THE ISLAMIC CREED AS THE BASIS OF ISLAMIC COUNSELING:

A GUIDELINE TO COUNSELORS

Norazlina Zakaria Kolej Universiti Insaniah

Noor Shakirah Mat AkhirUniversiti Sains Malaysia

Islamic creed has been regarded by most scholars as the root of the religion as asserted by Keshavarzi and Haque (2013).

Thus Islamic creed should also be regarded as the fundamental composition of Islamic counseling.

Hence, this concept paper is projected to review the principles of Islamic creed that could be incorporated into counseling

THE DEFINITION OF

• Islamic creed in this article is equivalent to the Arabic term al-aqidah al-Islamiyyah.

• Terminologically, the word ‘aqidah’ means “the firm belief without any wavering or doubt approaching it. It is what a human have faith in, tied his conscience, and took as his religion, after being deliberated on its truth from the untruth” (Al-Hamd, 1998).

THE DEFINITION OF ISLAMIC COUNSELING

• In Malaysia, the Establishment of Roundtable Discussion on Islamic Psychology and Counseling, Malaysia (2013) provided the definition of Islamic Counseling as “the interaction process in guiding one or more clients to receive guidance in the effort to obtain blessings from Allah through the use of psychological knowledge based on Islamic law”.

• Islamic Counseling is a professional method or art of psychological advisory which is oriented by Islamic faith and law in order to help clients in thinking, making changes, or taking actions voluntarily when facing challenges or elevating their quality of lives as the servants of Allah, as part of their efforts to search for Allah’s blessings as well as in obtaining happiness in the world and the hereafter.

• to demonstrate the relationship between counseling and Islamic creed, and

• to establish a guideline for the practitioners of Islamic counseling when consulting with their clients in matters related to creed.

correlating the discipline of conventional counseling to the Islamic creed:scrutinizing the aspects of conventional counseling as

suggested by Sipon & Wan Sulaiman (2002), outlining the Islamic creed that could be instilled into

theories, goals, functions and principles of counseling.

suggest on the method to incorporate the Islamic creed in the counseling process. Inayat’s (2001) model of Islamic counseling is chosen to be the basis of the Islamic counseling process.

This review revealed that there is a strong relationship between counseling and Islamic creed

The associating aspects are summarized in Table 1.

There are six aspects of Islamic creed associated to counseling that should

be observed by the Islamic counseling practitioners.

(1)belief in the existence of God and the ‘six pillars of Imān’,

(2) belief in the Divine Decree As determining factor in humans’ behaviors,

(3) belief in Holy Prophet Muhammad as the role model in counseling technique and superior human.

rūh (soul), qalb (heart), nafs (self), and ‘aql (intellect) fiṭrah(inner potential)

(4) belief in the existence of humans’ spiritual elements,

(4) the Islamic doctrine of true happiness,

(6) the Islamic belief in the

root causes of problems and their solutions

problem is test from

Allah

a type of kaffārah

(atonement of sins) or a “test

of faith”

failure to submit to

will of Allah

conflict with fiṭrah

Foundations of the Islamic creed that should be

abided by Islamic counseling practitioners

could be referred in

Table 2.

• the Islamic creed should form the basis of Islamic counseling practiced by Muslim counselors who are counseling Muslim clients.

• it could also be the guideline to multicultural counselors.

• For further research, it is suggested that assessment on the effectiveness of counseling models that integrate Islamic creed in its processes to be carried out.

THANK YOU