A comparison of the recognition of Islamic and Christian counselling in Malaysia

Abstract

This thesis is a research in the field of comparative religion studies, which compares Islam and Christianity, focuses on counselling as a comparative subject and the recognition issue as the domain of the research. This study is conducted due to several research problems, which are the imprecise definition of Islamic and Christian counselling, lack of contemporary report on Islamic and Christian counselling in Malaysia, the recognition issues on the practice of Islamic and Christian counselling, the ignorance of similarities and differences between Islamic and Christian counselling and the precariousness in the practice of Islamic counselling compared to Christian counselling. The objectives of the studies were to introduce and integrate views of the concept of counselling in the light of al-Quran and Bible, to analyse the counselling practices of Muslim and Christian counselling practitioners in Malaysia, to access and evaluate the views of Muslims and Christian counselling practitioners on the concept, the development and the recognition of Islamic and Christian counselling in Malaysia and to compare the concept, development and recognition status of Islamic and Christian counselling in Malaysia. A grounded theory qualitative research methodology was utilized in this study. Data was gathered from two main strategies, the library research and field research. The field research data was collected from semi structured interviews of thirty two respondents. Selective snowball sampling was carried out as they were chosen among the experts and the prominent registered and non-registered practitioners of Islamic and Christian counselling in the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The data analysis process involved two main procedures, constant comparative and negative case analysis. The findings of this study were; first, this study demonstrates that both Islamic and Christian counselling has strong Scriptural foundations. Second, the findings rejected the view that Islamic counselling was not clearly defined, and confirmed that the Islamic and Christian counselling definition in Malaysia is parallel to the definition in the literatures of both religions. Third, Christian counselling development is more advance compared to Islamic counselling Malaysia but Muslim counsellors in Malaysia are more outstanding compared to the Malaysian Christian Counsellors when matched up to their colleges worldwide. Fourth, both Islamic and Christian counselling in Malaysia were considered recognized by the community, but not recognized by the Malaysian government and law.