• About
    LeConte-Menu-sm-300.jpg

    In 2009, Zaytuna College was founded in Berkeley, California, with a mission that called for grounding students in the Islamic scholarly tradition as well as in the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society.

  • Academics
    student-book-writing-small.jpg

    Zaytuna College aims to educate and prepare morally committed professional, intellectual, and spiritual leaders who are grounded in the Islamic scholarly tradition and conversant with the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society.

    .

  • Admissions & Aid
    teacher-students-sisters-small.jpg

    Our mission is to educate students to become morally, intellectually, and spiritually accomplished individuals ready to contribute to our contemporary world in ways that are proportionate to their gifts and to the needs of human society.

     

    .

  • Campus Life
    sisters-looking-out-window-small.jpg

    Zaytuna’s campus is on Holy Hill and students enter the College as part of a cohort, a community of learners that travel together through the curriculum.

Breaking Bad Habits

Grad Student Studies Ghazali on Addictive Behavior 

 

Zaytuna College strives to ground future leaders in the Islamic intellectual tradition and prepare them to address contemporary challenges — and none is more pernicious than addiction. Soaring addiction rates, and the continuous emergence of new forms of addictive stimuli, are causing a global public health emergency — and Muslims are just as affected as the general public. 

“It’s a much bigger problem than Muslims realize,” says Zaytuna master’s student Dr. Amer Raheemullah, a Stanford psychiatrist specializing in addictive behavior. In an era when billion-dollar industries aim to engineer our habits for profit, he says, most people struggle with compulsive behavior. 

Dr. Raheemullah is interested in the central role faith and spirituality play in addiction treatment (thanks to the twelve-step movement). For his master’s thesis he is studying the work of Ghazali and other great scholars on this issue. He aims to help Muslims deepen their faith on the road to recovery. And he’s finding wisdom, mercy, and practical guidance from the Islamic tradition to support recovering Muslims and their families.  

At his recent colloquium presentation, he explained that al-Ghazālī’s philosophical work Mīzān al-ʿAmal explores a category of habits that can be classified as addictive. Remarkably, this text written nearly a millennium ago anticipated forms of addictive stimuli that western medicine has only recently begun to recognize.  

Western medicine defines addiction by substance or stimulus, so for emergent addictive behaviors, interventions are often delayed. Al-Ghazālī’s definition focuses instead on one’s state and behavior, so it may be more adaptable to our current crisis. He considers addiction a disease of the soul, deserving of care and compassion; and he normalizes the struggle to bring addictive behaviors into balance as a very common, and very difficult, form of jihad. He also emphasizes that God loves to forgive — and advises anyone struggling with addictive behavior to seek forgiveness every single time they make the same mistake, no matter how many times it takes.  

“An addiction may be understood as a severe habit,” Dr. Raheemullah says.  “Habits are also the heart of our ibada: cultivating the prescribed ones and leaving the prohibited ones.” It’s critical for Muslims to know how to make our habits work for us.  Dr. Raheemullah wants all struggling Muslims to know that no matter how complicated life with addiction becomes, or how tempted one might be to hide the problem, Islam offers a rational and merciful approach to recovery.   

Through MCC East Bay, Dr. Raheemullah offers free weekly online classes for support with addictive behavior related to chemical and digital vices. All are welcome to join anonymously and keep videos off.  Click here to register.