The chapter examines principles and values of communication and societal relationships from an Islamic perspective. It highlights the significance of communication in Islam, including language, communication theory, and the principles of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The chapter explores different levels of Islamic communication, cultural influences, and communication within Muslim families across age groups. It addresses the challenges Muslims face in a globalized world and the impact of communication technologies on Islamic culture. The chapter offers health practitioners and educators an insight into effective Islamic-based communication in therapeutic relationships for individuals with regards to addressing mental and physical health issues. This chapter also briefly discusses the contemporary challenges of globalization and communication as it relates to Islamic principles.

Religious and cultural health and food practices are informed and influenced by religious texts and beliefs. These beliefs and practices can impact dietary and food choices, which in turn can impact health. The Mediterranean dietary pattern, including regional variations of countries in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, is particularly aligned with Qur’anic guidance. The healthful dietary practices and health benefits conferred by specific foods mentioned in the Qur’an include and guide to components emphasized in the Mediterranean diet (MedDiet). This chapter examines Qur’anic guidance on food, nutrition, and dietary practices and, in particular, how this guidance relates to the traditional MedDiet. This information can be used to tailor acceptable and healthful dietary patterns for those in diverse Muslim communities. In addition, the health benefits of the traditional dietary patterns of Mediterranean countries, including the Middle East and North Africa, can and have been widely adopted globally for health interventions.

Islam counts sleep as one of the signs of the greatness of Allah (God) and urges followers to investigate this important sign. Sleep and sleep manners are notable subjects in Islamic sources. The Qur’an and Hadith discuss different forms of sleep, the importance of sleep, and healthy sleep habits. The types of sleep described in the Qur’an resemble sleep stages recognized in current sleep medicine. The Qur’an stresses the significance of preserving a regular circadian pattern of light and darkness exposure. A mid-day nap (Qailulah) is an established tradition for Muslims, and the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) advocated naps as helpful. Sleep practice and instructions by the Prophet (PBUH) resemble several sleep hygiene regulations described in modern medicine and behavioral therapy. The Prophet’s (PBUH) practices include sleeping on the right side rather than in the prone position, which is discouraged. We recommend that sleep researchers analyze Islamic literature to understand archaic society’s views, manners, and practices regarding sleep and sleep disorders.

There are often tensions within New Public Health because of the subjective nature of religion and spirituality. Omitting this crosscutting dimension reduces the evidence base and therefore the growth of New Public Health. Identifying the differences for low-income, middle-income, and predominantly Muslim countries compared to high-income countries outlines the ways these could exert an impact on New Public Health. Health-related guidance within the Qur’an and Prophetic sayings relates to the ways these link to the aims of New Public Health and their parallel positioning. Simultaneously, they differ, with Islam exhibiting a more salutogenic position. Therefore, the chapter suggests that the evidence base requires moving from New Public Health’s biomedical roots towards a more cohesive integration of the practices and beliefs of Muslim communities.

Immunization is a global development success story, saving millions of lives yearly by reducing the risks of contracting an infectious disease and enabling the immune system within the body to build protection. The global eradication of smallpox in 1977 demonstrates the potential of well-designed immunization campaigns. Islamic teaching places attention on preserving life, encouraging Muslims to care for their bodies and overall health, because of its preventive function. However, vaccination of populations is not without challenges; for example, vaccine hesitancy or avoidance emerges for a variety of reasons in Muslim populations, increasing the risks of communicable diseases globally. Public health has a role to play in countering issues. Such issues include misinformation, acting with diplomacy when discussing immunization programs with Muslim community leaders, ensuring the availability of evidence-based accessible information, and educating populations about the necessity and protective ability of vaccines to prevent life-threatening diseases. It also has a role to play in educating non-Muslim professionals about culturally competent care.

The chapter examines the methodological conundrums of producing knowledge about past traditions through present-day realities, a dilemma we navigate using the “progressive-regressive” method, a term first articulated by Marc Bloch. But beyond the study of the past, the study of the non-Western world poses particular challenges, which we explicate using Joan Cocks’ concept of neo-cosmopolitanism. The Islamic world, while culturally and historically distinct, has always operated within global circuits of economic and political exchange and has shared social imaginaries with the universal civilization of a given time. Where necessary we transcend the limits of three epistemic postures: Enlightenment liberalism, Orientalism, and postmodernism. We examine the status of “science” in the Abbasid world in relation to Ghazālī’s distinction between profane natural knowledge and sacred signs (āyat). Political fragmentation and economic change overlapped with Islam’s encounter with foreign scientific traditions. Ghazālī intervened to differentiate ẓāhir (the apparent) and baṭin (the hidden) as reconcilable components of knowledge, rendering these encounters theoretically coherent.

In the Islamic tradition, Jesus is revered as a prophet to the Israelites, not as divine himself. The Qur’an selectively adopts Christian narrative lore about Jesus and Mary, omitting key gospel narratives like the passion. Jesus’s miraculous conception is acknowledged, paralleling Christian tradition without implying divinity, while his death on the cross is recast as a divine deliverance of Jesus from his enemies. The post-Qur’anic tradition portrays Jesus as a world-renouncing ascetic and stresses his humanity and subordination to God.

This chapter examines the social and legal position of Jews in the medieval Muslim world as determined by readings of the Qur'an and Hadith.

The introduction briefly surveys Alexander’s historical career before going on to describe the development of his legend in the various Greek and Latin versions of the Alexander Romance, which continued to be rewritten (as the Historia de Proeliis) to the end of the Middle Ages. It also provides the context for the contributions surveying the Jewish, Persian, Arabic, Spanish, Slavic, French and German receptions of Alexander in literature, as well as his impact as a political role model in the Crusades, Muslim expansion and the world-dominating ambitions of early modern Europe. It concludes with a glance at the contested figure of Alexander and his homeland of Macedonia, in the present-day Balkans.

In the Islamic Ecumene shared religious principles intertwined with other foundational beliefs, which harkened back to the Turkic-Mongol tradition of the Islamic empires, providing cultural unity. The Islamic World constituted an international society despite the absence of a clear hegemonic power. Institutions, laws, and collective beliefs embodied in everyday practices, rituals, and even the design of buildings and cities provided unity in a heterogeneous and diverse Islamic ecumene.

When discussing violence in the Islamic milieu, the word jihad inevitably comes to mind, especially in the contemporary world. Jihad is almost invariably translated as “armed combat” or “fighting” in both academic and non-academic circles; and even as “terrorism” in politically-charged contexts. Such a monovalent understanding of jihad emerges primarily through consultation of the juridical literature and official histories that were produced after the eighth century of the Common Era and that are unduly privileged in academic discussions of this subject.

Jihad however emerges as a much more complex term when a broader range of primary Arabic sources are consulted. Such sources include the Qur’an and Qur’an commentaries (tafsir), collections of hadith, which refer to the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as legal works.The central premise of this essay is that a closer study of relevant Qur’anic verses and a comparison of early and late extra-Qur’anic sources drawn from the above genres allows one to chart both the constancies and shifts in the spectrum of meanings assigned to the term jihad.This in turn allows us to better understand how changing socio-political circumstances affected the way Muslim scholars of different stripes conceived of the boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate violence over time.