Laleh Bakhtiar

QUARANTINE: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The very first step the World Health Organization took to flatten the Covid-19 curve was to insist upon imposing quarantine. Interestingly, a hadith reports that Sa‘d reported: “The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, ‘If you hear of a plague in a land, then do not go into it. If it happens in land where you are, then do not go out of it’” (“Sahih al-Bukhari,” hadith no. 5396; “Sahih Muslim,” hadith no. 2218). Ibn Sina’s (980-1037) words are also coming in handy. Suspecting that small invisible organisms spread some diseases, he recommended 40 days of isolation (al-arba‘iniya) to prevent human-to-human contamination (https://www.siasat.com/muslim-scholar-ibnsina-first-came-idea-quarantine-1870313/), as well as for the use of quarantine to control the spread of diseases in his five-volume “The Canons of Medicine,” originally published in 1025. Traders from Venice heard of this successful method and took the information to Italy, where they Latinized it to quarantina. Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is most probably one of the first scholars to explain the intrinsic relationship between a political leadership and the management of pandemics in his “Muqaddimah.” He wanted political leaders to understand that pandemics can destroy civilizations, urban centers and rulers regardless of their prosperity and military superiority. Having recognized wisdom, logic, honesty, justice and education as a ruler’s most desirable qualities, he asserted that those rulers who surround themselves with wise ministers, bureaucrats, counsellors and scholars would be able to tackle pandemics intelligently and realistically.

Many see the current Covid-19 virus as a great disaster. Actually, it is giving us the opportunity to change and adopt the right path. God has given us free will so that we can learn from our experiences and choose our path. Thus, we should revisit our priorities in life and re-evaluate our paths in terms of serving humanity as our life’s supreme goal. ih

M. Basheer Ahmed, MD, a former professor of psychiatry at South Western Medical School Dallas, is chairman emeritus of MCC for Human Services North Texas.

Laleh Bakhtiar 1938-2020

A Scholar and Sufi

Laleh Bakhtiar, an Islamic and Sufi scholar and the first American Muslimah to produce a translation of the Quran, passed away on Oct. 18, 2020, in Chicago from Myelodysplastic syndromes, a rare blood disorder.

Born in Tehran and raised in the U.S., Dr. Bakhtiar studied Islam’s mystical (Sufi) dimensions and revisited Islamic texts from a Muslimah’s perspective for 50+ years. The founder and president of the Institute of Traditional Psychology (https://www.alignable.com/chicago-il/ institute-of-traditional-psychology), she was also scholar-in-residence at Kazi Publications (https://www.kazi.org/). She authored, translated, edited and adapted 150+ books, including “The Sense of Unity” with Nader Ardalan, and “Sufi Expressions of the Mystic Quest.” Many of these books deal with Islamic unity, architecture, psychology, psychoethics and moral healing through the Sufi enneagram. One of her proudest accomplishments came in 2007 with her translation of the Quran: “The Sublime Quran.”Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad, chief advisor for religious and cultural affairs to King Abdullah of Jordan, endorsing her translation on Amazon, wrote: “Her translation has generated intense scrutiny and criticism as well as praise and recognition from around the world.” Since Islam’s advent, the Quran’s translators and interpreters have mostly been men.

Her mentor Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr said, “The late Laleh Bakhtiar was for me, at once, a student, a friend, and a colleague. Deeply rooted in Islamic studies and avidly interested in Persian culture, she devoted a lifetime to scholarship and produced many fine works in the fields of Islam and Persian studies, Sufism and psychology. I pray for the blessing of her soul.”

In May 2016, Chicago’s Mohammed Webb Foundation (http://www.mohammedwebb.org/) awarded her its inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to the Muslim American community. She has also been lauded as a pioneering scholar and practitioner in the emerging discipline of Islamic psychology. Her “Quranic Psychology of the Self: A Textbook on Islamic Moral Psychology” (2019) has helped Quranic psychology claim its place as its own science, incorporating ethics, medicine, natural philosophy and philosophy.

Dr. Bakhtiar, who received her bachelor’s (history, Chatham College, Pennsylvania), master’s (philosophy and counseling psychology) and doctoral degrees (educational foundations, the University of New Mexico), was a nationally certified counselor and studied Islam under Dr. Nasr for 30+ years.

Her father Dr. Abol Ghassem Bakhtiar, who emigrated in 1919, served at Harlem Hospital and married Helen Jeffreys, a public health nurse, in 1927.

She is survived by her siblings Parveen, Jamshid, Lily, Maryam, Parvaneh, Shahrbanou, Afsaneh, Norooz, Pirooz and Abol; her children Mani Helene Ardalan Farhadi, Iran Davar Ardalan and Karim Ardalan; her grandchildren Saied, Samira, Rodd, Ryon, Aman, Amir, Ryan, and Layla; as well as daughter-in-law Susan Khalili and sons-in-law Shervin Farhadi and John Oliver Smith. ih

[Source: Davar Ardalan; https://medium.com/@idavar/courage-temperance-justice-and-theenduring-wisdom-of-the-late-scholar-laleh-bakhtiar-df5f2aa59e4. Copyedited in accord with Islamic Horizon’s guidelines.]