In Kashmir, healing unfolds not just in clinics but in mosques and shrines, where memory and faith converge with medicine, reports Syed Shadab Ali Gillani
In Kashmir, where memories of conflict shape daily life, healing is not limited to hospitals or prescriptions. Too many people turn to mosques, shrines and faith. Spirituality acts as a survival, guiding how people manage loss, fear and despair. In this setting, discussion of mental health bears a Kashmiri imprint, where religion, memory, and medicine meet and shape one another.
Prof Mushtaq A Margoob, Kashmir’s leading psychiatrist, has seen this reality across his career. For him, the shortage of mental health professionals is not a statistic but a daily reality. “With a smaller number of mental health professionals, especially in rural areas, civil society actors, most notably imams, ulemas, and other faith-linked figures have emerged as stakeholders in addressing psychological distress,” he said. In many villages, the imam is the first responder, the one who listens when no doctor is in sight. “A section of the population continues to seek spiritual or religious healing before accessing professionals,” he adds, pointing to how faith often steps up where medicine cannot reach.
Dr Abdul Majeed Ganai, professor of community medicine, spoke of this link between religion and health. “Islam speaks of the soul, Hinduism of the aatma, Christianity of the spirit,” he said. “Beyond the body, man connects with God through the soul. Physics explains nature, but spirituality speaks of what lies beyond. Thinking in these terms affects physical, mental, and social health.”
Ganai noted that spiritual health has a long history. “Imam Ghazali described health in four parts: physical, mental, social, and spiritual. Later, the World Health Organisation kept only three, but spirituality never lost relevance,” he said.
A Fracture of The Soul
But where Margoob sees a shortage as a systemic issue, Islamic scholar Gowhar Ahmed Al-Azhari sees a fracture of the soul. For him, rising depression, anxiety, and suicidal despair in Kashmir reflect something deeper. “From an Islamic perspective, the root lies in the disconnection of the soul from its Creator,” he said, drawing from the Qur’an: Wa ma khalaqtul jinna wal-insa illa liya’budoon, “I have created djinn and mankind only for My worship.” Worship, Gowhar explains, is not ritual alone but recognition. When that recognition fades, the heart suffers. And when the heart suffers, the mind falters. “Surely, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find peace,” he recites.
Kashmir’s wounds did not appear overnight. Margoob traces them back to the 1990s, a decade that remade Kashmiri lives. Conflict, displacement and fear marked a time when silence carried more weight than words. “The mental health landscape in Kashmir was deeply affected by the trauma of that decade, marked by prolonged conflict and unrest,” he recalls.
For many, survival meant turning inward, finding strength in verses, in prayers, in the quiet company of God. “While science has traditionally been sceptical of spiritual healing due to its lack of empirical validation, there has been growing recognition, even in the West, of the role spirituality can play in mental well-being,” he notes, citing surveys that show most societies still view spirituality as central to healing.
Between Faith and Psychiatry
Huda Mushtaq and Mushtaq Margoob, in their research paper Pir, Faqir and Psychotherapist: Their Role in Psychosocial Intervention of Trauma, note that the last three decades have brought marked social change in Kashmir. “With a significant improvement in the education level and socioeconomic status, like any other place over the past 30 years, the stigma attached to psychiatric disorders has decreased. The turmoil of the past has led to a phenomenal increase in psychosocial problems. The increased psycho-education through media, government health services and NGOs has led to an increased demand for psycho-therapeutic and medical treatment by mental health professionals on one hand, while on the other, continued death and destruction has reinforced the faith in God and coping with religion, resulting in a massive rush to faith healers, shrines and other religious places.”
They observe that there has been a shift in the percentage of patients who first seek the services of faith healers before turning to psychiatric help. In 1996, 73 per cent of patients would consult a faith healer before approaching a psychiatrist, with the practice more common in rural areas (87 per cent) than in urban settings (59 per cent). By 2005, the numbers had changed slightly, with 68.5 per cent overall (84 per cent rural and 53 per cent urban) turning to faith healers first. This authors believe it reflects continuity and change, a pattern of coexistence in which faith and psychiatry continue to interact much as they did decades earlier.
Dr Ganai points to the challenges of modern treatment. “Medicines are being used excessively, which reflects the decline. Humans have a great capacity to face problems, yet many fall into despair, depression, or suicide.” He sees value in a wider approach. “Community medicine rests on three principles: promotion of health, prevention of disease, and prolongation of life. If applied to mental health, and if Imams are part of this effort, results may not be perfect, but the direction will be right.”
Sermons of Resilience
In his sermons, Gowhar often recalls a Hadith: “In the body there is a piece of flesh; if it is sound, the whole body is sound, and if it is corrupt, the whole body is corrupt. That piece is the heart.” For him, corruption of the heart is not merely moral but also psychological.
Neglect of dhikr, remembrance, makes the heart restless. “Life itself is a test, fear, hunger, loss of wealth, loss of life, but glad tidings belong to the patient. Patience and remembrance are the spiritual medicines for the ailments of this age,” he tells his congregation. His words do not dismiss medical help but root healing in a theology of resilience.
It is here that psychiatry and faith converge. For Margoob, Imams are not only spiritual leaders but bridges. “Quranic verses such as Surah Ad-Duhaa are often recited or recommended by imams for those battling depression or despair,” he explains. These verses, he adds, are not charms but sources of meaning, reminders that despair is not the end. Islam’s stance against suicide, reinforced in sermons and counselling, acts as a shield for many.
Dr Ganai emphasises the connection between physical and mental health. “Mental health cannot be separated from physical health. A strong body supports a strong mind. All four components, physical, mental, social, and spiritual, must be considered together. If Imams and doctors work together, we will move closer to the goal.”
A Two-Way Flow
Margoob’s study also highlights a quiet cooperation between the two systems of healing. “In the majority of cases, without any ill feeling on either side and in a spirit of peaceful co-existence, the traffic continues to run both ways. Patients under the treatment of mental health professionals, wishing to make use of the local resources, are hardly objected to except for instructions not to approach an imposter using unethical measures like branding, etc, or discontinuing the prescribed treatment.
The indigenous healers, in turn, continue to refer cases, which they consider beyond their scope, to mental health professionals. Although the referral of patients from faith healers is not very large, it is still higher than the percentage of patients referred from other medical professionals.”
The data illustrates this overlap. “In 1996, from a sample of 912 patients seeking treatment at a psychiatric disease hospital, 81.6 per cent were referred by old patients, 13.4 per cent by faith healers and only 5 per cent by medical practitioners. While in 2005, from a sample of 1010 patients seeking treatment at a psychiatric disease hospital, 76.17 per cent were referred by old patients, 14.12 per cent by faith-healers and 9.7 per cent by other medical professionals. Though there is an increase in the number of patients referred by the other medical professionals, the number of patients referred from the faith healers shows no significant change.”
Leadership Under Strain
Yet Gowhar warns that imams themselves are often underprepared for this weight. He points to the fragile condition of Islamic leadership. “Many of our imams are not nurtured from brilliance, but from necessity,” he laments. Poverty, not passion, fills seminaries. Children sent there often arrive because they could not afford another form of education.
He invokes Imam Shafi’i, who once said knowledge requires six things: genius, effort, wealth, companionship, time, and a teacher. He also cites Imam Abu Hanifa, who reportedly spent 15,000 dirhams to master a single subject. “We entrust our imams with birth, marriage, prayer, and death, yet we pay them the least, leaving them weak in society,” Gowhar says, calling for reform that would strengthen imams as guides, not just caretakers of rituals.
The contrast between villages and cities reveals another layer. In the countryside, faith healers remain the first stop, while in Srinagar and other towns, a slow shift toward medical consultation is visible. But even there, faith is never absent. During the pandemic, the partnership between imams and clinicians became clearer. “Imams in various communities began referring individuals to doctors after providing spiritual guidance,” Margoob recalls.
Several psychiatrists reported cases where patients, initially suicidal, were first counselled with Qur’anic verses before being guided to clinical care. Many healed, proof that the imam’s words can prepare the ground for medicine.
Reinventing the Mosque
Gowhar sees in this a chance to reinvent the mosque. “If religion is to truly guide mental health, imams must be empowered, educated, and brought closer to their communities,” he insists. For him, mosques should not only echo with prayer but also host conversations of healing. Young people should find in them a safe space to share struggles, a place where the Qur’an and remembrance bring hearts back to life. “For the heart is like a fish, without water, it dies, without remembrance of Allah, it perishes,” he said, painting a picture where religion and psychology are not rivals but companions.
What emerges from these voices is not a debate but a pattern of mutual support. Margoob, with his clinical insights, shows the need for more professionals, infrastructure, and therapy rooms. Gowhar, in his sermons, insists that no therapy can succeed if the soul is ignored. Dr Ganai adds that “doctors and Imams must work together, but health is everyone’s responsibility. If food providers supply healthy food, and society spreads happiness instead of problems, mental health will improve. True progress comes when physical, mental, social, and spiritual health are developed together.”
“Encouraging collaboration with traditional healers has been specifically stressed, as a working alliance between traditional healers and allopathic practitioners can help to overcome barriers to treatment acceptance and delivery,” The research paper reads. “Thus in these resource-poor areas, the collaboration of medical and mental health professionals with appropriate traditional resources such as faith healers, pastoral care clergy and similar is seen as an important and necessary engagement and an opportunity in terms of care, provision of meaning and general community support.”
