The Taqua of Marriage

detriment of femininity due to the diversion of life-energies – henceforth
called ‘etheric forces’ – that are meant to preserve her function and form.

Nervous energy (stress, anxiety) is an obvious manifestation of this robbery or
displacement. Anxiety is an etheric thief. Physically, its toll is far more than
that of a day’s labor in the mines. Emotionally, its toll is the disturbance of
peaceful human relations. Spiritually, its toll is the loss of the remembrance
of Allah. All of this is theft and/or wastage of the divine word ‘Be’ as
dispensed to the stressed individual. In terms of the etheric life-force,
energies meant to form, direct and maintain the organ systems are diverted to
useless mental activity, which, in essence, is a lack of faith that manifests the
‘fear of man’ rather than the fear of Allah. Even if outwardly a person appears
calm, inwardly the theft is constantly occurring with major detrimental
effects on both immune and endocrine systems. Therefore, if a woman
carries anxieties attendant to a negligent husband or those of a manly role,
the psychic burden continually overtaxes her etheric reserves and inevitably
results in typical female disorders and an overall dissipation of beauty and
health; and these deficits—as we shall see—extend also to that which she
carries in the womb. Al-Majusi (1294 CE) has this to say about stress:

... finally, control the emotions so that one would avoid worry, anxiety and envy

which cause the body to become weak and sick.^27

And modern scientific findings agree with the sage:

Research has shown that stress is a contributing factor in a majority of disease

cases. A relatively new area of behavioral medicine, psychoimmunology, has been

developed to study how the body’s immune system is affected by psychological

causes like stress. While it is widely recognized that heart disease and ulcers may

result from excess stress, psychoimmunologists believe many other types of illness

also result from impaired immune capabilities due to stress. Cancer, allergies, and

arthritis all may result from the body’s weakened ability to defend itself because of

stress.^28

27
Al-Majusi, Kamil al-Sina’ah al’Tibiyyah, I: 152

(^28) Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology Second Edition, Psychology–Encyclopedias. I. Strickland,
Bonnie R., ed., Gale Group, 2001, NY. London, Boston, p. 634