Hayat House – Muslim Community (Newington, N.S.W)

Hayat House – Muslim Community (Newington, N.S.W)  (Hayat, the Arabic word meaning ‘life’) is designed to be a culturally appropriate, community-based drug and alcohol addictions rehabilitation program that meets the needs of Sydney’s diverse Muslim community. The aim of Hayat House is to provide community-based substance abuse assessment, counselling (individual, couple, family and group), casework and rehabilitation to Muslim individuals and their families.

In its initial phases of the program, the following services will be provided:

Assessment and Counselling

Individual counselling will be provided 2 days per week. Some after-hours counselling will be available depending on availability.

Weekly Group Therapy

All groups will run for approximately 2 hours and will incorporate both the Millati Islami principls as well as a psychological topic revolving around wellbeing and self-care. Groups will be facilitated by trained counsellors.

The Millati Islami 12-step Program

Millati Islami is a fellowship of men and women, joined together on the “Path of Peace”. They share experiences, strengths and hopes while recovering from an active addiction to mind and mood altering substances.

The spiritual and religious intentions behind the initiation fo this project to meet the ultimate objectives of the maqasid al-shariah which are necessary (al-daruriyyah) for humans to function and live peacefully in this world according to the Qur’an and Sunnah.

These include 5 areas:

– Protection of life

– Protection of religion

– Protection of human generation or procreation

– Protection of intellect or mind and lastly

– Protection of wealth or resources

Hayat House hopes to reach these ultimate objectives by assisting Muslims from further harming their health and lives from addiction with the aim to guide them towards abstinence from drugs and alcohol.

This reduction and elimination of drug and alcohol consumption will facilitate these Muslims to then follow the path of Allah (Most Compassionate and Merciful) and will enable them to perform obligatory workship, ibadaat. This will further the reduction of the drug and alcohol dependency which clouds conscious awareness of Allah and everyday intelligent reasoning necessary for everyday living and religious worship.

Reducing the consumption of drugs and alcohol will further prevent the wasting of finances in purchasing haram (prohibited) substances, removes the financial expenses from the family for the substance abuse habit and reduce the amount of crimes committed to keep financing the addiction.

Note: No fees will be charged to service recipients of Hayat House.