From Pain to Purpose: My Journey to Islamic Psychology.

Returning to the roots and Reviving the legacy.

I still remember the moment as if it happened yesterday. My high school bench mate, my closest friend, sat beside me on the school bench after attempting suicide by taking his father’s pills. We were in Qatar, one of the most developed Muslim countries in the world, surrounded by towering hospitals and institutions. But there was no one—no one—he could turn to who could offer him help that honored both his pain and his faith.

That moment never left me. It felt like that day planted a seed inside me. But, the heart was already a fertile soil for this seed to be planted as Allah made me start my journey into Islamic psychology even before that—with the quiet pain of my own childhood.

As a young boy, I was bullied relentlessly for not knowing English. Day after day, the ridicule chipped away at me. There were no school counselors to speak to, no supportive adult who could validate what I was going through, and certainly no understanding of the silent trauma a child endures when he’s made to feel less just for being different. The pain was swallowed, not healed. I began to wonder: How many more children like me are suffering in silence? How many are taught to suppress rather than heal?

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• Click to Read more of the struggles of learning English and Overcoming bullying - "Your Child doesn't have the ability to speak English!"

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That question would become the compass for my life.

Even as an immature teenager, I knew that our Ummah was in dire need of something essential—something often neglected: psychological support rooted in Islam. It turned into a passion. I started to self-study with the limited materials Allah gave me acess to. The internet was my teacher, libraries my sanctuary. I devoured every psychology and self-help book I could find in the school library. As I write this, memories take me back to the instance I wrote my first research article with the help of Allah at age 14—it was on OCD, exploring solutions from the Qur’an while drawing on Dr. Ian Osborn’s work. It wasn’t perfect, but it was sincere. And it was the beginning of something. A lifelong Journey.

Later, when I moved to Kerala for my higher studies, I faced another rude awakening. The psychological state of the Muslim youth was worse than I had imagined. The Indian Muslim community is one of the world’s largest—but in terms of accessible, culturally and spiritually appropriate mental health support, there was almost nothing.

It felt like a silent epidemic—masked by smiles, buried under shame. Isaw many young people who lived in pain and agony without anyone to helo them. It felt like watching people drown, and there was no help in sight.

So I got involved as much as i can. During my psychology degree, I volunteered for mental health outreach campaigns. I travelled from school to school, college to college, working in Childline as the chairman of the ambassador network, encouraging young people to speak up and seek help. It was a very fulfilling work.

During the floods and landslides in Kerala, i travelled with a team of volunteers, deep into the affected regions to offer any Psychological help i could. There was very little i could do back then, due to the lack of proper credentials and training in the field. So, I connected many who came for help to trained professionals. Whenever I saw any instances or incidents that required psychological assistance, I readily referred them to trained licensed Psychologists or counsellors with years of experience and expertise in hpes they find the solutions to their problems.

That’s when something else began to disturb me. I started noticing seeing a pattern. A very problematic pattern.

Some of the people who I referred to these psychologists not only failed to get better, but they got worse. Psychologically and spiritually. Some who spent months with these psychologists seemed to become more liberal and uninterested in their own faith. I started noticing a recurring problem—there was a huge gap between what our Muslim clients needed and what the field of psychology could offer them. I saw how many students, who came to college holding tight to their Islamic identity, slowly began to let it go—replaced by secular or liberal values they absorbed from the field. I sat through conferences, seminars, and lectures that proudly upheld liberal views and aged philosophies of Freud and others—thinkers whose ideas fundamentally clashed with Islamic worldview. Some theories even felt… harmful and dangerous!

I found myself becoming increasingly uneasy. I spent days and nights diving deep into materials of Psychology one after the other in hopes of clarifying my confusions. I deeply loved this field and strongly believed that this field is the answer to a huge portion of world’s problems. Weeks and months went by, Deeply introspecting and critically analysing the theories i had learnt. Coming across Dr fredrick crew’s work on Sigmund freud was mind-blowing. The more deeply I went into the field, the more contradictions I saw. Not just superficial problems, but very foundational ones. Beginning from the problems with DSM all the way to how deeply liberalism and other post modern philosophies infiltrated the field. The next few weeks, My mind was filled with cognitive dissonance. It was stressful to say the least! A lot of questions and confusions reverberated through my mind. It felt suffocating. I was trying my best to cognitively reconcile to entirely polar opposing world-views that were at cross with each other.

In my second year of university, something snapped. During our psych exams, I remember sitting in the hall, staring at the answer sheet. I had memorized and learned the textbook well enough to have aced the test with ease. I could’ve scored well. But my conscience refused to let me write. I couldn’t bring myself to put down answers that I no longer believed in. It felt like I lost my faith in modern Psychology.

It was a painful period of conflict. But from that pain came clarity: We don’t just need psychologists who are Muslims. We need psychology that is Islamic.

This led me to the world of Islamic psychology. At first, I was hopeful. But as I started networking with professionals who used the term “Islamic psychology”, I noticed something concerning. Many were simply applying Islamic terms over Western frameworks. Freud’s id, ego, and superego were being equated with the three types of nafs. Law of attraction was given an islamic branding and marketed for their own financial purposes. Non-Islamic concepts were presented as islamic under the guise of Islamic Psychology. There was no concern for the epistemological foundations. There was no respect for the original Islamic sciences. There were many who used the term islamic psychology without any background in islam or in Psychology.

That’s when I realized something crucial: you cannot serve the mind without first understanding the soul, And you cannot understand the soul without knowing the One who created it, And you cannot do so until you step deep into the sciences of this beautiful faith.

So I made a life-altering decision.

With the help of Allah, I left for Egypt, enrolled at Al-Azhar and began my journey into traditional Islamic sciences. It wasn’t easy. Life openeup a lot of challenges on the way. I travelled through villages all the way from caito to the Sudanese border on a bike coveinr 4000 KM, lived simply, and studied with scholars from diverse backgrounds. I sat with them, immersed myself in classical texts, and spent days in the courtyard of Al-Azhar masjid reading books on Islamic psychology. Coming across books from Dr. Malik Badri, Dr. Hooman Keshavarzi and Dr. Abdullah Rothman influenced me deeply. Egypt taught me the depth of Islam and the diversity of the Ummah. I saw islamic Psychology as a pathway to unity. These experiences showed me that Islamic psychology could be a door to healing and unity—if done right.

Later, With the help of Allah, I was selected to study in Madeenah under a noble sheikh. I lived with him, travelled across Saudi Arabia with him. Studying with him was very transformative. I witnessed the beauty of islam from the way he practiced it. I saw how developed a person can become when they become an open manifestation of islamic Principles. and witnessed something extraordinary: people came to him broken—with what modern psychology would call anxiety, trauma, or depression—and left with peace, without a single diagnosis. The healing was spiritual, powerful, rooted in Qur’an and Sunnah.

And it worked!!

It made me question: What are we missing?

This isn’t a rejection of psychological sciences. It’s a call to reclaim what is ours. To build frameworks that are both scientific and spiritually sound. To stop painting over Freud with Islam—and instead, return to our own divine foundations.

But theory alone isn’t enough.

When I returned to India, I received devastating news: one of my closest students had taken his own life due to intense bullying. Life circumstances made him jump from the 26th floor of his building to escape the deep mental pain placed on his shoulders by an unjust system. That moment broke me. I had spent so much time studying, researching, writing. But what had I done with it?

That’s when SIP – the School of Islamic Psychology was born.

It was created not just to teach—but to serve. To build a new generation of practitioners who are deeply rooted in Islamic theology and equipped with the latest psychological knowledge. To help the young boy in school, the woman suffering in silence, the man praying for peace but not knowing how to find it.

And as I launched SIP, I knew I needed to keep growing in a guided manner. I don’t consider myself a qualified person to be mentoring others in the field because i myself needed a lot of polishing. There was a lot of learning to do. I had to focus on integrating the years of islamic studies and secular psychological studies. I needed mentorship, refinement, direction under experts in the field who guide me to the right direction. I made sincere du’a to Allah—especially in Arafah during Hajj—that He guides me to where I can benefit and be benefitted.

Alhamdulillah, The due was answered a few weeks ago when I was selected as one of the top candidates for the Islamic Psychology program at HBKU in Qatar—one of the finest programs in the world that integrates both Islamic and psychological sciences with scholarly rigor. I couldn’t help but go down in sujood out of happiness and thank Allah. It was a humbling experience. Alhamdullillah.

This is not just my story.

It’s a call.

A call to all those who carry pain but don’t know where to go. A call to Muslim youth wondering why no one understands their struggles. A call to the students of psychology who feel torn between their faith and their field.

There is a way.

We don’t need to abandon Islam to study the mind. We don’t need to abandon psychology to protect the soul.

We just need to return—to our sources, our scholars, our principles—and build something authentic, healing, and true.

This is my journey.

And, in sha Allah, it’s only the beginning…
May Allah rectify this weak slave of his and guide him towards the right direction. May Allah make this field a door of solace for thousands who are suffering in the depth of Darkness and pain.