Islamic Spiritual Aspects of Death and Dying - Research Paper Example

Islamic Spiritual Aspects of Death and Dying, Grief and Loss The approach in which individuals manage their mourning and grief for the loss of loved ones through death is a reflection on culture and people. The practices and beliefs of Muslim citizens from Israel stem have cultural-religious view organizing private and public loss and bereavement experiences. The prolonged public grief expression and ritualized mourning is not encouraged within Islamic practices while placing value on acceptance of Allah’s or God’s will with understanding and restraint. Distinction between return to full functioning after a loss involves management of attachments and memories among the deceased with the fundamental Two Track Bereavement Model. Distinctions, in this case, involve relevance to the analysis of responses to loss by the Israeli Muslims. The introduction to adverse Islamic death and loss attitudes, various basic elements in terms of response to death and bereavement have been considered. Islamic emphasis towards acceptance and the return to full functioning is instantaneous. Myriad ways that memories and relationships of deceased persons to the scales are bound with life lived after the death (Bregman, 2010). The area leaves significant room in terms of individual variation. Both the Sunnah and Quran illustrate that heartfelt and honest crying is not permitted and acceptable but Allah’s mercy helps in easing the heartache and pain of grief. Counselors are encouraged to reassure all Muslim faith persons that crying is both fitting and natural, and helps in dealing with loss and grief. Friends and neighbors are encouraged to undertake chores such as looking after children and cooking during the period while individuals pay personal visits to the home of the bereaved family to offer condolences. Sending condolence cards of not common practice as personal visits to home for purposes of consoling the family is done as soon as they learn of the death (James & Gilliland, 2012). Within worlds that are characterized by significant economic, military, and cultural tensions, most thinkers note fault lines and spheres of tension dividing Islamic and Western civilizations and cultures. In America, the perspective bears more pronunciation from September 11 as well as the launch of the Iraqi war. There are different important ways that Islamic and Western societies present their differences. For instance, the societies vary in the degrees of emphasis on individualist and collectivist values (Bregman, 2010). The element is also observed in championing of traditional against “modernist” values while reducing the levels of diversity and pluralism tolerance. For purposes of understanding a culture and its structuring ways, the Islamic context shows intense learning through addressing the ways in which intimate human relationships can be ordered and how human crises are addressed. The Islamic and Western societies recognize worth the and significance of an individual, and elaborate in detail, the ways of dealing with impacts that death of such persons has to the people left behind. Israel is one of the small countries with a Jewish majority co-existing with sizable minorities of Muslims. The country is physically located in the Islamic sphere of influence on the geographic significance. There are insufficient levels of understanding for Muslim approaches to loss and the involved characteristics (James & Gilliland, 2012). The cultural ability to live side-ways without increasing access to the deeply rooted approaches on human experience maintains estrangement while hampering development of informed relationships. On a local level, it characterizes how international Western communities co-exist without an understanding of the significant features of the Islamic cultural worldview for all counterparts. Western approaches to bereavement and loss are not understood to most Islamic countries. The shared Islamic overview informs an introduction of the important features of cultural and religious practices and traditions of Muslims regarding loss and bereavement. Information on loss serves as the grounds for empirical studies in different aspects of loss and bereavement attitudes for Israeli Muslims and the preparation of rituals. The religious texts are checked to inform discussions among Muslim religious leaders from Israeli’s north and center (Irish, Lundquist & Nelsen, 2014). Even as it remains possible to establish recognized approaches to loss, bereavement, and death among Muslims, the leaders do not assert the existence of uniform and monolithic sets of practices and beliefs. Muslim citizens of Israel are spread across a wide scope of subcultures in terms of educational, rural, urban, and socioeconomic locales shading their understanding and practice to the religious traditions. The interpretation coupled with degree of adherence to religious doctrine is essentially different. A central component of Islam is the perspective that the Prophet Muhammad response to loss is the same way that people should counsel others to react. The Prophet mentioned the worthy emulation and points of believers’ behavior. From pre-Islamic-periods, Arabs held that the death remained a destructor to the living spirit. The individuals who were not subjected to burying and those whose death was not avenged were wandering spirits (Bregman, 2010). Leaving dead people to the fate was perceived to be a disgrace. Blood attention and revenge to funerary information was one of the ways of preventing the fate from the deceased. The implications of the ideas developed the requirements of doing the utmost assistance to the pronounced deceased. The actions were consistent with ethical ideals that Arab cultures placed in honoring oneself and the respective reference groups against values of life. The systems have different implications for current practices. The prolonged ritualized mourning and grief public expression are discouraged from Islamic practice (James & Gilliland, 2012). The belief of the society is that prolonged periods of mourning and grief interfere with rapid return of living deemed to be normative and adaptive. The teaching is complemented by and based on the interpretation everything, but quick return to accepting loss and the livelihood tasks is construed as a rejection of God’s will. Individuals who persist within the culture perceive ongoing concentration for mourning activities and for the deceased as limiting social acceptability and social support. Additionally, it places an individual at odds with religious and cultural practice. Heavy prices are paid by those responding “slowly” to the pain of bereavement and loss. The death and loss response among Muslims receives strong influence and manifestation from the general Islamic styles involved in dealing with the events. As indicated, life after death beliefs and about death vary based on the acceptance of fate and divine decree of the variations affecting the forms of response to individuals and society. Acceptance and belief of fate is an expression of God’s will to basic Islamic tenets. Recent Arabic-language expositions involved in dealing with issues of death are presented within the Sunna-ritual volume called Fiqh al-Sunna (Irish, Lundquist & Nelsen, 2014). This understanding of religious law is a modern presentation based on early texts and literature on Islamic religious law. In Israel, Islamic practices on mourning are identical in vast areas and remain integral part of the Islamic worldview. Minor differences are in existence even through the general occurrence is based on religious and social factors that are derived from the multicultural society interactions. As it is the case, religious, cultural and worldviews affect each other while perceiving duly the Muslims’ perception on mourning in Israel (James & Gilliland, 2012). Muslims in Israel engages members of Druze, Jewish, Christian, as well as other cultural-faith groupings resulting in mutual influence. In such light, writings on non-Arab and Arab Muslims suggest that Islamic practices are perceived and integrated differently among different societies and countries. Religion sets boundaries affects issues of culture and lays a foundation to appraise and integrate new situations and information. Additionally, the ways in which responses are developed acts on the cultural influences affecting the interpretation and shape the transpired meanings. The cultural and religious features for Islamic bereavements from Israel balance various features (Irish, Lundquist & Nelsen, 2014). The integral distinctions of bereavement cultures respond to death through mediation of social forces while the society develops expectations on mourning and bereavement behavior. Particularly, pronounced attention to ritual and memory on later periods while responding to the loss of Christian and Jewish practices has triggered the adoption within Islamic practices all over Israel. This takes place later than the third day of the mourning period through religious sanctioning. Cultural beliefs identify response to religion based on distinct influences and cultures where religious responses affect degrees of dynamic cultural and religious evolution (James & Gilliland, 2012). In alternative examples, the Muslims’ face the broader society based on influences from Islamic bereavement cultural expressions among Turkish ancestry persons in Germany. Within the system, there were social constructions and tensions reflecting on the ways in which Arab culture develops along balanced expression and control for strong emotions as developed along bereavement. Arab culture is featured by relative and strict definitions of the gender roles taking an account significance of the gender and organization of the society. Men have a general expectation of mastering their emotions and expressing their grief through controlled and quiet behavior (Bregman, 2010). The system also maintains composure based on the wake and reality of loss. The traditional perceptions of masculine roles have a fairly widespread acceptance within western worlds especially in recent years. On the other hand, women receive extensive societal legitimacy in expressing their grief in different ways, even though there are different forms of constraints. An illustration of constraints includes prohibition to attend funerals. However, women can keen, scream, and their responses are tolerable even as they lack the ability of quickly returning to the immediate societal roles as well as normal functions. There is a general acceptance that women prefer ways of maintaining emotional ties with deceased persons (Irish, Lundquist & Nelsen, 2014). The gender roles form congruence with women through the perception of sensitivity and definition of relationships. The gender also appears unable to separate their actions from either the dead or the living. Women are permitted to be minimally constrained while men take up rigid role expectations. In conclusion, in Islam, the death perception takes a different dimension. Death and birth are perceived as divine decrees. God did bequeath life; parents did not. Events were not the causes of death but mere means in which God enacted his will. Man’s life was perceived to be holy while Arabs did not depend on their tribal rulers. In this light, all people were responsible for their actions prior judges of the world and to God during the judgment day. Previous understanding of people’s roles and responsibilities follow the losses that deal with significant shifts. References Bregman, L. (2010). Religion, Death, and Dying, Volume. New York: ABC-CLIO. Irish, D. P. Lundquist, K., F. Nelsen, V. J. (2014). Ethnic Variations in Dying, Death and Grief: Diversity in Universality. New York: Taylor & Francis. James, R., & Gilliland, B. (2012). Crisis Intervention Strategies. New York: Cengage Learning. Read More