'Our therapeutic direction is towards Light': transcendence and a non-secular politics of difference in Islamic Counselling training

The Islamic Counselling training model discussed in this article first emerged in 1990s multicultural Britain within the newly expanding field of cross-cultural counselling and psychotherapy. It is informed by classical Sufi notions of the self, the development of an Islamic psychology, and decolonial scholarship. Based on ethnographic research on the current training in Islamic Counselling, this article explores the ways in which this model trains students to engage with relational differences through non-secular notions of reality, the self, and its relation to multiple others. Differences are made sense of through notions of 'worldview' and 'journey' that go beyond categories of culture, religion, and race, and while these differences are similarly 'acknowledged', there is also the possibility of surpassing them through an experiential process of 'witnessing'. Islamic Counselling's therapeutic goal, therefore, is not the forging of a pious self, but transcendence: the establishing of a deeply felt understanding of Oneness or Truth. Through this process, Islamic Counselling holds difference and connection in view simultaneously, while challenging a relativist notion of cultural difference inherent in ethno-psychiatry and cross-cultural counselling. It offers a radically new mode of relating with differences within and beyond the counselling setting. << Notre orientation est vers la Lumiere >> : transcendance et politique non seculiere de la difference dans la formation au conseil therapeutique islamiqueResumeLe modele de formation dont il est question ici est apparu dans les annees 1990 dans la Grande-Bretagne multiculturelle, au sein du champ en pleine expansion du conseil et de la psychotherapie interculturels. Il s'inspire des notions soufies classiques du Soi, du developpement d'une psychologie islamique et de travaux sur le decolonialisme. Sur la base de recherches ethnographiques sur la formation actuelle au conseil therapeutique islamique, cet article explore la maniere dont celui-ci forme a aborder les differences relationnelles a travers des notions non seculieres de realite, de Soi et de relations avec de multiples autres. La comprehension des differences passe par les notions de << vision du monde >> et de << voyage >> qui vont au-dela des categories de culture, de religion et de race ; bien que celles-ci soient egalement << reconnues >>, elles peuvent etre transcendees par un processus experientiel au cours duquel on << devient temoin >>. Le but therapeutique du conseil therapeutique islamique n'est donc pas de donner forme a un Soi pieux mais de parvenir a la transcendance et a une comprehension profonde de l'Unicite ou de la Verite. Par ce processus, il envisage simultanement la difference et le lien, tout en remettant en question une notion relativiste de la difference culturelle inherente a l'ethnopsychiatrie et au conseil therapeutique interculturel. Il offre une maniere radicalement nouvelle d'aborder les differences, dans le cadre du conseil et au-dela.

Automated summary

The article discusses the emergence of the Islamic Counselling training model in multicultural Britain and its foundation in classical Sufi notions, Islamic psychology, and decolonial scholarship. The model trains students to engage with relational differences through non-secular concepts and aims for transcendence and understanding of Oneness or Truth. Islamic Counselling offers a radically new approach to handling differences within and beyond the counseling setting.