Healing Communication and Religious Coping: Ruqyah as Meaning-Making Practice in Contemporary Islam
Main Article Content
Muhamad Hanif Fuadi*
Frista Fitriany Ramadhanita
Religious healing practices continue to shape how Muslim communities interpret illness despite the expansion of modern healthcare systems. Ruqyah is commonly understood as a spiritual ritual or religious intervention, while its role as a therapeutic communicative practice of meaning-making remains underexplored. This article examines ruqyah as a form of religious coping that operates through healing communication in contemporary Islamic contexts. Using a qualitative literature-based approach through an integrative and thematic interpretive review, this study analyzes scholarly works on religious coping, Islamic spiritual healing, and the relationship between religion and modernity. The analysis applies thematic coding to communicative elements such as narrative framing, symbolic language, relational interaction, and meaning negotiation, identifying key themes of meaning-making, authority, narrative construction, and relationality. The findings demonstrate that ruqyah functions not merely as a spiritual ritual but as a symbolic and relational communicative process through which meanings of illness, hope, and acceptance are constructed. From a communication studies perspective, ruqyah operates as therapeutic communication in which meaning is co-constructed through religious narratives, interpersonal interaction, and faith-based symbolic language that frame experiences of suffering and healing. These processes help individuals reinterpret illness and strengthen psychological resilience within religious contexts. This study contributes to health communication scholarship by conceptualizing ruqyah as a communicative meaning-making practice rather than solely ritual healing. It further advances Islamic Studies by extending the concept of religious coping through a communicative perspective, highlighting the continuing relevance of Islamic healing practices within increasingly medicalized social environments.
Ahmadi, F., Mohamed Hussin, N. A., & Mohammad, M. T. (2019). Religion, culture and meaning-making coping: A study among cancer patients in Malaysia. Journal of Religion and Health, 58(6), 1909–1924.
Akpinar, H., Ozcan Mircali, F., & Bulut Ugurlu, N. (2025). The Relationship Between Therapeutic Communication Skills and Spiritual Care Competencies of Nurses: The Example of Türkiye. Journal of Religion and Health, 1–15.
Akrim, A., Rudianto, & Adhani, A. (2021). Interactive effects of stoicism and religious coping on psychological distress, fatigue and intercultural communication. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 8(4), 214–237.
Anwar, N., Rattani, S. A., Shams, S., Mughal, F. B., & Jalaluddin, S. (2025). Exploring religious, spiritual, traditional, and folk healing practices for oncological disorders. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, 25(1), 252.
Arrey, A. E., Bilsen, J., Lacor, P., & Deschepper, R. (2016). Spirituality/religiosity: A cultural and psychological resource among Sub-Saharan African migrant women with HIV/AIDS in Belgium. PloS One, 11(7), e0159488.
Bentley, J. A., Feeny, N. C., Dolezal, M. L., Klein, A., Marks, L. H., Graham, B., & Zoellner, L. A. (2021). Islamic trauma healing: Integrating faith and empirically supported principles in a community-based program. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 28(2), 167–192.
Blumer, H. (1986). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Univ of California Press.
Cummings, J. P., & Pargament, K. I. (2010). Medicine for the spirit: Religious coping in individuals with medical conditions. Religions, 1(1), 28–53.
Dolcos, F., Denkova, E., Iordan, A. D., Shafer, A. T., Fernández, G., & Dolcos, S. (2025). Dissociating and linking divergent effects of emotion on cognition: insights from current research and emerging directions. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1483373.
Frank, S. A. (1995). Mutual policing and repression of competition in the evolution of cooperative groups. Nature, 377(6549), 520–522.
Jatmiko, A. (2024). The Qur’an and Healing (Living Qur’an Study: Ruqyah in Islamic Guidance and Counseling Practice). IDACON-International Da’wah Conference, 33–45.
Mehralian, G., Farzaneh, M., Yousefi, N., & Haloub, R. (2024). Driving new product development performance: Intellectual capital antecedents and the moderating role of innovation culture. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge (JIK), 9(3), 1–13.
Minton, E. A., Spielmann, N., Kahle, L. R., & Kim, C.-H. (2018). The subjective norms of sustainable consumption: A cross-cultural exploration. Journal of Business Research, 82, 400–408.
Molla, I. B., Hagger, V., Rothmann, M. J., & Rasmussen, B. (2025). The Role of Community Organisation, Religion, Spirituality and Cultural Beliefs on Diabetes Social Support and Self-Management in Sub-Saharan Africa: Integrative Literature Review. Journal of Religion and Health, 1–58.
Murtadho, F. (2022). The effects of using mother tongue in delivering health protocol messages on health attitudes and behaviors: Do gender, age, and education level make any difference? Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 12(2), 348–360.
Omar, M., Abdullah, M., Ahmad, A. R., Mat Amin, A. R., Shafei, S. A., Haron, S., Ramli, R., Hussian, M. A., Kusmin, Z. A., & Haron, H. (2025). Factors affecting the effectiveness of ‘ruqyah’treatment among Muslim community in Malaysia. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 27(2), 202–221.
Pankowski, D., & Wytrychiewicz-Pankowska, K. (2023). Turning to religion during COVID-19 (Part II): A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of studies on the relationship between religious coping and mental health throughout COVID-19. Journal of Religion and Health, 62(1), 544–584.
Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. M. (2000). The many methods of religious coping: Development and initial validation of the RCOPE. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56(4), 519–543.
Pinto, C. T., Guedes, L., Pinto, S., & Nunes, R. (2024). Spiritual intelligence: a scoping review on the gateway to mental health. Global Health Action, 17(1), 2362310.
Pirutinsky, S., Cherniak, A. D., & Rosmarin, D. H. (2020). COVID-19, mental health, and religious coping among American Orthodox Jews. Journal of Religion and Health, 59(5), 2288–2301.
Rababa, M., & Al-Sabbah, S. (2023). The use of islamic spiritual care practices among critically ill adult patients: A systematic review. Heliyon, 9(3).
Razali, S. M., & Khalib, A. Q. (2012). Pain symptoms in Malay patients with major depression. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 5(4), 297–302.
Rossato, L., Benfato, J. C., Ullán, A. M., & Scorsolini-Comin, F. (2022). Religious–spiritual experiences of family members and caregivers of children and adolescents with cancer. Palliative & Supportive Care, 20(5), 711–719.
Thomas, J., & Barbato, M. (2020). Positive religious coping and mental health among Christians and Muslims in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Religions, 11(10), 498.
Thorvilson, M., Warsame, F., & Ferdjallah, A. (2025). The role of Islamic Ruqyah at end-of-life: An opportunity to provide metaphysical relief. Palliative & Supportive Care, 23, e106.
Zainal-Abidin, A. N. I., Ariffin, F., Badlishah-Sham, S. F., & Razali, S. (2022). Exploring spiritual and religious coping among PLHIV in a Malaysian Muslim community: a qualitative study. HIV/AIDS (Auckland, NZ), 14, 409.
