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All Journal Asian Journal of Islamic Psychology
Fatimah Badawy
The American University in Cairo
Religion Other

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A Heart-Centered Metacognitive Framework for Understanding and Treating Obsessions and Compulsions in Islamic Psychology Fatimah Badawy; Abdelrahman Badawy
Asian Journal of Islamic Psychology Vol. 2 No. 2 (2025): Volume 2 Issue 2 August 2025
Publisher : Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta

Show Abstract | Download Original | Original Source | Check in Google Scholar | DOI: 10.23917/ajip.v2i2.15703

Abstract

Obsessions and compulsions are typically conceptualized in modern psychology as maladaptive thoughts and behaviors that require cognitive or behavioral modification. Within Muslim populations, however, these symptoms are frequently moralized and misunderstood as indicators of weak faith or spiritual corruption, often resulting in reassurance-seeking, ritualization, and increased symptom severity. This study proposes a heart-centered metacognitive framework grounded in Islamic psychology that reconceptualizes obsessions as morally neutral intrusive cognitions misinterpreted at the level of the heart (qalb). Using an integrative theoretical review design, classical Islamic scholarship on the heart, doubt, and waswās was synthesized with contemporary empirical literature on obsessive–compulsive disorder, metacognition, and scrupulosity. The analysis yielded a coherent model explaining how misinterpretation of intrusive thoughts leads to compulsive neutralization behaviors, and how healing occurs primarily through non-engagement and restoration of epistemic certainty (yaqīn). The framework provides Muslim mental health practitioners with a clinically effective and theologically grounded approach for assessment and intervention.
Co-Authors Abdelrahman Badawy