that, 'This is Islamic, so it has to be good,' " says Ishak, who was
trained in Australia and Great Britain.
The 60-bed hospital, which attracts patients
as far away as Somalia and Saudi Arabia, stresses holistic diagnoses, refrains
from giving definite prognoses since "death is in the hands of
Allah," and believes it is wrong to practice medicine with profit in mind,
he says.
Fees are 20 to 30 percent lower than at most
Malaysian hospitals.
"I am just the instrument of Allah and
doctors must tell their patients this," Ishak says. "You know doctors
can be arrogant. They will tell you that they can cure you in five days and
five days later you can be six feet underground. It's not me that is healing.
We are not powerful. In Islamic medicine, this is the key, the main
concept."
By Denis D. Gray
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