The Wounded Healer

I found myself having the urge to write this blog, after attending one of the best lectures last night; ‘Islamophobia and Muslim Mental health’ by Dr Ahmed Hankir. Those of you who attended know this won’t do it justice, but for the most I’ll be reiterating what Dr Hankir taught us. I never thought I’d call a lecture amazing but I guess this wasn’t a lecture. Maybe it should be. Actually, I change my mind, it definitely should be, so others can understand the importance of Islamophobia and mental health. It’s a topic that’s often missed out, and not understood.

I loved the lecture in its entirety, the fact the speaker calls himself ‘The Wounded Healer’ speaks for itself. I even enjoyed the part where a fellow United supporter was rooting for Liverpool. I guess that’s the ‘Salah effect’. Even though we can joke about this, it’s so important to see how the exposure to Mohamed Salah has actually reduced the rates of Islamophobic incidents. I wasn’t aware of the extent of this until last night. For those non football fans, Mohamed Saleh is a Muslim footballer, who was signed to Liverpool in 2017. He exceeded all their expectations and claimed the Premier League Golden Boot. There was a study conducted by Stanford university which found that anti Muslim hate crimes had dropped by 18.9% in Merseyside after the signing of Mo Salah.

As someone who wears a hijab and quoting an audience member ‘unapologetically’ Muslim, I’m not surprised if someone is afraid of me or has a negative connotation with the way I look, due to the fact that there main exposure is probably the media. I quote the lecturer again ‘in the media for every positive word written about Muslims there’s 21 negative ones’, so it’s almost normalised in society to fear Islam. That’s why we need to be exposed to figures who ‘humanise’ Muslims, to fellow successful Muslims, who are praised, but more importantly we need to interact.

If people come up to me and speak to me, I’m sure they’ll realise I’m just your regular girl (maybe a bit more smiley and shorter than average) but far from scary. It’s weird to think that I have had people come to me and tell me I am their first Muslim friend, as if its something unique. They tell me they never truly knew what Islam was and they want to learn. All they knew was what they heard from the media, so unsurprisingly I’ve had words like oppressed and barbaric thrown at me, but as a friend I’ve changed their previously absurd views.

You may be wondering, what has Isamophobia got to do with mental health? Well actually as I learnt yesterday, it is shown that after a ‘Muslim’ terrorist attack the emotional stresses of perceived Muslims increases. Why is this? Fear of backlash. Being afraid that people are going to associate what is shown to represent Islam within the media to them and incite hatred towards them. I completely agree with the speaker and use the word perceived purposefully because although completely false, being Muslim has become racialized. If someone is speaking Arabic they are automatically assumed to be a Muslim. This is not the case, the colour of my skin, the language I speak does not define my religion. My religion is not defined by the atrocious people who commit acts of terror. Yet, people who speak or look, as the lecturer put it, like Riz Ahmed or like myself will fear the reaction of the public after the ‘Islamic’ terrorist attacks. I use the words Muslim and Islamic just as Dr Ahmed did, in quotations because it’s essentially an oxymoron: terrorism is not and never will be part of Islam.

My point? Just as Dr Ahmed stated, with the rise of Islamophobia comes the rise in mental health difficulties for Muslims or simply BAME people. The speaker’s words resonated with me, as he stated Muslims are still not seeking support for mental health, because there is a stigma within the Muslim communities, despite the fact that Islam teaches Muslims to seek treatment. I speak from my experience that there is a struggle when it comes to talking about mental health in Muslim communities. Why? I do not know. I found it so important to be reminded that even the prophet Muhammed (PBUH) struggled with his mental health and contemplated suicide, but I realise people do not talk about this enough.

Second generation immigrant Muslims have an increased likelihood of suffering with their mental health. There is an ‘identity crisis’: for me, I’m too religious to fit in, but still not religious enough, too Yemeni to be British, but too English to be Yemeni. So where do I fit in? Where do I belong? Thankfully, the awareness I have of myself has allowed me to find a sense of belonging with the other ‘misfits’.

How do we end the stigma? By employing what I learnt yesterday, as I’ve done throughout this blog. We all need to challenge Islamophobia, educate others about Islam and attend and share lectures like this. Share social media videos tackling Islamophobia. If you haven’t already, follow the speaker @ahmedhankir on twitter. And in terms of the stigma of mental health in the Muslim communities, we need to find ways of normalising conversations on mental health. Where people know that just like dua (prayer) is not enough for a broken arm, dua without intervention, is not enough for recovery of mental health illnesses. We need to combine our spirituality with treatment. I see the Muslim community and how we care for people when they’re sick, so why shouldn’t we do the same when someone is struggling with their mental health?

Finally, we need to praise the people who are brave enough to share their stories. I never thought I’d see an Arab Muslim man be vulnerable about his mental health, and use his experience to help others, but I found it inspiring to see and it has encouraged me to write this blog and continue fighting against Islamaphobia.