Modern versus traditional medical approaches among Muslim in Malay world

Abstract

One of the amazing discoveries that are based on Quran is the medical science discovery. In nowadays Malay community, some Muslim professional medical officers or ‘medical doctor’ apply the modern technology or devices to diagnose and treat patients; while some others prefer to use traditional techniques to cure illnesses. Hence, the medical approaches in the Malay Muslim world can be divided into two main categories: modern and traditional. This paper is intended to discuss, to compare and to present a survey result on the practice of the approaches in the Malay world, specifically in Malaysia. The research was done by reading materials and carried out a survey related to the medical practices of Malay Muslim people in Malaysia on 30 Malay Muslim respondents. Based on the majority result, it is found out that the respondents had high preference on the modern medical approach because it is more effective but in contra is lack of application of Islamic elements by the practitioner. Besides, they felt that Islam is encouraging more on modern medical approach and less on traditional approach because majority of them agree that the traditional medical practice contains negative practice of worshipping the evil. Overall, both the medical approaches have their own strength and weaknesses. Hence, it is up to a Muslim to either prefer the modern method or traditional method as long as it is not violating their religion belief.