Table 1.
Supportive quotes for TAIM healing practices
| Spiritual Healing |
| • “In spiritual, they told me to recite verses of the Holy Quran, and I mean, after reciting, blowing on the water and making her drink, to do Dum (reciting the verses and blowing on the person) so I did it. And those pir faqir, (spiritual leaders) they also used to give amulets etc.” • “They also used to recite but they also used to tell me that you read this, such as you blowing on her after reciting Alhumd Surah Alfatihah, (first chapter of the Quran) seventy-two times. I still do it even now but when she gets very ill then I surely read it on her because I see a lot of benefit of it.” • “Only that whenever we take medicine we pray for cure as well. The first we do is to pray for cure when taking any medicine. Religion has the priority.” • “I also got that treatment a lot, they write Quran and Hadith on a clean paper and then they drink it by putting it in the water and take a bath with it, so I also did that.” • “…I’m a good Christian and my believes…you know, I was brought up that you pray to a certain saint.” |
| Herbal Medicine |
| • “So these people give the treatments like hakims (religious teacher), they make medicine from herbs.” • “If I find it somewhere, they I pick a few seeds and eat though it is full (of cure). It is said for the black seeds that…there is a Hadith (saying of the Prophet Muhammad), it has cure for everything except death.” • “I do not use toothpaste, I mostly use miswak (a teeth cleaning twig made from salvadora persica tree) according to the Sunnah.” |
| • “I take a tea called Rooibos tea, which is a South African tea and its not a leaf tea, it’s a bush and it has no tannin and its high on anti-oxidants.” • “There was a pain in abdomen, severe pain, he gave me a medicine made out of roots.” • “Now what I have done is we take Ayurvedic treatment…” • “My brother in law has the knowledge of homeopathy, so I use it sometime when he got to know about my illness, he sent a bottle.” |
| Applied Therapy |
| • “It is Sunnah (what Prophet Muhammad [peace be upon him] said or used to do) if someone wants to do (use cupping).” • “Got the treatment from the doctor too but when it didn’t get well then do the massage, then they pull, then it gets well…” • “A man told me that there is a man in Pakistan who blows on people, and later he cuts wood as he cuts the plant, he will blow and will hit with it also, so I thought of getting it done when I will go this time.” • “There is also vapourisation.” |
| Mind-Body Therapy |
| • “I meditate.” • “When you do the ablution for the five daily prayers, your sins fall from you like dirt from the body.” • “To stay healthy…just one should pray five times. It means to stay away from bad habits so that one stays healthy.” |
| Dietary Practices |
| • “Because you see in religion you are taught that you have to respect your body, so if you respect your body, you have to eat the right food and you should not neglect your body.” • “There is saying of our Prophet (peace be upon him) that while eating leave a little hunger, it is better. Same is for water, if you drink in the beginning then you will eat balanced diet.” • “Religion tells you to eat permissible tings and not to eat not permissible things, and secondly eat according to the way of the Prophet (peace be upon him).” • “You know I look certain food stuffs, things like, you know the traditional food stuffs supposed to give you health, ginger, chili, you know those sort of things…you know, supposed to help garlic.” |
Note: The statements in Table 1 are not English translations, we sought to reflect the language participants actually used with a high level of fidelity in our representation. It serves the purpose of illustrating the difficulty of what the participants have said. For the non-English language, further, it provides authenticity to the metaphors used which are virtually impossible to find equivalents in English. Also, many of the participants had a low level of literacy, and in fact spoke ungrammatically