Basicofislam
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Alternative Therapy & Islam: Massage
This is an ongoing series about alternative medicine and Islam. Ms. Burns reports on the most popular question she is asked “How does this therapy relate to Islam? Is it OK to use this therapy?” In this series she explores various kinds of alternative therapies and how they relate to Islam and Islamic Healing.
lthough massage is a word of Arabic origin and the Prophet Muhammad advocated massage in the Hadith, many Muslims still debate on if massage is halal, and in some Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, bills to make massage illegal have been introduced to the governing body.
Much of the misunderstanding surrounding massage in Islam can be traced to three sources: the lack of information on Islam and massage in general, misinformation about what massage is and the kinds of massage available, and the use of massage parlors in the Far East and Asia for illicit meetings.
The origin of the word “massage” is derived from either the Arabic word “mass,” meaning to touch, or the Greek word “massein,” to knead. In Islamic history, massage has been used as a healing tool by the Prophet as well as some of the most prominent Muslim healers. Abu Na’im reported that Abu Hurayrah narrated that the Prophet stated, “Eat the olive oil and apply it (locally), since there is cure for seventy diseases in it, [and] one of them is leprosy.” According to Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah, Sayyid Al-Ansari narrated that the Prophet said, “Eat olive oil and massage it over your bodies since it is a holy (mubarak) tree.”
When children are taught how to do ghusul they are often told, “Massage water over your body as you would oil.” Prayer itself has even been compared to massage. In the Ahmadiyya Gazette, Zakhariya Virk mentions massage in his article, The Benefits of Prayer. He says, “In the tashah’hud position our hip, elbow, knee joints, backbone, and wrist joints move in a way that provides a form of relaxation for our entire body. Pressure is applied on the body as if it was a kind of massage.”
Ibn Sina (Avicenna), a respected physician of the 10th century, was also concerned with using massage as an effective means to relieve pain before, during or after medical treatment. This became a standard procedure in Islamic hospitals up until the present day.
Also significant for its medical uses of massage is the traditional bath (hammam) which is to be found in one form or another throughout the Islamic world. Most hospitals in the Islamic world had hammams. Because of various forms of bodily purification required by Islamic law, baths were built from the earliest times and to this day, there is no small village without a public bath which is attended regularly for ritual as well as hygienic reasons. Another subject written on numerously was the use of hot/cool air and water in professionally administered therapeutic massage (see Qusta ibn Luqa). Ibn Sina also discusses the medical uses of the bath and he, as well as al-Razi are said to have treated some patients in the bath itself.
The baths were one of the few places in Islam open to everyone from early morning to late night, and sometimes longer. One of the attractions was the barber who shaved faces, cut hair, let blood, and massaged and washed bodies. An important task of the barber was scrubbing the soles of bather’s feet (a form of reflexology) to remove the callouses. This was done to heal the body as well as to cure headaches. Massage attendants rubbed their hands with pomegranate peel to harden them and give them a pleasant scent.
It was also said that “to build a hammam is a venture that pleases Allah.” Yusuf B. Adbalhadi, an early Islamic writer said, “Whoever has committed many sins should build a bath (as penance).” The use of pomegranate in the hammams may also be because of the pomegranate’s place in the Qur’an. There are three references of the pomegranate in the Qur’an under the name of Rumman - Qur’an 6:99, Qur’an 6:141 and Qur’an 105:68.
There are many famous stories in Islam related to the hammam. One story tells about the day an Imam visited the bath-house: Al-Manaqib states that Imam Reza (may Allah be pleased with him) once went to the public bath-house and someone asked him to give him a massage, so he kept giving the man a massage till someone recognized him and told that person who that dignitary was. The man felt extremely embarrassed; he apologized to the Imam (may Allah be pleased with him) and gave him a massage. A tourist named Mikkel Aaland, visiting the public hammams in Turkey described the experience as such, “When the massage ended, I felt drained, as though I had endured a demanding workout — no wonder some consider the Islamic massage a substitute for the sport and exercise of the Roman bath.”
The massage Mr. Aaland describes, however, is not the only kind of massage that one can receive. When most people think of massage they think of Swedish Massage. This is the most popular form of massage taught in the United States. Swedish massage is a vigorous system of treatment designed to energize the body by stimulating circulation. Five basic strokes, all flowing toward the heart, are used to manipulate the soft tissues of the body. The disrobed client is covered by a sheet, with only the area being worked on exposed.
The word “disrobed” is usually the frightening prospect for most prospective Muslim clients, however, many are unaware that in the traditional hammams, clients were always disrobed. In Islamic hospitals massage on women was always done by a woman and massage on a man always administered by a male. However, if the prospect of removing clothing for a massage is not comfortable, even practitioners of Swedish massage can adapt their techniques to clothed clients.
Additionally, there are many other kinds of massage that are traditionally done with clothing on. These massage techniques include reflexology, sports massage, water tank massage, acupressure massage, champissage, Amma, Body Rolling, Craniosacral therapy, Endermologie, chair massage, Exerssage, Huna Kane, LaSTONE therapy, Thai massage, and Ayurdevic massage which have been adapted in India to offer a form of Islamic Massage focusing on points called Muqame Makhsoos.
Exerssage is a facial yoga self-massage technique that uses twenty-four cranial yoga postures and a series of acupressure massage movements to relieve jaw tension. Huna Kane is a Hawaiian technique where the practitioner “dances” their forearm softly across the client’s muscles which informs the client of emotions they need to clear from their body.
Huna Kane is practiced on fully-clothed clients who lie on a mat on the floor. Amma (sometimes spelled Anma) is a form of Japanese massage. This form of body work is based on the principles of Chinese medicine, which are prominent in Islamic medicine and is more than five-thousand years old. Amma massage uses a wide range of pressing, stroking, stretching and percussive techniques that are done without oils and can be done on a client who is fully clothed either sitting or lying down.
LaSTONE therapy is a massage technique that uses stones, rather than the practitioner’ s hands, to elicit healing in the client’s body. Stones of various shapes and sizes and varying temperatures ranging from zero to 140 degrees are placed on the client’s body in various positions. Reflexology is based on an ancient Chinese therapy, and involves the massage of the client’s hands and/or feet. Pressure is applied to certain pressure points on the hands and/or feet to stimulate self-healing and maintain homeostasis in the body. The only clothing you need to remove for a reflexology treatment is your socks.
Thai massage is based on the theory that the body is made up of seventy-two thousand energy lines, of which ten hold top priority. Thai massage is practiced in a firm mat on the floor instead of on a table, which is instrumental in the effective use of the practitioner’ s body weight in the massage. The client remains fully clothed in Thai massage, except for the feet.
In some Islamic countries massage is embraced as part of the local healing tradition, while in other countries, it has received a bad reputation due to illicit meetings taking place at various “massage houses”. In Malaysia, traditional Islamic healers, called Bomohs, use only three things in their healing: herbs, spiritual healing and massage.
They use only means that are halal and tahir (lawful and pure) according to the Qur’an and Sunnah.
While some may argue that the technique is not Islamic unless it is described exactly in the Hadith, Shaykh Fadhalla describes our relationship with other healing modalities when he states in his book, Nuradeen, “Man is brought about in order to recognize his inner freedom and the way and the path towards this service. We want to learn as many techniques as we can and to eventually see their unification, in order to serve as best we can. We know because of our tawhid that if the approach is to unify man, to unify his inwardness with his outwardness, and himself with his Creator, then you will know all the areas overlap, so we are basically multi-disciplinaria ns. We believe in whatever is usable (and halal) because it all comes from the same source.”
You can find out more about Islamic Healing by visiting her website: www.islamichealingc ourse.com.
Alternative Therapy & Islam: Massage
This is an ongoing series about alternative medicine and Islam. Ms. Burns reports on the most popular question she is asked “How does this therapy relate to Islam? Is it OK to use this therapy?” In this series she explores various kinds of alternative therapies and how they relate to Islam and Islamic Healing.
lthough massage is a word of Arabic origin and the Prophet Muhammad advocated massage in the Hadith, many Muslims still debate on if massage is halal, and in some Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, bills to make massage illegal have been introduced to the governing body.
Much of the misunderstanding surrounding massage in Islam can be traced to three sources: the lack of information on Islam and massage in general, misinformation about what massage is and the kinds of massage available, and the use of massage parlors in the Far East and Asia for illicit meetings.
The origin of the word “massage” is derived from either the Arabic word “mass,” meaning to touch, or the Greek word “massein,” to knead. In Islamic history, massage has been used as a healing tool by the Prophet as well as some of the most prominent Muslim healers. Abu Na’im reported that Abu Hurayrah narrated that the Prophet stated, “Eat the olive oil and apply it (locally), since there is cure for seventy diseases in it, [and] one of them is leprosy.” According to Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah, Sayyid Al-Ansari narrated that the Prophet said, “Eat olive oil and massage it over your bodies since it is a holy (mubarak) tree.”
When children are taught how to do ghusul they are often told, “Massage water over your body as you would oil.” Prayer itself has even been compared to massage. In the Ahmadiyya Gazette, Zakhariya Virk mentions massage in his article, The Benefits of Prayer. He says, “In the tashah’hud position our hip, elbow, knee joints, backbone, and wrist joints move in a way that provides a form of relaxation for our entire body. Pressure is applied on the body as if it was a kind of massage.”
Ibn Sina (Avicenna), a respected physician of the 10th century, was also concerned with using massage as an effective means to relieve pain before, during or after medical treatment. This became a standard procedure in Islamic hospitals up until the present day.
Also significant for its medical uses of massage is the traditional bath (hammam) which is to be found in one form or another throughout the Islamic world. Most hospitals in the Islamic world had hammams. Because of various forms of bodily purification required by Islamic law, baths were built from the earliest times and to this day, there is no small village without a public bath which is attended regularly for ritual as well as hygienic reasons. Another subject written on numerously was the use of hot/cool air and water in professionally administered therapeutic massage (see Qusta ibn Luqa). Ibn Sina also discusses the medical uses of the bath and he, as well as al-Razi are said to have treated some patients in the bath itself.
The baths were one of the few places in Islam open to everyone from early morning to late night, and sometimes longer. One of the attractions was the barber who shaved faces, cut hair, let blood, and massaged and washed bodies. An important task of the barber was scrubbing the soles of bather’s feet (a form of reflexology) to remove the callouses. This was done to heal the body as well as to cure headaches. Massage attendants rubbed their hands with pomegranate peel to harden them and give them a pleasant scent.
It was also said that “to build a hammam is a venture that pleases Allah.” Yusuf B. Adbalhadi, an early Islamic writer said, “Whoever has committed many sins should build a bath (as penance).” The use of pomegranate in the hammams may also be because of the pomegranate’s place in the Qur’an. There are three references of the pomegranate in the Qur’an under the name of Rumman - Qur’an 6:99, Qur’an 6:141 and Qur’an 105:68.
There are many famous stories in Islam related to the hammam. One story tells about the day an Imam visited the bath-house: Al-Manaqib states that Imam Reza (may Allah be pleased with him) once went to the public bath-house and someone asked him to give him a massage, so he kept giving the man a massage till someone recognized him and told that person who that dignitary was. The man felt extremely embarrassed; he apologized to the Imam (may Allah be pleased with him) and gave him a massage. A tourist named Mikkel Aaland, visiting the public hammams in Turkey described the experience as such, “When the massage ended, I felt drained, as though I had endured a demanding workout — no wonder some consider the Islamic massage a substitute for the sport and exercise of the Roman bath.”
The massage Mr. Aaland describes, however, is not the only kind of massage that one can receive. When most people think of massage they think of Swedish Massage. This is the most popular form of massage taught in the United States. Swedish massage is a vigorous system of treatment designed to energize the body by stimulating circulation. Five basic strokes, all flowing toward the heart, are used to manipulate the soft tissues of the body. The disrobed client is covered by a sheet, with only the area being worked on exposed.
The word “disrobed” is usually the frightening prospect for most prospective Muslim clients, however, many are unaware that in the traditional hammams, clients were always disrobed. In Islamic hospitals massage on women was always done by a woman and massage on a man always administered by a male. However, if the prospect of removing clothing for a massage is not comfortable, even practitioners of Swedish massage can adapt their techniques to clothed clients.
Additionally, there are many other kinds of massage that are traditionally done with clothing on. These massage techniques include reflexology, sports massage, water tank massage, acupressure massage, champissage, Amma, Body Rolling, Craniosacral therapy, Endermologie, chair massage, Exerssage, Huna Kane, LaSTONE therapy, Thai massage, and Ayurdevic massage which have been adapted in India to offer a form of Islamic Massage focusing on points called Muqame Makhsoos.
Exerssage is a facial yoga self-massage technique that uses twenty-four cranial yoga postures and a series of acupressure massage movements to relieve jaw tension. Huna Kane is a Hawaiian technique where the practitioner “dances” their forearm softly across the client’s muscles which informs the client of emotions they need to clear from their body.
Huna Kane is practiced on fully-clothed clients who lie on a mat on the floor. Amma (sometimes spelled Anma) is a form of Japanese massage. This form of body work is based on the principles of Chinese medicine, which are prominent in Islamic medicine and is more than five-thousand years old. Amma massage uses a wide range of pressing, stroking, stretching and percussive techniques that are done without oils and can be done on a client who is fully clothed either sitting or lying down.
LaSTONE therapy is a massage technique that uses stones, rather than the practitioner’ s hands, to elicit healing in the client’s body. Stones of various shapes and sizes and varying temperatures ranging from zero to 140 degrees are placed on the client’s body in various positions. Reflexology is based on an ancient Chinese therapy, and involves the massage of the client’s hands and/or feet. Pressure is applied to certain pressure points on the hands and/or feet to stimulate self-healing and maintain homeostasis in the body. The only clothing you need to remove for a reflexology treatment is your socks.
Thai massage is based on the theory that the body is made up of seventy-two thousand energy lines, of which ten hold top priority. Thai massage is practiced in a firm mat on the floor instead of on a table, which is instrumental in the effective use of the practitioner’ s body weight in the massage. The client remains fully clothed in Thai massage, except for the feet.
In some Islamic countries massage is embraced as part of the local healing tradition, while in other countries, it has received a bad reputation due to illicit meetings taking place at various “massage houses”. In Malaysia, traditional Islamic healers, called Bomohs, use only three things in their healing: herbs, spiritual healing and massage.
They use only means that are halal and tahir (lawful and pure) according to the Qur’an and Sunnah.
While some may argue that the technique is not Islamic unless it is described exactly in the Hadith, Shaykh Fadhalla describes our relationship with other healing modalities when he states in his book, Nuradeen, “Man is brought about in order to recognize his inner freedom and the way and the path towards this service. We want to learn as many techniques as we can and to eventually see their unification, in order to serve as best we can. We know because of our tawhid that if the approach is to unify man, to unify his inwardness with his outwardness, and himself with his Creator, then you will know all the areas overlap, so we are basically multi-disciplinaria ns. We believe in whatever is usable (and halal) because it all comes from the same source.”
You can find out more about Islamic Healing by visiting her website: www.islamichealingc ourse.com.