by his hair; or he produces ordinary sheets of paper and passes them off to the crowd as banknotes, but when his spell fades the papers revert to what they really are, just as pick-pockets do. Among the sorcerers’ tricks, too, is that one of them will take a dung-beetle—the insect everyone knows—and, by his magic, make it look to the onlookers like a lamb. They also persuade people that they can walk along a single fine thread—what is now called the circus tight-rope—or that they are acrobats.

All of this is lies and fraud perpetrated against the public, a deception of the eyes and nothing but illusory sorcery. Once the spell passes, everything returns to its original state. We therefore must not be taken in by them, must not believe them, and must not allow them access to our children or our lands to promote their magic.

As for the kāhin (soothsayer), he is the one who claims knowledge of the unseen. The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—informed us that the devils eavesdrop, snatch a single word, convey it to the soothsayer, who then adds to it a hundred lies; yet the people believe everything he says because of that one stolen word. The Exalted says: “Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend? They descend upon every sinful liar; they pass on what they overhear, but most of them are liars” (Q 26:221–223). Soothsaying was widespread in the pre-Islamic days of ignorance: every tribe had its own soothsayer to whom they referred and whom they consulted about hidden matters. When Islam arrived it abolished soothsaying, and the Prophet—peace be upon him—prohibited going to the soothsayers, and he said—