Guest Editor’s Introduction

It is my pleasure to introduce this special issue on Psychological Well-Being and Character Development in Classical Islamic Psychology. This special issue came together to capture some of the notable paper presentations that came out of an international symposium held in the summer of 2022 in Istanbul, Turkiye. This symposium on “The intersection of Islamic Studies and Contemporary Psychology” was sponsored and hosted by both ISAR, an Islamic research center and Khalil Center, an Islamic psychology clinic and research center. It was held at ISAR’s campus in Uskudar, Istanbul.

The rationale and motivation to have such a symposium was to try to expand the available literature on psychology in the Islamic tradition in the English language. Such literature would be important to help provide greater resources and expand the nascent and new field of Islamic psychology that has become increasingly popular over the last decade as well as to serve as a greater contribution to the broader field of psychology overall. Since Islamic psychology prizes and makes a claim to the richness of Islamic traditions as it pertains to psychology, this symposium was envisioned to try to demonstrate this by excavating some of these classical discussions for potential relevance and utility in modern psychology. Therefore, all submissions required that the author draw upon Muslim scholarly works written in the classical period (i.e. 9th to 19th century) and present its potential relevance to modern questions of human psychology. It was not sufficient simply to provide a descriptive review of a particular historical scholar’s works regarding psychology, but rather they needed to demonstrate its relevance, its convergence and divergence with similar discussions within the modern psychological literature. After reviewing all of the top entries, among the central themes that emerged was that of ‘psychological well-being and character development’. This was the theme selected for this special issue. This theme is very timely given the extensive and increasing interest in topics of psychological well-being, resilience, and character within the broader positive psychology movement.