One Father’s Journey Toward Peace: Integrating the Qur’an Into Narrative Therapy to Address Loss From Parent–Child Estrangement

Abstract

Islamic culture values strong family bonds and rupturing family relations is not often an option for family members, leading to estrangement. For Muslim parents, the failed familial repair, compounded with estrangement, may lead to isolation and become an obstacle to seeking therapeutic aid. Teaming a non-pathologizing intervention of narrative therapy (NT) with a bibliotherapy tool, the Qur’an can be explored as a therapeutic support. NT guides individuals to share their dominant problem-saturated narratives as the clinician listens for alternate strength-based narratives. This case study will augment NT to include the Qur’an as a bibliotherapy tool in reconstructing a father’s journey of loss as he seeks resolution and meaning from his daughter’s permanent estrangement. Pairing NT and the Qur’an to reshape the father’s loss narratives aids in externalizing the problem narrative and reconstructing a meaning-making narrative.