The Disease and the Cure

Author: Imam Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya

Verification and Commentary by / Dr. Amer bin Ali Yasin

The Disease and the Cure by Imam Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya
It is a valuable and great book, of immense benefit, which gathers between its covers the most dangerous diseases and ways to treat them from the Quran and Sunnah. It discusses polytheism and its types, hypocrisy and its harms, legal punishments, entry points for sins, and major sins such as love, wantonness, and other ailments. For each disease, it describes an effective cure, detailing each disease in a separate chapter, totaling 114 chapters. The book is verified and contains useful commentaries, hadith authentication, and a hadith index at the end.

Al-Jawab al-Kafi li man sa'ala 'an al-Dawa' al-Shafi aw al-Da' wa al-Dawa' (The Sufficient Answer for One Who Asks About the Healing Cure or The Disease and the Cure). It is a book authored by Imam Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya (691 AH - 751 AH). Its chapters deal with the topic of self-reform and rectification, and its refinement according to the Islamic perspective. The reader moves through its chapters encountering advice and reprimand. The book addresses the maladies of the inciting self (nafs al-ammarah bi al-su'), highlighting its flaws and missteps, showing the power of desires over it, and warning against the plots and tricks of Satan in making the self fall into sins and transgressions, and relying on the worldly life and its adornments.

It is an Islamic book that deals with Islamic psychology with rational and textual evidence.

The reason for its authorship was a question posed to Ibn al-Qayyim, the gist of which was: "What do the honorable scholars, the imams of religion, may Allah be pleased with them all, say about a man afflicted with a calamity, and he knows that if it persists, it will corrupt his worldly life and his afterlife? He has striven to repel it from himself by every means, but it only increases in intensity and severity. What is the stratagem to repel it? And what is the way to uncover it? May Allah have mercy on whoever helps an afflicted person, and Allah helps His servant as long as the servant helps his brother. Give us a fatwa, may you be rewarded, may Allah have mercy on you."