Numerous reports affirm that the polytheists of pre-Islamic ignorance would approach an idol, call upon it, and then hear a voice. They imagined that the one who spoke and answered them was the very deity they worshipped instead of Allah, whereas in truth it was nothing but an accursed devil determined to lead them astray and plunge them into false beliefs.

The point of all this is to make it clear that personal experiences and anecdotal stories are not the proper means for determining the legitimacy of religious actions. The sole, accepted criterion is to refer the matter back to the Sharia, embodied in the Quran and the Sunnah—nothing else.

One of the matters in which many people become most confused is their attempt to reach the unseen world by one method or another: visiting soothsayers, fortune-tellers, astrologers, sorcerers, and charlatans. They assume these individuals possess knowledge of the unseen because they reveal to them certain hidden things that sometimes occur exactly as foretold. On that basis they conclude the practice is lawful simply because the prediction came true.

This is a serious error and manifest misguidance, for the mere presence of some benefit in a given means is not enough to establish its permissibility. Selling wine, for instance, may enrich its vendor and make him prosperous, and the same can happen with gambling and lotteries. Yet our Lord says about them: “They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, ‘In them is great sin and some benefit for people, but their sin is greater than their benefit.’” 1 Nevertheless, both remain forbidden, and a curse has been pronounced concerning wine.