250615P - ADVANCING INTEGRATED ISLAMIC MEDICAL EDUCATION

Presentation at the Annual Meeting FOKI 2025, theme: ‘Advancing Islamic Medical Education and Research through Collaborative Excellence for Enhanced Shariah-Compliant Healthcare Services’ held in UMI, Makassar, Indonesia on 15th June 2025; by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule MB ChB (MUK). MPH (Harvard), DrPH (Harvard)

The Motivation of Integration in Medicine:

• Islam is not a state of being but an action to improve and get better towards the pleasure of Allah. This means that all human endeavors, including medicine, require the integration of Islamic values to improve.
• Integration is infusing the moral teachings of Islam, deriving from the ‘aqiidat and the practical regulations of the shari’ah into medicine.
• Integration is not parochializing medicine or creating medicine for Muslims only. It is the universalization of medicine because Islamic values are universal. 
• This universality, though obvious, is misunderstood or distorted by Muslims and non-Muslims.
• A lot has been achieved in the endeavor of Integrating medicine over the past endeavor over the past half-century, as will be explained below, but a lot remains to be done.

Tauhid is the Basis for Integration:

• Tauhid is the basic paradigm of Islamic thought (fikr), civilization (hadharat), and knowledge (ma’arifat).
• There is one Creator (tauhid al rubuubiyyat) for the whole universe; therefore, everything living or non-living and every phenomenon must have meaningful integration with everything else because the source is the same.
• We will focus on the integration of Islamic values (qiyam islamiyyat) in medicine, in the knowledge that there are other forms of integration.
• Integration of Islamic values into medical education, training, and practice is a prerequisite for quality healthcare in Muslim communities. No community or civilization can succeed without basing its development on its own values.

The Future of Integration in Medicine:

• The future of integrated medicine is very bright, not only for Muslims but for the whole of humanity, because Islamic values are universal and not parochial. 
• Integration is putting values in scientific medicine and not inventing a new type of medicine.
• Integration of values has more urgency because of profit-driven ethical violations in medical biotechnology, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and health insurance.

Definition of Islamic Medicine in 1995:

• A medicine seminar, organized by the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia in July 1995, discussed the issue of what constitutes Islamic medicine.
• Muslim physicians in Malaysia at that time were going through turbulent arguments with practitioners of traditional medicine, who were convincing many patients not to go to hospitals (non-Islamic medicine) but to seek medical care from them.
• This had resulted in disease diagnosis being delayed, and a solution was needed.
• A paper presented at that conference defined Islamic medicine, and part of its abstract is reproduced here.

Definition of Islamic Medicine in 1995, con’t. - 1:

• Islamic Medicine is defined as Medicine whose basic paradigms, concepts, values, and procedures conform to or do not contradict the Qur'an and Sunnah.
• It is not specific medical procedures or therapeutic agents used at a particular place or a particular time.
• Islamic medicine is universal, all-embracing, flexible, and allows for the growth and development of various methods of investigating and treating diseases within the framework described above.
• This definition calls for a basic transformation of medical systems. Islamic medicine thus becomes the result of an Islamic critique and reformulation of the basic paradigms, research methodology, teaching, and practice of medicine. This process of conceptual transformation, also called Islamization of medicine, is described in detail in the paper[1].

Historical Developments after 1995, con’t. 1:

• In this period, medical education from an Islamic perspective became a reality as faculties changed their curricula to reflect Islamic values.
• Focus was on two areas: medical fiqh (al fiqh al tibbi) and medical ethics relating to issues from biotechnology.
• Medical fiqh dealt with the impact of disease on the regulations of taharat, ibaadat.
• At a later stage regulation of munakahaat and mu’amalaat was covered.
• Existing fiqh rulings or new ijtihad by the jurists solved these problems by qiyas and ijma, and physicians and patients would be satisfied.

Historical Developments after 1995, con’t. 2:

• Developments in medical ethics in teaching and practice were more complex because medical technology created new dilemmas that could not be solved purely by fiqh because they had a moral dimension.
• The first was organ donation and organ transplantation.
• This was followed by assisted reproduction, such as in vitro fertilization, that developed tangential issues of ovum and sperm donation, surrogate motherhood, and disposal of excess fertilized embryos.

Historical Developments after 1995, con’t. 3:

• Advanced life support technology created issues of deciding to withhold/withdraw life support and how to use brain death as a criterion of death.
• In the genetic area, issues arose regarding gene therapy and genetic engineering. These issues could not be resolved using traditional fiqh, and recourse was to new tools.
• Starting in 2004, the theory of maqasid al shari’at emerged as the main guide in the area of medical ethics.[2,3]

Historical Developments after 1995, con’t. 4:

• Practical aspects of janazat management.
• Practical aspects of taharat and salat in cases of traumatic injury.
• Ibadat friendly hospital, rumah sakit mesra ibadat.

Organizations of Islamic Medicine:

• Local Islamic Medical Associations (IMAs).
• Federation of Islamic Medical Associations (FIMA).
• Islamic Hospitals Consortium (IHC).
• Consortium of Islamic Medical Colleges (CIMCO).

Kulliyyah of Medicine, Kuantan, Malaysia: 

IIUM Medical Centre: 

Overview of Integration:

• Integration of Islamic values into medical education, training, and practice is a prerequisite for quality healthcare in Muslim communities.
• No community or civilization can succeed without basing its development on its own values.
• We can now see the fruits of efforts integration starting in Malaysia more than 20 years ago. 
• Integrated medicine is being taught to doctors and nurses, and we have several Islamic or shari’ah-compliant hospitals. 
• We are looking forward to integrated healthcare systems, including health insurance, integrated research, and an integrated pharmaceutical industry.
• Integration of Islamic values in the medical faculty ensures integration of those values in the hospitals by future doctors. 

5 Components of Integration:

• Conceptually, we need to teach the Islamic concepts of life, death, disease/illness, and treatment.
• We then need to teach basic medical sciences as evidence of the well-coordinated and well-proportioned perfect creation by Allah, and that life processes follow the physical laws (sunan Allah) that the creator set.
• After that, we need to teach the Islamic ethical and fiqh aspects of diagnosing, preventing, and treating disease.
• After that, we need to teach the Islamic concepts of a healthy and balanced family and community, and how dysfunctions are the root causes of many human diseases. 
• Leadership and management.

Future Focus Areas of Integration:

• Community Medicine is based on the Islamic view of a healthy community.
• Medical research for new knowledge. Integration of Islamic epistemology with 3 sources of knowledge: aql, naql. Basic drives are the values of objectivity (istiqamat), purposiveness (ghaiyyat), and balance (tawazun).
• Curricula and teaching materials.
• Insurance and business models to ensure justice and equity in medical services coverage.

Problem With the Current Community Health Curriculum:

• Community health starts with community diagnosis, followed by programs that deal with the obvious and external manifestations of the problem.
• Community health should be more about establishing the normal and not diagnosing and dealing with the abnormal.
• We need to remove the root causes of addiction by strengthening community institutions before treating addiction.

A New Approach To Teaching Community Health: Family Institution

• Gender: each gender has competencies that the other lacks, leading to a strong pair.
• Family as a Natural Social Unit: The family must be preserved as the basic unit of society. 
• Marriage: start of family formation.
• Parents and Relatives are part of the extended family support system.
• Children: The next generation.

A New Approach to Teaching Community Health: Community Institution

• Masjid.
• Ukhuwwat.
• Takaful.
• Shuura.
• Maal (economic system).

A New Approach to Teaching Community Health: Community Problems

• Life-Style.
• Sexual Perversions.
• Addiction.
• Poverty.
• Violence.

A  New  Approach  to  Teaching Community Health: Community Actions

• Dawa.
• Enjoining the good and forbidding the bad, amr & nahy.
• Social change, taghyiir ijtima’e.

Future Focus Areas of Integration: Research:

• Medical research for new knowledge is part of the religious duty of ijtihad.
• Integration of Islamic epistemology with 3 sources of knowledge: aql, naql. 
• Basic drives are the values of objectivity (istiqamat), purposiveness (ghaiyyat), and balance (tawazun).
• Research priorities should be based on human needs, rather than profit motivations.
• Need for major changes in the funding and publication of research.

Future Focus Areas of Integration: Curricula and Teaching Materials

• Urgent need to develop integrated curricula.
• Need for integrated teaching/learning materials.
• Cooperation among medical schools.
• Problem of different views and concepts.
• Emphasis on professionalism based on Islamic values.

Future Focus Areas of Integration: Business Models

• Integration of Islamic Business Models into the Medical Education System.
• Integration of Islamic values in medical education about health insurance and universal access.

NOTE:

1. https://omarkasule-tib.blogspot.com/2011/05/950709p-islamic-medicine-concept.html
2. https://omarkasule-tib.blogspot.com/2011/05/040717p-medical-ethics-from-maqasid-al.html
3. https://omarkasule-tib.blogspot.com/2011/05/040717p-ethics-and-etiquette-of-human.html