In a well-known hadith, the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have stated that “Islam began as a stranger and will return as it began, as a stranger; and blessed are the strangers.” The word for “strange” in Arabic is gharīb, a word which connotes a feeling of sorrow in the spiritual sense. It connotes the feeling of loneliness, of being away from ones loved ones, albeit temporarily. The spiritual element of the emotions is largely missing in the psychological literature. In her investigation into ḥuzn, an emotion that receives considerable attention in the Islamic sources, Dr Mahshid Turner has produced a work of pioneering status. This work is not concerned only with the nature of this emotion as such; it is concerned also with the significance and ontology of sorrow, a feature which adds to the value of this work, rendering it very useful for the psychology and theology of ḥuzn.

Human nature has been defined variously by philosophers and other thinkers, but the most widely circulated definition, if not the most widely accepted one, is based on “rationality”, as in the Arabic term “haywan al-natiq” or ‘rational animal’. Since the time of Aristotle this definition has been adopted by many thinkers, but it is also contested by another idea which says that without emotions, the rational man is nothing more than a robot-like animal. Therefore, what makes us human beings is our emotions, and the existential circumstances which render our life meaningful in many instances. By making such a statement, these thinkers, many of whom, such as Kierkegaard, are existentialists, do not mean that all of the emotions are necessarily desired. However, emotions such as anxiety, pathos, pleasure, boredom, ecstasy, grief, empathy and a host of others help us build a passionate relationship with the truth which is in this sense only subjective. If we follow the ontology of emotions, and thus of ḥuzn, we may express it as the path of “truth”. How can we justify the feeling of sadness leading to “truth”, or building a passionate relationship with the truth? We need to inquire briefly into the nature of ḥuzn in this sense in order to find an answer to this question.