Dr. Abdallah talks about the importance of psycho-spiritual introspection in one's orientation to the practice of Islam and how religious obligations should be transformational rather than simply transactional. If we look to avoid difficulty or hardship and attempt to overlook our inner state, we can fall into 'spiritual bypassing', where we use belief and ritual as a replacement for doing the inner reflection and hard work of healing our hearts. Islam requires us to do both, and if we orient ourselves to the practice of the religion in this way, the obligatory acts of worship and remembrance can and should become transformational.

Dr. Abdallah was invited by the Emmoa Foundation in Ghana to speak about an Islamic perspective of the themes in Brene Brown's book 'Rising Strong'. He discusses how the Islamic paradigm of psychology positions vulnerability in relation to God, self and the other, and asserts that Muslims need to embrace vulnerability within their relationship to and practice of Islam. He draws parallels to Brown's stages of "Reckoning, Rumbling and Revolution" with Al-Ghazali's 6 stages of Murabata.

Dr. Abdallah presented on "Finding Center in the Heart (of the Pandemic):
Practical Tools from the Islamic Tradition for Building Resiliency in Times of Disruption and Trauma" at the Huron-Respect Conference, 'Pastoral & Spiritual Care During the Pandemic' hosted by Dr. Ingrid Mattson on November 14, 2020.
In this short presentation he outlines how he and his network of colleagues responded to the COVID pandemic crisis, tending to the wellbeing needs and collective trauma of Muslim communities around the world using online webinar platforms to address increases in anxiety, family conflict, depression, and existential grief. His approach to Islamic psychology is presented as a psycho-educational program to orient participants to indigenous Islamic tools for building resiliency and decreased anxiety.

On Monday February 8, 2021 the world lost a giant of a man. Professor Malik Badri was more than the founder of modern Islamic psychology, he was an example of the purification of the heart. Professor Badri made it his life's mission to bring to light what Islam has to offer the world for healing and wellness and he left behind a vehicle to carry on his legacy.

Dr Abdallah Rothman was a student of Dr Badri as well as his in-law, colleague and close personal friend. Read some of Dr Abdallah's reflections on his teacher in the wake of his recent passing.

Dr. Abdallah Rothman was the guest on the Karima Foundation Podcast where he speaks about the need to adapt our orientation to religious knowledge to make it more accessible for practical application in today's contemporary world. He discusses the tendency for people to avoid facing themselves and the common response of "covering over" our inner truth or attempting to bypass the struggle and difficulty associated with growth and healing.

You can also view the video recording of this podcast on the Karima Foundation Youtube channel.

This article builds upon an Islamic model of the soul (Rothman & Coyle, 2018) to develop a data-grounded, experience-based ‘iceberg model’ of Islamic psychotherapy. The findings and the model offer new insights for the continued development of clinical interventions within an approach to psychotherapy that has Islamic integrity and explicitly values Muslims’ religious orientations and commitments.
The advance online publication version is available with institutional access at APA's website here
The accepted manuscript version is available by open access here

The Iceberg Model of Islamic Psychotherapy (Rothman & Coyle, 2020)