Religion is also a process of healing, I discovered – a healing of the soul. Even our language points to this relation. The words ‘holy’, ‘wholesome’ and ‘healing’ all have the same root. (In German, this is even more striking: heilig, heil and heilen.) Muslims believe that all humans are born in a state of purity, our fitra, and it is only in the course of our lives that we tarnish our soul through bad habits and wrong behaviour. Through spiritual practices such as prayer, recitation of Quran and dhikr we can cleanse these acquired ‘black spots’ in our soul and return towards our original primordial nature.1 More so, dhikr is said to enliven the heart.
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