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.
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