They also say, “This was tried and proved beneficial.” The truth is that we do not concede the validity of this appeal to experience. There is a vast difference between healing coinciding with ruqyah and healing occurring because of it. Has Allah Most High not granted polytheists provision and sent them rain, while they claimed that this came about because they prayed to their idols? This is not to equate polytheists with healers. This is one point to which few pay attention.

Another issue is the prevalence of lying among ignorant healers, especially career practitioners who earn their livelihood from ruqyah—even though accepting payment for ruqyah is permissible. I am specifically referring to those who make it their profession. Even when it is not an outright lie, it amounts to deception and the inflation and exaggeration of facts. If the trials and benefits they publicize were truly as they portray them to people, their resonance and impact would be palpable; yet bitter reality gives the lie to this.

Al-Saffārīnī said: Imam Ibn Aqīl wrote in al-Funūn: “Al-Ma’mūn, wielder of the auspicious spear, said: ‘If alchemy were valid, we would have no need for land tax; if talismans were effective, we would have no need for troops and guards; and if astrology were valid, we would have no need for the courier service.’” End quote. (1)

Even as healers multiply, we find increasing numbers of people afflicted by possession, sorcery, and the evil eye. Lying has become widespread among both groups. To Allah belongs the command before and after. The inner circles of healers are generally composed of people who are not from the people of the Sunnah, and I doubt their integrity and accuracy. Many who claim to be victims of envy actually suffer from obsessive misgivings, and many of those supposedly possessed fabricate claims about the jinn! Were it not for fear of undue length, I would relate examples and true stories, just as healer-authors themselves do.

A Jew or Christian Performing Ruqyah for a Muslim

You find many ordinary people going to rabbis and monks to seek ruqyah from them, utterly unaware of sound creed and all the issues it encompasses. In such a case, it does them no good to be told that scholars differ on the matter. Rather, the ordinary person should be given a ruling according to the preponderant view and spared the details of scholarly disagreement, because he does not understand them. The Sunnah is to address people in terms they understand.