As for innovations in treating the evil eye, those that presently come to mind include going to soothsayers, impostors, and sorcerers. I have explained how a sorcerer may be recognized in my book Treatment through Ruqyah: Between the Sunnah and Innovation, which may be consulted. Other such practices include seeking treatment from women and sprinkling water or salt when envy is feared; they claim that this wards off the evil eye. This is a form of shirk. Similar practices include touching wood; hanging amulets, protective charms, a blue bead, a five-fingered hand, or a ring; tying a thread; and, upon seeing something one fears may be envied, sending blessings upon the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) or saying, “Allah is greatest.” What is prescribed is to say, “What Allah has willed! There is no power except with Allah,” to pray for blessing, and to seek refuge in Allah, as explained above.

I did not intend this treatise as yet another addition to the works written on envy. Rather, I wished to emphasize that only the established sunnahs should be followed in treating someone afflicted by the evil eye. Nor am I presently inclined to catalogue here the innovations of ordinary people and charlatans. Whoever is content with the Sunnah, Allah Most High will suffice him. Moreover, innovation has no bounds. The truth is that the subject of treatment through ruqyah has already received its due share of writing. A sensible person need only be measured in his approach, and Allah is the Protector from error.

I cannot let this opportunity pass without drawing attention to something frequently found in healers’ books and still more frequently in the words of healers who are not authors. They treat the patient, whatever his condition—whether afflicted by the evil eye, possessed, or bewitched; the early Muslims used the optimistic euphemism matbūb (“one under treatment”) for the latter, in hope of his recovery. You therefore find a healer reciting verses whose wording he imagines somehow corresponds to the patient’s condition and designating them as ruqyahs specific to that illness. If he goes even further, he assigns these verses to one condition and those to another, sets fixed parameters, and prescribes procedures for which Allah has sent down no authority. If healing happens to occur with one of them, it is then accorded the distinction of being “proven by experience.” I shall give some examples:

• For someone afflicted by the evil eye, they recite: “Your sight will return to you humbled and weary.” Yet Allah did not reveal the verse for that purpose, and there is no connection whatsoever between the verse and the patient’s condition.

• Some give the patient water over which recitation has been performed and recite: “And their Lord will give them a purifying drink (21).” [Al-Insān: 21]