Medicine, Muslim Education & the Future of Knowledge — Dr. Aisha Subhani-Talking With Teacher Season 7-Episode 4

So I'm assuming that your inspiration for going into medicine was your mom or something like that.

You know,

it

was interesting because you had two very common in the subcontinent.

You have engineering and medicine, right? It's kind of cliche almost.

But for my mom, one thing that I saw that she was very... uh kind of passionate about what she was doing but very caring about her patients i actually during the summers i used to help her in her office because she had a private practice she did internal medicine and i would see how her patients would interact with her like their their reaction to her and then you know her relationship with them like that kind of back and forth And I just thought it was amazing because they really looked to her not just as, OK, this doctor is going to give me advice and give me treatments or whatever they're going to do.

But as somebody that just is there, they're kind of unloading a lot more than that, just about their their their family issues, what they're going through and having somebody that's able to kind of put things in perspective and kind of keep them focused on their health.

And so I found that to be.

uh you know it was amazing to just see and so that's what piqued my interest in medicine um and the fact that you're actually really helping people and so that's what got me in into into that sphere so yeah i

mean so so i'm assuming that you've also you know studied a bit of prophetic medicine and you know and um or at least you're familiar with uh books about that and you know and

Yeah, to a certain degree.

Yeah, I mean, we did study, I did study a little bit, I mean, but not as much as I would have, I would have liked to, like, they will know we in these things.

Interestingly, you know, when in our time with Sheikh Hamza, I mean, he would speak about it a lot, because he was kind of trained in homeopathy and,

and

those aspects, which, as you know, has a lot of roots, I mean, the prophetic medicine and what we learned from there.

has those two kind of go hand in hand, traditional medicine.

But I think one thing that the tradition teaches you is to look at things holistically.

One of the

problems with modern medicine, as you know, is that It's kind of symptom-based.

So you've got a problem, I got a medicine for you, but it's not really looking at root causes.

And I think our tradition is all about root causes.

The Quran is filled with root causes of pathology.

It's just human pathology, whether it's psychology, emotional, right? And then of course there's physical manifestations too.

I think one of the things that we don't spend a lot of time on is prevention and understanding root causes and living a healthier lifestyle.

And so I think what that's kind of taught me in my approach is just to give patients that aspect as well.