40 Hadiths on Social Justice
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Hadith #36 - The Prophet's Doctors and Islam's History of Healthcare
In Hadith #36 of the 40 Hadiths on Social Justice Series, Sh. Omar Suleiman discusses Islam's history of healthcare, preventing and treating illness, and taking care of those who are ill.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. You can get seated inshallah. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Wa salatu wa salamu ala rasulihi al kareem wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salamu tasliman kathira. So just a house keeping note to begin that next week, which is on Tuesday, next Tuesday will be the last week that we do the halaqa for you on justice. Of course, the week after, we'll inshallah, we'll be going into Ramadan at that point on May 15. So potentially taraweeh or Ramadan, so I think it's important that we'll just stop it next week inshallah. Then we'll just have a few halaqas left after Eid where we'll finish off our 40. We're getting there. We're in the last, truly in the final stretch. I believe this is 36 at this point, right? Yes, no, maybe? 36, right? And tonight's topic is actually one of my favorite ones. I'm not sure why, such a low turnout tonight. Something happening tonight? What's going on tonight? NBA playoffs? That doesn't explain the sister's decline. Attendance as well. So I'm not sure what's happening tonight unless people are preparing for the NRA convention. That's possible too. Tonight's halaqa is actually one that I think is probably the most important or one of the most important in framing contemporary issues within an Islamic context, the issue of health care. Rarely do you see health care covered within an Islamic context, and beyond just mentioning Ibn Sina and some of the great medical pioneers in the past that arose from Muslim empires,
but actually how we conceive of this as an Islamic issue or what we can operate out of, particularly the paradigm of the sunnah of the Prophet, peace be upon him. So I'll start off with this hadith just to set the spiritual undertone of this, which is very profound. Remember, as I said last week, people with disabilities were looked at as curses on society, as burdens on society, as a population that brought no benefit whatsoever. And that shaped the attitude and that shaped the policy towards people with disabilities. When we talk about health care and just how we view the sick as a whole, there's a hadith from Abu Huraira, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Prophet, peace be upon him, said that Allah will say on the Day of Judgment, so this is a hadith Qudsi, Allah will say on the Day of Judgment, O son of Adam, I was sick and you did not visit me. So the person will say, Ya Rabb, kif a'uduka wa anta Rabbul Alameen, O my Lord, how could I have visited you when you are the Lord of the world? How is it possible that you were sick or that I could visit you and you are the Lord of the world? Qala ama alimta anna abdi fulana marida falamta audhu? Did you not know that my servant so and so was sick and you did not visit him? And so Allah continues to say, ama alimta annaka lau'udtahu lau'ajatani aindaha? Don't you know that had you visited that person, you would have found me with him? Had you visited that person, you would have found me there. The hadith continues that I was hungry and you did not feed me. And the person says, Ya Rabb, O my Lord, how could I feed you when you are the Lord of the world?
And the answer is that ama alimta, did you not know that so and so was hungry? And had you fed him, and this is where there is a distinction, had you fed him, then you would have found that reward with me. You would have found that reward with me. Lau'ajatathalika aindi, you would have found that reward with me. The hadith continues with one more that I was thirsty and you did not give me anything to drink. The same answer, don't you know that so and so was thirsty and you did not give that person anything to drink? Had you done so, lau'ajatathalika aindi, you would have found that reward with me. There is a difference between how Allah addressed the sick person and how He addressed the hungry person and the thirsty person. You know what it is? The sick person is the only one that Allah uses the words, you would have found me with that person. With the others, you would have found the reward. But the sick person, you would have found me with that person. This automatically sets the stage for how we view the ill. How we view those that are ill in society. So beyond just talking about the rights that a sick person has on society, you talk about the nature of how society views that person. Especially if we are operating out of an Islamic ethos in this situation. That's why, for example, and I don't want to go through all the hadith, all the narrations about the reward for visiting the sick and taking care of the sick. Because honestly, this is a deep subject from an intellectual perspective. You can find many, if you just search the reward for visiting the sick in Islam, you will find many different narrations, many different traditions. One of them, that the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, said that 70,000 angels accompany a person when they go to visit the sick. And they accompany that person when they leave that sick person all the way until you reach home.
Or all the way until you reach to the point that you departed from. That 70,000 angels would accompany you. Some of the scholars mention the benefit of that. That the Prophet, Peace be upon him, told us about Al-Bayt Al-Ma'mur. The frequently visited home in the heavens, which is a place that 70,000 angels visit every day to glorify their Lord. And they never return. So, they connected that tradition, that hadith, with this hadith Qudsi, that when you're going to visit the sick, it is as if you are going to visit Allah. So, you've got 70,000 angels that would accompany you on that visit. How amazing is that? I mean, just making a simple intention when you go to visit someone in the hospital, that I'm going to go with 70,000 angels to visit this person right now. It's a beautiful hadith, a beautiful narration. And we know that Allah and His Messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, are truthful. Meaning that this is not an exaggeration, but this is truth. So, if you start to view the sick as the source or a place or a person that is accompanied by Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, that will shape the way that people would rush to treat the ill, the way that people would rush to comfort the ill, the way that people would rush to direct resources towards the ill. So, let's now break this down through some of the narrations and through some of the ways that Islam conceives of this at the societal level. Well, number one, you can't talk about health care unless you talk about prevention of illness and prevention of disease. And it's really interesting because it starts off with addressing moderation in eating, drinking, and even fasting, consumption. 2016 marked a turning point in human history. Does anyone know what that turning point was?
The first time in history that you have more obesity than people that are underweight in the world, globally. Meaning more people get sick now because of eating too much than eating too little. If you think about what that says about our world now in terms of economic disparity and in terms of the resources not being funneled properly, the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer, more people would need health care because of overconsumption as opposed to those who would need health care because of not consuming enough. And this is a historical, this is the first time in human history that this has happened and it says a lot. So, you can't talk about this topic without going through, وَكُلُوا وَشْرَبُوا وَلَا تُصْرِفُوا where Allah mentions to eat and drink but not to be excessive in your eating and in your drinking. So, it starts off with that. The second thing is that Islam as a religion taught seeking treatment as a religious duty. In many religious traditions, it's looked down upon to seek a cure for your illness, especially when we're talking about the old religion. It's looked down upon to seek a cure for your illness because it represents a deficiency in your trust in God. So, it contradicts a metaphysical understanding to some traditions that you would go and you would seek help. The Prophet ﷺ said, تَدَاوُوا He said, seek treatment, O servants of God. تَدَاوُوا فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ عَزَّ وَجَلَ لَمْ يَضَعْ دَاءً إِلَّا وَضَعْ لَهُ دَوَاءً غَيْرَ دَاءٍ وَاحِدٍ الْحَرَمُ The Prophet ﷺ said, seek treatment, O servants of Allah. For Allah did not create a disease except that He created for it a cure except for aging.
So, every disease or every illness has a cure except for aging. So, the Prophet ﷺ said, seek treatment when you have an illness because there is a cure if you look hard enough. Islam also dealt with the way that we would treat, obviously back then in particular, plagues. So, the idea of medical quarantine, you'll find some of these concepts in our literature. So, for example, the Prophet ﷺ said, do not enter a land in which there is a plague nor exit a land fleeing from the plague. Do not enter a land in which there is a plague nor exit a land fleeing from the plague. When you think about contagiousness and quarantining and protecting the wellness of the welfare of society as a whole. This was, by the way, a new concept and it ties into the seeking treatment part because there is a very famous narration where Umar, radiyallahu anhu, at the state level applied this. When a plague hit a land, that the people that were in that land should not leave it and the people that were not there should not go to it. And the statement that he said to Abu Ubaidah, may Allah be pleased with him, when he said, are you running away from the decree of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? He said, we're running from the decree of Allah to the decree of Allah. That our understanding of the decree of God and divine providence does not mean that you don't actively do your best to avoid harm. So we're running from the qadr of Allah to the qadr of Allah. We're running from the decree of Allah to the decree of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Islam taught societal preservation because bad health compromises society at large. So where the Prophet, peace be upon him, says, la darara wa la mirar. There is no harm allowed nor any reciprocation of harm. There is no harm allowed nor any reciprocation of harm.
So under that principle of la darara wa la mirar, that's where the scholars talked about the importance of hygiene in Islam. And where they talked about the prohibition of khamr, of intoxicants, or the prohibition of extramarital relationships. All of this came under this principle of there is no harm and no reciprocation of harm and preserving the health of society as a whole. And this is how the scholars early on, Islamic scholars, were able to derive from what are seemingly restricted theological texts to relevant texts to society all the way to using a siwak, to the way that you use a toothbrush. All in the name of preservation. And this is where you start to find some interesting people. I'm not going to get your hopes up if this is your thing, but I've been thinking about what the series will be after the 40 hadith on social justice. Looking at great contributors and pioneers in different fields that we often don't hear about. I can't promise that I'm going to do that. I'll think about it. But you find some really interesting people that arose out of the seerah of the Prophet ﷺ. You guys don't seem too excited about that subject. How many of you have heard of al-Harith ibn Kalda? Does that name sound familiar? From the companions of the Prophet, peace be upon him, al-Harith ibn Kalda. Has anyone in here ever heard that name? Interesting man. He was, according to traditional sources, some say that he's the oldest known Arab physician. The oldest known Arab physician. So all of you that want to force your children to become doctors, you need to read about this man. But don't force your children to become doctors. Oldest known Arab physician, and he was a sahabi. He was one of the companions of the Prophet ﷺ. And at that time, if you read about Gundus Shapur, Gundus Shapur was the intellectual center of the Sassanid Empire. That's where they were developing their tradition of medicine,
and they were developing their sciences and things of that sort in the Sassanid Empire. So Gundus Shapur, and I'm sure I'm not pronouncing it right, but G-U-N-D-E-S-H-A-P-U-R. This man, al-Harith ibn Kalda, wadiyaAllahu anhu, actually went to study there. And he learned what he learned there, and then he came back to the society of the Prophet ﷺ. And the Prophet ﷺ, he started this pursuit of Islamic medical knowledge, if you will, before Islam started, but when he came back, the Prophet ﷺ employed him to help people. To actually use his newfound medical knowledge to help people. So what did I say his name was? Al-Harith ibn Kalda, or Kalada. Kaf, Lam, Dal, Tamar, Buta. So you find a person like this. You also find al-Muqawqis of Egypt, the ruler of Egypt. He sent a physician for the Prophet ﷺ. And what the sources imply is that he was sending a physician just to care for the Prophet ﷺ. A physician just to take care of the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ instead turned around and commissioned him to treat all of the people of Medina free of charge. So free healthcare existed in Medina through this physician that was sent by al-Muqawqis of Egypt as a gift to the Prophet ﷺ. You also find a woman by the name of Rufayda al-Aslamiyya. Rufayda al-Aslamiyya. How many of you have heard that name? Rufayda al-Aslamiyya. Oh yeah, we found someone, alhamdulillah. One person heard of her name. There are actually scholarships that are named after her in the Muslim world at least, in some of the universities. This was a woman that the Prophet ﷺ appointed, she was a nurse, to tend to the wounded.
If you go to the seven masajid, the seven mosques in Medina, the masjid of Salman al-Farisi is where she tended to the wounded. The Prophet ﷺ appointed for her a share of the spoils of war. And basically he set up camps, so field medics or military paramedics were appointed in the masjid. So she had a tent in the masjid. So you think about the masjid free clinic concept, the Prophet ﷺ had that concept in Medina. And the woman that was in charge of that was Rufayda al-Aslamiyya radiyaAllahu ta'ala anha. So this not only covered health care costs, but the medical training and the schooling. So this is a profound example that we find from the Prophet ﷺ. And the Prophet ﷺ used to praise this woman. So what did I say her name was? Rufayda al-Aslamiyya radiyaAllahu ta'ala anha. So you've got a physician, you've got a nurse, you've got people that are caring and tending to the poor in Medina at that time. And this idea formed the spiritual foundation of the concept of al-qaf, the concept of endowments. Al-qaf, endowments that would take care of people. This is really where you start to find the spiritual foundation of this in Islam. So the al-qaf of Damascus, which were the most prominent endowments in early Islamic history, not only did they produce the world's first hospitals, they also produced, and this is where the al-qaf system reached, they also produced homes for senior cats, dogs and cattle. So you can actually read about that. Basically the more charitable that Muslims became, and the more that the al-qaf grew, they had to find new charitable endeavors. So retired cats and dogs was a thing.
A waqf to hire out people to walk elderly people in the rain under an umbrella, there was a waqf for that. There was an endowment that was dedicated to that. Those were the days. Those were the days that people put their money into that charitable circulation, to where they were coming up with causes. I'm not saying there weren't legitimate causes, of course there were legitimate causes, but they were expanding in the realm of ihsan and excellence with things that no civilization prior to them had thought of. Obviously you look at some of the earliest pharmacists, you learn about al-Bayrouni, or you learn about al-Razi or ibn Sina and ibn Rushd, people that were the pioneers in medicine. This is an important part here to understand how did Muslims really take this idea of health care as a right of the individual and implement it institutionally. It breaks my heart sometimes when I go through the Muslim world and I see the poor quality of the hospitals. If you want to get treated properly, you've got to come this way. It used to be the opposite. It was directed to the east, to Baghdad, for the best hospitals, for the best universities. That's because the first hospital actually originated in Baghdad, about 700 years before the first hospital in the west in Italy. There was a hospital in Baghdad, and that was built by Harun al-Rashid, one of the early caliphs in Islam, one of the early khulafa. 500 years before Italy had its first hospital, Cordoba had 50 hospitals. This idea of medical centers and hospitals and clinics originated out of the Muslim world. How many med students do we have here? Doctors? What kind of community is this?
Medical board exams that make people want to hurt themselves sometimes? What do you do? Dentistry. That's medicine too, right? Take care of people's teeth. The concept of a medical board exam, making sure that people were qualified. Actually, some of the earliest to write about medical board exams, they based it on a hadith. The hadith in Abu Dawud, the Prophet ﷺ says, Whoever practices medicine, while not being known to be proficient in medicine, is to be held accountable. Whoever practices medicine, while not being known to be proficient in medicine, is to be held accountable. That's a hadith in Abu Dawud. So you could see these early pioneers of medicine basing these institutions and these policies off of hadiths, off of a spiritual foundation that we find in our tradition. Was this to be restricted to some elite class? No. In fact, Umar radiyallahu ta'ala anhu, Umar bin al-Khattab, the second khalifa, the second caliph, he once passed by a group of Ahl al-Dhimma, so they weren't Muslims, that were afflicted with leprosy. So he commanded that the jizya be suspended and also that a medical stipend be granted to them from bayt al-mal, from the treasury of the Muslims, to treat them. Okay, so the idea that this treatment was supposed to be available even to non-Muslims under the Islamic Khilafah. This was something that also extended to prisoners and captives, where Ali radiyallahu ta'ala anhu was the first one that we find narrations about him routinely checking up on prisoners and making sure that their health was maintained. Umar bin Abdul Aziz, there's a letter that he wrote to his governors, again we're talking about the first hundred years of Islam,
and he said, check who is inside or amongst the prisoners and pay close attention to those who are sick. The khalifa al-mu'tadhib, that's a tough name, I know, 9th century khalifa al-mu'tadhib, he dedicated 1500 dinars monthly on sick prisoners' needs. So those who were sick, prisoners who were sick and needed to have their needs fulfilled, he dedicated 1500 dinars a month to them as a stipend. And you find many different stories from some of the early Abbasid khalifas in particular. So the Abbasid khalifa produced many of these medical advancements that were not known to people before. And there's a quote that I really appreciate from William Osler. William Osler is a founder and the second president of the Medical Library Association. And he said, by the way, you guys have all heard the name canon, the word canon, not the canon. When you speak about a group of literature, that comes from the word in Arabic, qanun. That's actually where it comes from. So he said the qanun, the canon of Ibn Sina, has remained a medical bible in Europe for a longer period than any other work. The 19th century Canadian founder of medicine, if you will, or one of the founders or presidents of modern medicine, the Medical Library Association, the qanun of Ibn Sina has remained a medical bible in Europe for a longer period than any other work. That's in history. So how do we understand those concepts and then weave them into modern day concepts? How did this work and what lessons can we take from it?
This is where you separate between state and the welfare or the goodness of a people. The proliferation of the concept of waqf, of the endowment, is certainly what spearheaded the Muslim civilization in this regard, with the support of state. So the state supported this idea of charitable contribution and charitable giving, and society as a whole taking it upon themselves to care for every sick person, Muslim, not Muslim, prisoner, not prisoner, whatever it may be, that everyone had a right to be taken care of, that no one should ever be restricted from health care. In fact, the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, really interestingly, I mean, this is not something that many people would believe, but he sent Sa'd ibn Abi Waqas to read al-Fatiha, to read ruqya, which is the Quran, to read the Quran on a non-Muslim chief as a form of cure. So this idea of even reading ruqya speaks to the general right of every person to have that care for them in this world. Now, all of this continued historically, at least in the Muslim world. What dismantled the waqf system was actually colonial meddling. So colonial meddling started to slowly dismantle the waqf system and it uprooted that entire system, the endowment system, and that's where you found that the medical advancements that were made, at least in terms of care, really started to disappear. But it's important to mention here that it was not Bayt al-Maal or the generosity of the Sultan that made our medical civilization a reality, but the waqf model which the masses competed in due to their Islamic engineering. I'm going to say that again. It was not Bayt al-Maal, the treasury, or the generosity of a leader,
the generosity of a head of state, that made our medical civilization a reality, but it was the waqf model, the endowment model, which the masses competed in due to their Islamic engineering. You could not separate that spiritual incentive from the rights of people to be taken care of. Now, where does that lead us to now? Obviously, we have people that die on a daily basis because they don't have access to health care. Tens of thousands of people here in America, in an advanced country, because you cannot afford to get sick in this country because of the big interests that have manipulated that entire industry. You can't afford to get sick in America. That's a terrible thought. Again, I've said this in some of the previous classes, that years from now, people will look at this and they'll say, man, that was really backwards. They're really regressive in some of these regards. That's really a backwards way of thinking in some ways. We have to learn to take care of people because they deserve to be taken care of, because they're sick. There's the policy level. We can find our tradition empowering enough and enabling enough to take on the right to health care as an Islamic obligation, as a moral issue. This is a moral issue that people should not be stopped from being able to get health care because they are financially incapable. It's a moral issue. The second thing here is that our communities need to lead the way in charitable hospitals and charitable clinics. We've had several Muslim clinics that have been established. We need to make sure that we also have hospitals and we need to really take that to the next level. Meaning it should be a part of every masjid built into the masjid's function that there's a free medical clinic. Those medical clinics need to be mobile. They need to be taken to downtown.
They need to be taken to places where people don't typically have that access. We need to pool our resources in that regard. I think that the point of this is obviously to give us that spiritual imperative, to give us that Muslim imperative to treat this as an issue that just as those that pioneered the medical civilization within an Islamic context, we need to be able to take these directives and implement them within our own capacity. And Allah knows best. There is one hadith that I wanted to share with you all last week that I forgot to mention. You guys remember what we talked about last week? Nobody? I'm looking at you. There you go. Disabilities. This is a beautiful hadith that I found, because it's about how you make people feel as well. We talked about disabilities last week. How you make people feel. We talked about the Prophet turning away from a man who was blind in a very inconvenient situation. Even though he could not see the Prophet's frown, it was more about how the Prophet's attitude was towards Abdullah ibn Um Maktoum. This hadith is a very powerful hadith. It's an authentic hadith. The Prophet said, لا تدين النظر إلى المجدومين. Do not stare at those who have leprosy. Leprosy was a very common disease in their society, a very common illness. Do not stare at those who have leprosy. If you think about merging that with the hadith of تبسمك في وجه أخيك صدقة, a smile in the face of your brother, is a charity. Have you ever felt the difference between a doctor who smiles at you and who's reassuring, and a doctor who treats you like he wants you dead? You might do the same thing medically, but there's something about a smile,
there's something about comforting someone and not making them feel like a burden. You take that hadith, تبسمك في وجه أخيك صدقة, to smile in the face of your brother is a charity, pair it off with this hadith, don't stare at a person who has an illness that would make them self-conscious. That's the amount of detail that we're supposed to pay attention to as part of our أخلاق, as part of our morals and mannerisms as believers. You're supposed to pay attention to that much. Now implement that. When someone is around you and you know they might be self-conscious about something, don't stare, don't look at them in a way that would make them think that there's something wrong. Instead, show charity to them by smiling and acting normal, not making them feel repulsed or making them feel awkward. So the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم made it a point that we pay attention to the self-esteem of people, the emotional health of people, beyond just the physical disability or the physical sickness and illness that we spoke about today. So the physical disability of last week or the physical illness that we spoke about today, the emotional well-being of people is also important. So last week we covered mental health and we covered physical disability. This week we've covered health care as a whole. But emotional well-being, that's not something that you can put in a book usually. That's not something that you can package in an institution. That's just something that has to become part and parcel of how you function. So we ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to allow us to care for those who are ill, to protect us from any sort of harm in this life and the next. We ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to instill within us compassion towards those who are ill and to show us compassion as we are all spiritually ill and in need of Him. Allahumma ameen.
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