treatment by ruqyah is prescribed for organic illnesses for which physicians have treatments. It is therefore all the more fitting that so-called spiritual illnesses be treated with ruqyah, especially in cases of envy.

Is Ruqyah Based on Revealed Prescription or Empirical Experience?

Treatment with the Quran and ruqyah is a branch of jurisprudence governed by two considerations: treatment itself, and seeking Allah Most High’s aid and supplicating Him to repel the aggression of the jinn or ward off the harm of an envious person. Such treatment, like the treatment of other ailments, may be viewed either as a devotional matter or as an ordinary means. The distinction between the two is evident even to the silent, let alone one who speaks—indeed, even to the inept, let alone the discerning.

Whoever regards it as one of people’s customary practices and treats the discussion of it like that of other empirically based remedies will hold that, in treatment with the Quran, whatever has been tried and found to bring about healing is valid, even if it is not reported in the Sunnah. Indeed, even if the Sunnah reports something contrary to it, they consider the empirically proven remedy more deserving of being followed. Whoever regards it as a purely devotional matter, however, must adhere to the revealed texts and not go beyond the Quran and Sunnah, but patiently constrain himself to the Sunnah until healing comes by the permission of Allah Most High.

I have not found anyone who explicitly considered both of these principles or drew attention to them, though they may be inferred from the scholars’ statements. For example, the scholars rule that some therapeutic practices employed by pseudo-erudite healers—if I may use that expression—or by seasoned practitioners in the field are religious innovations. This indicates that they regard treatment as fundamentally devotional. Yet we soon find them deeming ruqyahs valid without restriction—or, as they put it, generally permissible—subject to conditions such as being in Arabic, being free of polytheism, and not being believed to possess intrinsic efficacy. This indicates that they leave the matter of treatment open to whatever ruqyahs have proved effective through experience, as though it were fundamentally an ordinary matter, together with all the subsidiary rulings built upon that foundation.

It later became clear to me that the general body of scholars who wrote on this issue, past and present—the early scholars, may Allah have mercy on them, and the later scholars who followed them—regarded it as both an ordinary and a devotional matter at the same time. Anyone who examines the scholars’ works will recognize this clearly. Yet, in view of the many texts I found in the Sunnah