My purpose in the foregoing has only been to establish the unseen matters affirmed by the Sacred Law and to refute those who deny them. From another perspective, however, I most strongly condemn those who exploit this belief, making the summoning of jinn and speaking to them into a profession for treating the insane and those afflicted by seizures. In doing so, they employ means beyond the mere recitation of the Quran, for which Allah has sent down no authority—such as severe beating, which has sometimes resulted in the patient’s death, as has occurred here in Amman and in Egypt, becoming the talk of newspapers and gatherings.
In the past, those who recited over people afflicted by seizures were a small number of righteous individuals. Today, they number in the hundreds, including some women who openly display their adornment. Thus, the matter has gone beyond being a religiously sanctioned means—ordinarily undertaken only by physicians—to other practices and methods unknown to both the Sacred Law and medicine. In my view, they are a form of charlatanry and satanic whisperings, which Satan inspires in his enemy, man:
“And thus We have made for every prophet an enemy: devils from among mankind and jinn, whispering to one another embellished speech by way of deception.”
It is also a form of seeking refuge in the jinn, as the idolaters did in the pre-Islamic era, mentioned in the saying of Allah Most High:
“And there were men among mankind who sought refuge in men among the jinn, and so they only increased them in burden.”
Whoever seeks their assistance in breaking a spell—as they claim—or in discovering the identity of the jinn that has possessed a human being, asking whether it is male or female, Muslim or disbeliever, and then believes it; and those present with him likewise believe it—all of them are included in the warning contained in the Prophet’s saying, peace and blessings be upon him: “Whoever goes to a soothsayer or a fortune-teller and believes what he says has disbelieved in what was revealed to Muhammad.” In another hadith: “...his prayer will not be accepted for forty nights.” (1)