Being a Muslim Psychology student, entering the human mind becomes interesting, and the path brings its own special intellectual conflict. And we end up at an intersection of two great worlds: the spiritual universe of the soul, the realm of consciousness and the world of divine creation; and the empirical world of neurons, neurotransmitters and observable behavior. – The concept of Fitrah

Getting around this intersection as a Muslim psychology student can be a fundamental crisis, to the extent that we debate within our own minds all the time what we have been taught in the lecture hall versus what is present in our faith. Am I just an emergent function of the biology of my brain? Am I just devoted to my moral compass fabricated by the society, or is it in my very blood and bones?

This conflict within the self is what we will examine in this blog in the context of Islamic definition of fitrah, i.e., the human disposition. We will find out that fitrah is not only not a theological concept, but a scientific principle can work our way out of this false dichotomy, and offer a more whole and holistic, integrated view of the human being. Towards the conclusion, we will be able to change how we perceive this predicament not as a problem, but as something remarkable and distinctive to be accepted.

The Two Maps in the Human Territory: The Deeper Dive

The essence of the dilemma is presented in that two various, and even conflicting, maps attempt to explain one and the same territory: human nature.

• The Map of the Soul and Fitrah: This is based on an Islamic view of human being: According to the Islamic view, a human being is a compound of both a moral soul (ruh), which is immaterial and was created by Allah in the best form (the best state). Every human being is born on a naive nature, the fitrah. This notion is based on the well known sayings, which serve as the foundation of the ruling, the imam, Farquhar such, where every kid is produced on the fitrah. It is deep that their parents make them a Jew, Christian or Magian. It refers to our default configuration to have a realization of Tawhid (Oneness of God) whose core is a sense of morality which tends to the good and away from the evil, and a recent longing of meaning, its connection and fairness. This soul is conscious, praiseworthy will, righteous responsibility and its destination goes beyond this temporal life. Products of actualizing this fitrah are what make the purpose of life
• The Map of the Brain and Behavior: Modern psychology, especially in its powerful paradigm of the Western world being far too materialistic, projects the human experience onto the physical brain and observable behavior nearly entirely. The thoughts are deemed as neural pathways that had become ever stronger through the very process of repeating, the emotion through the portions of the dopamine, serotonin, and cortisol, and the sophisticated behaviors accomplish themselves, often, to be the products of genetic predisposition (nature) and environmental conditioning (nurture). Other schools of thought, such as Behaviorism, the theory of observable stimuli and responses only, and neuropsychology, which tries to find the physical analogue of every mental experience, sometimes tend to be non-reliant on the reality of the soul, a transcendent purpose, and an in-built sense of what is right and wrong. It has been proposed as binary as human brain to construct an image of the self.

This is the source of a low-grade cognitive dissonance which is involuntary in every case involving the Muslim psychology students. We are in a lecture and we are learning something pertaining to the amygdala and fear and we automatically consider the question: “Well, how about fear in regard to Allah (khawf)? Is it just a chemical flare-up?”

Young Muslim psychology students read theories of moral development and ask themselves: “Is this more a matter of social learning, or is this the process of systematic realization of the fitrah which has always been there?” The question is pressing now; the thing is that in case my consciousness is only an epiphenomenon of the activity of my brain, then how will there be the I that will be brought to book? Well, in a case when my decisions are predetermined by my childhood, by my biology, where is my free will?

Fitrah: The Integrative Card between the Two Worlds

It is at this point that the idea of fitrah will become more than a bit of faith; it will become an effective integrative model. Fitrah does not conflict with the scientific exploration of the brain and behavior; it is the totality reality which causes it contextualizing and meaningful. The soul is linked to its physical entity, the soul, and that is what is referred to as the bridge.

The soul (ruh) can be viewed as user, the conscious willful accountable self, which is a useful analogy. A brain is the unbelievably advanced piece of equipment and software, a miracle of divine design. The output is the actions and words that appear on the screen of reality and this is behavior.

Fitrah is the native operating system, native software, then, which directs one to the truth and goodness, and bond with its Creator. It is our code of nature to compassion, justice and seek of meaning- those habits studied by secular psychologists as prosocial behavior, empathy, or moral intuition.

The hadith of the fitrah instructs us that the hardware (the body and the brain) is already pre loaded with this software. It lessens the dilemma of the Muslim psychology students when they come to understand that the empirically determined working of psychology is the working of how fitrah has to say itself, or repressed by means of the human mechanism. Psychology explains how it came about; Islam explains why. utilizing both in an integrated manner gives Muslim psychology students an edge.

Reserve the Maps in Practice: Theory to Therapy

Knowing fitrah provides an opportunity to make a Muslim psychology student approach the major not as a skeptic reluctance to work with the field, but as a physician who will approach constructively but at the same time be a critic.

1. In Understanding Mental Health: an Integrated Model
There could be a strictly materialist perception of depression being a chemical imbalance of the brain. It could be in a reductionist faith perspective that it is simply a frailty of faith or a deficiency in praying. Both are incomplete.

Using the fitrah model, a Muslim psychology student may maintain a balance between the two views and an element of compassion. It is entirely suitable to neurobiology of depression, which is undoubtedly a subject of dysregulation of neurotransmitters, the involvement of prefrontal cortex and hippocampus (malfunctioning hardware developed in the brain). It confirms also the effectiveness of evidence-based interventions such as Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) to reset the maladaptive cognition patterns.

Nevertheless, it takes a very important step. It poses the question: what is the situation of the soul? One of the manifestations of depression is the strong inability to realize the purpose, the hopelessness and regrettable guilt or a sense of out of context-all those conditions obscuring the real nature of the fitrah. Fitrah instinctively pursues hope, connection and purpose and its depression puts a shroud of the intentions.

Thus, the therapy within the context of this combined perspective may include both CBT interventions and interventions with spiritual background. A therapist assisted with this model may assist a client to:

• Pray (salah) as a form of message mindfulness and a discipline and oneness source.
• PRT by participating in remembrance (dhikr) in order to fight negative ruminations and find heart anchors.
• The idea of divine mercy and forgiveness needs to be revisited in order to deal with crippling guilt.
• See the point of voluntary service (sadaqah), and use the innate mercy of the fitrah to end the cycle of narcissism.

For Muslim psychology student, this is not treating the symptoms, it is attempts of polishing the heart and returning it to its ultimate source of peace, which is really where the dis-ease of the soul contains its roots.

2. In unfolding Human Development: Abetting the Inborn
Development psychologists such as Piaget and Kohlberg charted the observable developmental cognitive and moral reasoning stages. A Muslim psychology student is able to enjoy these stages and view them as the unfolding of the fitrah which have been influenced by the environment in the form of development.

The innate curiosity of a child regarding the person who created the stars is their fitrah appearing as mental edification. This is their fitrah being moral as they have their inherent sense of fairness in the playground (“That’s not fair!”). The post-conventional stage provided by Kohlberg where a sense of morality is promoted by universal few ethics, is strongly echoed in the conformity of the fitrah to a sense of divine justice, not just societal superficiality.

The parental and educational task, then, is not to impose morality upon the outside, but to care, safeguard, and encourage this beginnings of goodness, to grow out of the inside. Education is transformed into a tarbiyah process i.e. tilling the soil of willingness to be so that the seeds of knowledge and faith may flourish. It is to the legacy of the how of development that it provides the why of the divine purpose.

3. In Making Sense of Free Will and Determinism: The Compass and the Terrain
The debate on nature vs. nurture is the archetypal dilemma in psychology. The third view proposed by Fitrah is a more subtle viewpoint, namely, an underlying nature (the disposition of the soul) which gets molded by nurture (environment).

We are given a kind of compass (fitrah) when we are born that gives us Tawhid and moral truth. But upbringing, culture, trauma, our own personal choices may serve as magnetic interference– it may tune the compass, or make us disregard the result of the tuning, or call to mind that the instrument is defective. This model is a perfect way of attaching the Islamic aspect of divine command (qadar) and human responsibility.

As a component of our physical creation, the brain can predispose us to some specific impulses (aggression, addiction) either by genes or early childhood events (the deterministic effect). However, the soul as directed by its fitrah has the innate abilities of carrying out self-consciousness, introspection, and executive overreach to opt towards the superior way. Fasting (sawm) and praying are essentially fitness practices designed to install the better system of the soul to subjugate the desires of the body, to lose track and discover the right north.

The Opportunity to adopt the Comprehensive Perspective: The Sublime to Disaster

The prospect of Muslim psychology students is not the future of the intellectual feebleness but the future of the depth. It is the struggle needed and as honorable as to discover an inseparable truth in that divided world. True to the idea of fitrah Muslim psychology students can:

• Get Critical, and be a Confident Person: Muslim psychology students may learn more in departing from Freud and Skinner and Maslow than in dogging their assorted godless theories. It is possible to learn valuable information concerning the defense mechanism, conditioning, and self-actualization and sift through it, through the lens of Islamic worldview. We shall say this theory, this is a mechanism, but not the purpose.
• Make your own Unique contribution to the Field: It is, so badly needed by the world that there were psychologists and therapists who did not only meet clients as a case of symptoms or a disease name, but also as souls who got lost. An interpretation of fitrah enables Muslim psychology students to have an approach to therapy that is, however, comprehensive–healing the mind through attending to the heart, and treatment of behavioral malfunctions through restoring a person to his or her inborn, God-given vocation.
• To Find Intellectual and Spiritual Peace: It is a conflict between the soul and the brain as the soul appears to be, but when we find the brain to be the great creation in which the soul and its fitrah do their work in this world we feel that the problem of conflict has been solved. Once Muslim Psychology students integrate the concept of fitrah to modern psychology, the science of the brain turns into the science of the creation by Allah and the science of behavior transforms into a means of comprehending the way the human spirit shows and looks like.

It is against this light that studying of psychology, for Muslim psychology students, takes the form of a profound worship rather than a professional dilemma. It is a method of fulfilling the order to think about the creation of the heavens and the earth, to comprehend with the most significant of the creations of Allah: the human being is the creature itself. We are blessed with having Muslim psychology students to achieve this stage (but not a curse), to be in between, and to have a form of task to carry out between one world and another, to pursue a knowledge that will be both scientifically grounded and spiritually awakening.