so she went to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and asked him to invoke Allah on her behalf. He told her, “If you wish, I will pray that Allah cure you; but if you wish, remain patient and you will have Paradise.” She answered, “I choose patience.” Although the seizures caused her pain and suffering, she bore them so that she might be numbered among the people of Paradise. She then said, “Messenger of Allah, when I have a fit my body becomes exposed, so ask Allah that I not become exposed.” He prayed, and from then on she would still have seizures, but her body was never again uncovered.

Epilepsy—may Allah protect us from it—is of two kinds:

1. Epilepsy caused by nervous spasms. This is a physical ailment that can be treated by conventional physicians with medicines that soothe it or eliminate it completely.

2. Epilepsy caused by devils and jinn. A jinni overpowers a human being, throws him to the ground, enters into him, and strikes him against the earth until he falls unconscious from the violence of the seizure and feels nothing. The devil or jinni takes hold of the person’s very self and begins to speak with his tongue. Anyone hearing the speech imagines that it is the human who is speaking, but it is actually the jinni. For that reason you will notice differences in what is said; it is not like his normal speech when awake, because it is altered by the jinni’s utterance.

This type of epilepsy—we ask Allah to protect us and you from it and from every affliction—is treated by Qur’anic recitation performed by learned and virtuous people, who recite over the afflicted person. At times the jinni addresses them, converses with them, and explains why he assaulted that human; at other times he simply speaks.

That jinn can cause seizures in humans is established by the Quran, the sunnah, and by plain observation.