Islam and Notions of the Self

By Salma Yaqoob

It is interesting to note that the Human Being is considered to be the meeting point of these two different dimensions. The arabic word for such a meeting point is barzakh – interspace.

In the light of this Islamic perspective, any efforts to gain an understanding of the self require a study of the spiritual aspect of the self. Knowledge of the self, and what it means to be human, in modern times however is not so much the domain of religion as the domain of the field of psychology.

In todays’ secular age, the field of psychology is in a way the new theology, and therapists and psychologists are the priests of this age. The irony is that the word “psychology” is based on the Greek word psyche, meaning “soul”, or, “spirit”. Psychology therefore means study of the soul. However it is now anything but, and indeed the idea of a soul or spiritual nature is not even acknowledged in mainstream psychology.

The Psychology of Basic Process of Sensation: Islamic Perspective

Dr.Alizi Alias (International Islamic University Malaysia)

Before talking about various sensory systems created by Allah (vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch), modern secular psychology usually starts by talking about sensory threshold and sensory adaptation. Sensory threshold refers to the smallest amount of energy needed for a person to consciously detect a stimulus 50 percent of the time it is present.  In other words, just enough for us to detect the slightest sensation (image, sound, smell, taste, or surface), 50% of the time. For examples: