Sufistic Psychotherapy as a Decolonial Paradigm: Transcending the Dominance of Western Epistemology in Islamic Mental Health

Akhmad Hasan Saleh (Universitas Islam Negeri Syekh Wasil Kediri, Indonesia)
Mohd Zaliridzal Bin Zakaria (Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia)

Dirasah: International Journal of Islamic Studies
Vol. 4 No. 2 (2026): Islam, Human Development, and Social Change

Indonesia's Islamic Religious Colleges (Perguruan Tinggi Keagamaan Islam, PTKI) have institutionalised Sufism and Psychotherapy as formal academic disciplines. However, their curricula juxtapose Sufi doctrine and Western clinical technique without a coherent epistemological bridge, exposing a structural dependency on positivist-secular epistemology that this article terms intellectual captivity. Existing scholarship on Sufism and psychotherapy remains largely comparative or conceptual, with little empirical attention to how Indonesian Islamic higher education institutions actually construct this integration in practice. This article addresses that gap by asking how Sufistic Psychotherapy can be reconstructed as a decolonial epistemological paradigm rather than an apologetic adaptation of Western psychology. It draws on qualitative case-study fieldwork at five PTKIs (UIN Palembang, UIN Semarang, UIN Kudus, UIN Surakarta, and UIN Kediri), combining curriculum document analysis with in-depth interviews with program heads, faculty, and the chair of the Sufism and Psychotherapy Consortium (KOTATERAPI), alongside critical engagement with classical Islamic epistemology and decolonial theory. Curriculum mapping and interview data show that the existing Body of Knowledge (BoK) remains dominated by textual-normative (bayāni) and intuitive-spiritual (‘irfāni) modes of knowledge while the rational-empirical (burhāni) dimension is comparatively underdeveloped, producing a pre-paradigmatic and institutionally uneven field. Building on this diagnosis, the article reconstructs Sufistic Psychotherapy through five integrative epistemological pillars: a spiritual-physical ontology; an integrative waḥy-‘aql-żawq epistemology; an axiology of tazkiyat al-nafs; a transdisciplinary methodology; and an anti-dichotomous paradigm. The article contributes an empirically grounded, spirito-empirical model that repositions Sufism as an autonomous knowledge system and offers PTKIs a concrete pathway for standardising Sufistic Psychotherapy as a globally contributive, authentically Islamic discipline.