Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists AMBER HAQUE ABSTRACT: Early Muslims wrote extensively about human nature and called it Ilm-al Nafsiat or self-knowledge. In many cases, their works seem to be the original ideas for many modern day psychological theories and practices. What is interesting however is that a lot of what the early scholars wrote was blended with Islamic philosophy and religious ideas. This paper covers major contributions of prominent early Muslim scholars to psychology and outlines the challenges faced by today’s Muslims in adapting to the Western theories. It also offers a few recommendations on the indigenization of psychology for Muslim societies interested in seeking the Islamic perspective on human behaviors. KEY WORDS: Islamic psychology; early Muslim scholars; history of psychology; Muslim psy- chologists; indeginous psychology. Islam is a major world religion and there are growing numbers of Muslims in the west, particularly in North America where the Muslim population esti- mates range between 4 and 6 million (Haddad, 1991; Hussain and Hussain, 1996). The sharpest rise in the Muslim population has been seen in the last couple of decades and continues to grow steadily. Although the growth of Muslims is not higher compared to other ethnic or religious groups, interest in Islam and Muslims has risen significantly after the September 11th incidents in America. Besides information on Muslims from the media, the social science literature is now replete with the socio-political aspects of Arab/Muslim cul- tures. A meager amount of writings is also available on the psychological issues relevant for this minority community (Haque, 2004; Murken and Shah, 2002; Reich and Paloutzian, 2001). With the increase of Muslim population in Amber Haque, Department of Psychology, UAE University, AL Ain, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia. Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 43, No. 4, Winter 2004 (Ó 2004) 357 Ó 2004 Blanton-Peale Institute