The Coronavirus pandemic has swept the world in recent months and with it came a wave of panic, unease, and a need for courage. Humanity is collectively fighting for its health, a treasure that we sometimes take for granted. It is imperative that we constantly look to maintain our health through reviewing potentially harmful practices and working to discover new methods of cleanliness and purity. Many of our articles in this issue will explore the theme of health across the spectrum including bodily, psychological, spiritual, and moral health. We also discuss Coronavirus in detail in this issue’s Science Square and dispel some conspiracy theories that the virus is man-made.

Washing our hands regularly is actually one of the most simple and effective ways to help prevent the spread of viruses, including Covid-19. Such a simple procedure seems like common sense nowadays, but this process was actually a breakthrough in the nineteenth century. Consistent hand washing and sterilization is especially important for hospital staff as they can easily transmit new diseases and germs into patients with weakened immune systems. Taking responsibility for our individual health will contribute to the overall health of our society by at least not spreading disease.

Diabetes is another disease that threatens the well-being of millions across the globe. It is complicated, and we explore in this issue the differences that excessive fat and sugar consumption can have in regards to causing and accelerating diabetes. We can best preserve our health with reasonably sized diets that are rich in nutrients, and routines that physical exercise.  

The effects of selfishness versus selflessness on the mind are also explored. It is no secret that many current societies promote selfishness over the well-being of others whether through subliminal advertisement messaging or the consistent emphasis placed upon trampling over others for career success. The way that we view and treat others, whether positively or negatively, has a rippling effect throughout society and works to either bolster or deteriorate our collective mental health and happiness.

We must especially work hard to preserve the health of our children, from the food that they eat to the media and technology that they use. Cell phone usage among infants and toddlers is becoming more and more widespread, however studies have shown that excessive usage can stunt their growth or even permanently alter their very fragile and rapidly developing brains.

Our world is rapidly changing, as it seems that every year produces new innovations and challenges to keep up with. It is up to us to stay informed and aware, lest we fall behind and fail to preserve the very things that we hold most dear.

There are many ongoing studies into fasting, a practice prescribed across many religions. Increasingly, there is evidence to support that intermittent fasting is beneficial to human health.

The opposite of fasting – overeating – has been revealed to be a major culprit in many illnesses, including cancer, obesity, and heart disease. For many years, the medical consensus was that fasting, i.e. prolonged hunger, too, could have deleterious effects on the human body. From kidney failure to loss of muscle, fasting was believed to be harmful – thus calling into question the benefits of this widespread religious commandment.

People of faith – including Muslims – have long believed that God wouldn’t recommend a practice that was harmful to the body. The hardships and troubles that accompany a religious practice are not too extreme for people aware of their servitude to God: they regard their trials as a testament of their faith. Part of that faith is the certainty that God wouldn’t recommend a harmful or unbearable practice.

In this article, we will share with you two unknown benefits of fasting that have been recently discovered.

Regenerating stem cells

There is a substantial body of evidence showing that staying hungry during certain periods of the day heals the body’s metabolism, hastens loss of fat, decreases oxidative stress,* and improves the functions of the tissues that make up various organs including the liver, the intestines, and the brain. The first of the two new discoveries about the underlying processes, however, provides a missing piece of the puzzle by helping us understand the incredible changes hunger triggers in stem cells.

Researchers at MIT, Duke University School of Medicine, and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge published an article recently on stem cells, indicating that part of stem cell’s mystery could lie in the oxidation (burning) of fat in the mitochondria [1]. Omer H. Yilmaz and his fellow researchers found that a 24-hour fast hastens fat breakdown in intestinal stem and special progenitor cells of rats.

To run the study, Yilmaz and colleagues let the mice go hungry for 24 hours to study the state of their stem cells. They found that the functions of intestinal stem cells increased, and fat metabolism quickened, in both young and aged mice, even during early periods of hunger. They saw that the body’s tapping into fat for its energy needs maintained the health and strength of the intestinal stem cells. Moreover, they noticed that if the aged mice did not fast, they started to lose their ability to break down and use fats for energy expenditure.

The researchers obtained more interesting results as the studies progressed. It was found that a single period of hunger for 24 hours boosted renewal of intestinal cells – and the stem cell functions increased even more significantly in aged mice. Another interesting finding was that mice with damaged intestines that were fasted recovered faster than those that were fed.

“My lab is really interested in understanding how diet, in general, can be used to improve tissue function,” Yilmaz said. “One of the tissue types I study is the intestine. In my lab we study the intestine because it’s one of the largest organs in the body. It’s also a tissue that experiences rapid cellular turnover.” [2]

The intestine is lined by a single layer of cells, Yilmaz explains, that turns over every 5 to 7 days. The workhorses of the intestinal lining and this cellular turnover are intestinal stem cells. These cells must retain a high level of function or cellular health in order to replenish the intestinal epithelium on a regular basis. Intestinal stem cells are particularly important in terms of repairing intestinal damage caused by gut infections and chemotherapy, for example.

The single layer of epithelial cells needs to be renewed every 5-7 days: the aids and enzymes secreted in the intestine for digestive and absorptive activities damage cells despite the protective mucus layer, and some other cells already burst and die as they empty their secretions. Moreover, some medications, particularly chemotherapy, cause the destruction and breakdown of the epithelial cell layer. However, fast-multiplying stem cells replenish the epithelial cells. Stem cells are very active and young and have the ability to divide and multiply continuously.

Dr. Yilmaz also says:

“As we age, stem cells in the intestine as well as in many other tissues of the body, including in the blood and nervous systems, become less functional. We believe that reduced adult stem cell function contributes to some of the decline of function associated with old age. My lab is very interested in studying low-calorie interventions to delay this decline. As a field, we’ve known for over 100 years that low-calorie states such as fasting or caloric restriction can have positive effects on tissue health and aging. We’ve seen evidence that fasting during times of intestinal infections that lead to diarrhea may promote healing of the intestinal lining, for example.” [2]

This quote emphasizes the importance of the issue. Yilmaz adds that despite all this knowledge, the cellular mechanisms of this renewal have not been discovered, and he and his team are working to find out how fasting and hunger enable this recovery.

Stem cells become happy in fat!

The researchers discovered through the experiments that the stem cell function could be brought about in hungry mice by the burning (oxidation) of fatty acids in intestinal cells. When they stopped the fat metabolism through genetic engineering, they noticed that the benefits of fasting on intestinal stem cells were negligent.

In the present dietary conditions, we obtain nearly 60-70% of our energy from carbohydrates or sugar, 20% from fats and 10% from amino acids. Yet an interesting finding revealed by Dr. Yılmaz and his research team is that we essentially obtain much greater energy from using fats once we fast. According to their experiments on mice, during fasting, the intestinal stem cells in both young and aged mice switch from carbohydrates to fats as the primary source of energy, and this shift enables improvement in stem cell functions.

It is not yet known what underlies the fat metabolism that boosts stem cell functions in response to fasting, but it is observed that stem cells work better when they burn fat. The ability to metabolize fats efficiently decreases with age.

It is likely that this hastened metabolism – encouraged by certain diets, like the keto diet, where the amount of fat ingested is raised to 70% and carbohydrate intake is limited to 5% – helps with epileptic seizures and similar neurological disorders: the ketone bodies generated during metabolism of fats are used as energy sources by the brain.

According to Dr. Yilmaz, if fasting can improve the functions of intestinal stem cells through metabolism of fats, the key is the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell responsible for this function. Fat metabolism, or the immediate breaking down or “burning” of the fat entering the cell, is carried out in the mitochondria. Disrupted energy generation associated with aging and decreasing mitochondria can be a reason for the brain’s susceptibility to age-related illnesses. Positive developments in brain functions can therefore be viewed in connection with the correlation between fasting and the oxidation of fatty acids.

Cleaning by fasting

Just like the spring cleaning in our homes, our cells need a thorough cleaning to function properly. Wrongly folded protein particles, remains of damaged organelles, broken molecular pieces, and aged cells that can no longer divide should be disposed out of our cellular structure. Fasting perfectly performs the task of cleaning these wastes and clearing the area in the cell.

“Everything has zakat (a means of cleaning), and the zakat of the body is fasting.” (Ibn-i Majah, Siyam: 44)
“Fasting is a protective shield.” (Bukhari, Sawm: 2)

What is autophagy?

Autophagy is the compound of two ancient Greek words: auto (self) and phagos (eating). What is meant by “self-eating,” is the breaking down and recycling of protein waste and old, impaired molecules by intracellular digestive organelles called lysosomes. In this way, proteins or cellular organelles are digested and taken out of circulation. We can liken autophagy to garbage collection.

Japanese researcher Yoshinori Ohsumi’s study, which brought him the 2016 Nobel Prize for Medicine, found that the autophagy that occurs inside the cell due to fasting or starvation plays an important role in preventing ageing, infections, and tumors. If autophagy breaks down, many illnesses may be triggered, including cancer. Conversely, if autophagy activity is regular, tumors may be suppressed – depending on the stage of development and type of tumor. Cancer research has long focused on channeling these autophagic activities. Restriction of food intake through fasting shows promise: it may protect normal cells while triggering autophagy and thus increasing the effect of cancer treatments. Autophagy might offer solutions or treatment options for other illnesses, too, including inflammatory diseases [3], neurodegeneration [4], metabolic and cardiovascular diseases [5], obesity [6], and metabolic disorders.

Preclinical studies have shown that dietary restrictions by fasting contribute to the increase of a person’s lifespan and slow the development of age-related diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases [7].

* Oxidative stress: The damage caused as a result of excessive proliferation of free oxygen radicals released from foods that spike blood sugar (with high glycemic index) as metabolic waste. A good example of oxidative stress is the browning of certain foodstuff such as apples, bananas, etc. sometime after they are peeled.

References

1. Yilmaz, Omer H. et al. 2018. “Fasting Activates Fatty Acid Oxidation to Enhance Intestinal Stem Cell Function during Homeostasis and Aging.” Cell Stem Cell, Vol. 22, Issue 5, May 3, pp. 769–778.
2. Paige Brown Jarreau. 2018. “Eating (Or rather, Fasting) Our Way to Rejuvenated Stem Cells?” in Life and Tech @ LifeOmic. June 7. A Medium Corporation.
3. Cadwell K. 2016. “Crosstalk between autophagy and inflammatory signaling pathways: balancing defence and homeostasis.” Nat Rev Immunol.16 (11): 661–75.
4. Menzies FM, Fleming A, Caricasole A, Bento CF, Andrews SP, Ashkenazi A et al. 2017. “Autophagy and Neurodegeneration: Pathogenic Mechanisms and Therapeutic Opportunities.” Neuron. 93 (5):1015–34.
5. Bravo-San Pedro JM, Kroemer G, Galluzzi L. 2017. “Autophagy and Mitophagy in Cardiovascular Disease.” Circ Res. 120((11)):1812–24.
6. Lavallard VJ, Meijer AJ, Codogno P, Gual P. 2012: “Autophagy, signaling and obesity.” Pharmacol Res. 66 (6):513–25.
7. O’Flanagan CH, Smith LA, McDonell SB, Hursting SD. 2017. “When less may be more: calorie restriction and response to cancer therapy.” BMC Med. 15(1):106.

These tiny and mysterious creatures of the water are called Plankton; included in these are passively floating or weakly swimming animals and plants. The word plankton comes from the Greek word “planktos,” which means “to drift.” The plankton that drifts in the ocean currents are among the most abundant creatures of the planet. A bowl of water taken from an ocean consists of millions of these tiny organisms; they cannot be perceived by the naked eye. The only way to really become familiar with these creatures is to find them and observe them with the help of a video scope or a microscope. Many marine plants and animals go through a stage in their life cycle when they are plankton, but they ultimately outgrow this stage. These types of creatures are called meroplankton. Unlike meroplankton, holoplankton are tiny creatures which live their whole life as plankton.

Plankton are also classified as either plant plankton or animal plankton. Phytoplankton is the scientific name for plant plankton, whereas zooplankton is the term used for animal plankton. Phytoplankton are usually smaller than zooplankton and it is hard to observe them even under the microscope. Most of the food chains in the ocean begin with phytoplankton, which are eaten by tiny zooplankton. These tiny zooplankton in turn are eaten by larger animals living under the water, including sharks and blue whales.

Since plankton are at the bottom of most of the food chains in the ocean, anything that causes damage to their lives may effect many other organisms. Losing large numbers of plankton may affect the abundance of krill, which is the main diet of whales. Phytoplankton produce oxygen that people breathe; therefore a decrease in the number of phytoplankton may cause problems for human beings. Most plankton live near the surface of the oceans. Pollution, especially that caused by chemical pollutants, has a direct impact on the water at the surface. This is a great threat to plankton populations. Plankton are not only critical for their role in the food chain, but they are also important for their usage in the production of valuable minerals. Ancient deposits of plankton, which were buried under the seafloor and later mined, have become important sources of oil, shale, and many other valuable minerals.

Like land plants, phytoplankton fix carbon through photosynthesis, making it available for higher trophic levels.¹ The major environmental factors influencing phytoplankton growth are temperature, light, and availability of nutrients. Phytoplankton can undergo rapid population growth or “algal blooms” when water temperatures rise in the presence of excess nutrients. While increased phytoplankton populations provide more food to organisms at higher trophic levels, too much phytoplankton can harm the overall health of the oceans. During these blooms, most of the phytoplankton die and sink to the bottom, where they decompose. This process depletes the bottom waters of dissolved oxygen, which is necessary for the survival of other organisms, including fish and crabs.

Major groups of phytoplankton include: diatoms, golden-brown algae, green algae, blue-green algae, dinoflagellates and crypto monads. Phytoplankton are being used as indicators of environmental conditions within the oceans because their populations are especially sensitive to changes in nutrient levels and other water quality conditions.

Zooplankton are planktonic animals that range in size from microscopic rotifers to macroscopic jellyfish. Their distribution within the oceans is governed by salinity, temperature and food availability. The zooplankton community is composed of both primary consumers, which eat phytoplankton, and secondary consumers, which feed on other zooplankton. Zooplankton can be classified into three size classes: Microzooplankton-protozoans and rotifers, Mesozooplankton-including copepods and invertebrate larvae, and Macrozooplankton-including amphipods, shrimp, fish larvae, and jelly fish. Zooplankton, like phytoplankton, are excellent indicators of environmental conditions within the oceans, because they are sensitive to changes in water quality.

The most common animal in the plankton group is the copepod. There are more than 7,500 species of copepods. Copepods are small shrimp-like animals.

Copepods have appendages that are used like paddles for movement. They eat diatoms and other plankton and in turn are eaten by other, larger, drifters. A single copepod can eat an average of 200,000 diatoms a day.

Amphipods, which are the main diet of the gray whale, look like a cross between a shrimp and an isopod. The amphipod typically ranges in size from 2 to 50 mm, although a few may be larger. Amphipods are common in aquatic ecosystems throughout many parts of the world, inhabiting marine, brackish, and freshwater environments. A few species also live in terrestrial ecosystems.

One of the most interesting plankton species is the barnacle. It lives in the upper zone of the oceans where the water only comes at high tide. The appearance of a barnacle is rather deceptive. At first glance it looks like a mollusk, but when you observe the larva of the barnacle the truth becomes clear. Barnacles cause serious problems on the hulls of ships and buoys.

Jellyfish, which are basically nothing more than a large stomach with long tentacles, are also plankton. Their tentacles have stingers on them which they use to catch and paralyze food and then bring it to their stomachs. They move through the water by pumping their stomachs. For the most part they move up and down in the water, letting the currents carry them from side to side.

Copepods, amphipods, jellyfish, and barnacles are some of the most abundant and well-known examples of plankton. The oceans of the world contain a world of tiny organisms; most of them invisible to the human eye and yet these are the basis for nearly all the life in the sea. Our awareness of these tiny creatures will help enhance our appreciation of God’s uniqueness and greatness. The more we learn about the mysteries of the deep, the more we believe in the existence of God.

Footnote

1. Trophic levels: Producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer.

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali was born in the city of Tus, northern Persia (Iran), in the year 450t-i/1058.

His father prayed that his two Sons would become great scholars. Al-Ghazali became ‘the most scholarly person of his generation and the imam of his time’ and his brother Ahmed ‘an awe-inspiring preacher’ (A1-Sabki, p.94). Through them, their father’s prayers were answered.

Al-Ghazali studied in Jurjan and Naisapur and became the head of the Nizamiya school in Baghdad, where he was involved in the political and religious issues of his time. He gave up his position of influence to take up devotional retreat in Damascus. From this important period of his life came the masterpiece Ihya Ulum al-Deen, The Revivification of the Religious Sciences. This, along with his other distinguished works, Ayuhal Walad and Bidayatul Hidayah made a great contribution to the development of educational philosophy.

Al-Ghazali died in the town of his birth in 505H/1113.

Zakariya al-Ansari was born in Sunaika in the Egyptian province of Sharqiyya in 824H/1449. His teachers include the great scholar of hadith Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (died 852n/1449) and the jurist Jalal al-Din al-Mahali (d. 871H/1466). He rose to the position of Qadi, a position he held for twenty years. He lived through the end of the Mamluk reign and saw Egypt conquered by the Turkish Sultan Salim I. (1517). Al-Sha’rani describing the twenty years he spent with al-Ansari, said that he was ‘never inattentive and never missed even a supererogatory prayer’. He quoted his sheikh as saying: ‘I do not want to accustom myself to laziness’. Al-Ansari continued in this state of vigilance over religious matters until his death at the age of one hundred.

He wrote several books on jurisprudence including Manhaj altullab and commentaries on a variety of early texts including Ibn Malik’s famous poem containing the rules of Arabic grammar.

The references in this article are taken from a short treatise entitled al lu’lu’ al-Nazim fi Rum al-ta’alum wa ta‘lim, which explains his view of the curriculum.

Education and Ideology

Educational ideology, in the words of Scrimshaw (1983) is ‘that system of beliefs which gives the general direction to the educational policies of those who hold those beliefs’. The educational philosophy of Islam develops from the beliefs found in the Qur’an and Sunna. In the early days of Islam, Muslims’ approach to these beliefs were straightforward and uncontroversial. There were no differences of opinion regarding the beliefs and practices of the Prophet, upon him be peace. His companions constituted clear examples of his educational ideology wherever they settled. However, as Islam spread, it faced new problems and had to deal with differing ideologies and belief systems that had crept into the body of the Muslim community. The need to determine educational practice became increasingly important. The first books collecting the beliefs and practices that ‘gave the general direction of education’ were written in the third century. These included Adab al-Mu’alimeen by Muhammad bin Sahnun.

Educational beliefs address four main questions. They are:

• How is knowledge defined and how should it be classified?
• What is the role of the teacher?
• What is the role of the learner?
• What happens when learning takes place?

The definition and classification of knowledge

Al-Ghazali’s division of knowledge has sometimes been misunderstood. He has been accused of advocating a secular view of the curriculum. This misunderstanding has been compounded by the translation of his two main classifications of knowledge as ‘sacred and ‘profane’². A more accurate translation would be ‘revealed’ and ‘non-revealed’ knowledge. The first category covers ‘that which came from the prophets’. The second category includes ‘all knowledge obtained through the use of the intellect, experimentation or hearing’.

A full understanding of these two categories can only be understood by examining the relationship of the temporal world and the everlasting Hereafter. The two are intrinsically connected. Knowledge of the Hereafter is gained by examining the temporal world. The temporal world gives us signs and proofs of the existence of a Greater Existence and leads us to worship Him. Knowledge of the Hereafter teaches us how to live our temporal lives. All knowledge belongs to God. The two categories differ only in their means of acquisition.

Al-Ghazali also applies legalistic criteria. Knowledge may be fard, compulsory, or not. The fard knowledge is further divided into fard alayn, compulsory on every individual and fard al-kifaya, a compulsion on the community at large. The latter is fulfilled if at least one person learns it.

An example is the studying of medicine. –

Revealed knowledge may be of the fard al-ayn category i.e. the basic beliefs or fard al-kifaya i.e. principles of jurisprudence.

Non-revealed knowledge falls into three categories. The first is fard al-kifaya which therefore ranks among some of the types of revealed knowledge. These are connected to what al -Ghazali calls the four fundamental activities, without which human activities, including spiritual affairs, cannot be organized. They are –

i. agriculture

ii. cloth manufacture

iii. building

iv. politics.

Any activity auxiliary or subsidiary to any of the above is also fard-al kifaya. Iron production is auxiliary to agriculture. Milling and bread making is subsidiary to it. Both are compulsions on the community.

Compulsions fall on the individual or society according to specific situations. For example, one who enters Islam is not expected to know about fasting until the month of fasting arrives. Likewise, the compulsions on a community depend on how the society has developed with regards the four fundamental activities.

Another category is ‘praiseworthy’, which is not compulsory, knowledge. An example is the study of the intricacies of medicine or arithmetic. A basic understanding is supplementary to the fundamentals mentioned above and is therefore compulsory, but this is not true of its intricacies and detailed theories.

The other two categories are ‘blameworthy’ knowledge which includes magic and ‘neutral’ knowledge which includes poetry.

Al-Ansari’s classification of knowledge

Al-Ansari uses a slightly different classification. He identifies four categories.

1. Shariah studies

2. Literary studies

3. Studies based on exercise

4. Intellectual studies

The first category is similar to al Ghazali’s ‘revealed knowledge’. He includes three areas. They are Fiqh (jurisprudence), Tafsir (exegesis) and Hadith (traditions of the Messenger).

The second category includes fourteen branches of language including etymology, grammar, the study of metaphors, rhyme and speech making. The variations of Qur’anic reading are part of this category.

The third category presents the most radical alternative to the approach found in ‘modern’ school systems. Among the skills and studies that are developed through exercise are tasawuf (Islamic mysticism), engineering, music, politics, character building and domestic sciences.

The intellectual studies include areas such as logic, the principles of jurisprudence, medicine, the study of time and astronomy.

Although it is unlikely that any school would want to return purely to the syllabus of al-Ghazali or al-Ansari, their approach can help us to identify priorities in schools. They can also help us to break away from what is becoming a uniformly Western approach to knowledge. Islam has contributed greatly to education and educational theory. By looking at great thinkers like al-Ghazali and al-Ansari, Muslims and non-Muslims alike can consider alternative approaches to syllabus organization.

In our next article we will examine the role of the teacher and the student.

American Indians applied its leaves as a poultice to heal wounds, and brewed a cough mixture from its roots. Now its seeds are claimed to have medicinal uses ranging from relieving pre-menstrual syndrome to management of multiple sclerosis, alcoholism and atopic eczema.

The seeds contain approximately 15% protein, 24% oil and 43% cellulose and lignin. The fatty acids in the oil are thought to be important to health because the oil contains 65-85% linoleic acid (LA) and 7-15% gamma linoleic acid (GLA): LA is an essential fatty acid for the body which it cannot make but which it converts to GLA. GLA is one of the components of cells and a precursor of prostaglandins which regulate many body functions. However, the LA GLA conversion step may be blocked by a range of factors including excessive levels of blood cholesterol, a high proportion of certain fatty acids in the diet, ageing, alcohol intake and diabetes.

Supplementing the diet with evening primrose oil (EPO) by-passes the conversion step, thus providing for the presence of GLA in the body. A recent World Health Organisation report suggested that 3% of the total calorific intake of adults should be in the form of essential fatty acids, this figure rising to 5-6% for children and pregnant and lactating women. GLA can be provided by several other sources as well, e.g. borage oil and blackcurrant oil, both of which contain a higher concentration of GLA than EPO but not as much LA.

The quality and composition of EPO used in commercial manufacturing is currently the subject of much research and monitoring work. In the UK research is concentrated on obtaining GLA from other sources e.g. by fermentation from the fungus mucor javanicus.

A concentrated oil from evening primrose, borage and blackcurrant seeds, is now undergoing clinical trials and may be used in second generation oil products of the future. EPO is already used in a variety of beauty and hygiene products, including cosmetic and skin care products, shampoos and soaps.

Trials have been curried out to investigate claims of the effectiveness of EPO in treating many diseases and conditions, including multiple sclerosis, cardiovascular disease, asthma, atopic eczema, cancer, obesity and premenstrual syndrome. So far the results have been variable but some genuine clinical effects have been seen.

Millions of dollars have been and are being spent on developing new methods of extracting useful natural products for the benefit of mankind. We are now seeing a widespread desire to return to natural resources to cure various ailments. Let us hope that, before mankind destroy their environment, they will come to realize the importance of nature’s medicine-cabinet, and give thanks where it is due. Without that giving of thanks, mankind will not practise the humility and compassion necessary if our common resources are to be preserved both for ourselves and for future generations.