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Foreword

Hussein A Gezairy, MD, FRCS
Regional Director for the
Eastern Mediterranean Region of
the World Health Organization.

Nobody would disagree that health is one of God's greatest blessings; in Islam it is the greatest blessing after that of faith, for the Prophet (pbuh) said, "After faith, no one was given anything better than well-being".

However, there is another blessing for which humanity hardly ever gives thanks, and that is that God, who has created and fashioned and who has ..proportioned and guided, has shown us the way to good in this world and the next, and has guided us to that which is beneficial and to the protection of life, intellect and progeny. Thus, the verses of the Quran and the hadith of the Prophet (pbuh) contain innumerable principles relating to the protection of health which protect everyone equally and safeguard their well-being. These principles are scattered throughout the texts of the sharia tothe extent that one is amazed at the fact that they are not

classified, as other texts are, so as to make it easier to derive the rulings from them and so enable people to know the practical legal rulings in detail.

Dr M.H. Khayat has attempted to undertake this task in regard to the fiqh of health. At the invitation of the Islamic Organization of  Medical Sciences he prepared a lecture on the fiqh of health which he delivered at the fourth Conference on Islamic Medicine held in Karachi in 1984 and which was published in the proceedings of the conference issued by the Organization.

We decided to make the benefit of that lecture publicly available by publishing it in the Health Education through Religion series, particularly since the author made a number of additions, including commentaries and texts from the Sharia, and explanations of the hadith that were included and that were restricted to those that attained the grade of being either genuine or good.

In closing this foreword, it only remains for me to entreat God, the most generous of those from whom we seek help, to make the contents of this book knowledge from which benefit can be gained and which will inspire the reader to adhere to the health principles therein that have been derived from the sharia texts, and to enable the writer to continue to revise the chapters and make it a more complete book with further details on health that will ensure the maximum benefit from it.

Terms Used in Health Education