Whathealingreallymeans—degreesofshifa',andwhy"notcuredyet"isoftenwrong

A note from us before you read: this essay is about what "healing" means. It applies equally to medical treatment and to ruqyah. If you are ill, see a doctor first and stay with your treatment — ruqyah works alongside medicine, never instead of it. Nothing here promises a cure; healing is in Allah's hand alone.

The most misunderstood word in treatment

A raqi of long experience calls this the most important topic in the whole field of treatment — because a wrong idea of shifā' (healing) is the reason people despair, hop from raqi to raqi, and even fall into haram and shirk chasing a cure. He has seen patients whom Allah had healed while they and their families still insisted, "not healed yet" — because they never understood what healing is.

You often hear that people afflicted by 'ayn, hasad, sihr or mass "never get better" despite months or years of ruqyah. He notes who usually says this: an envier; a family with a patient for whom Allah has not yet decreed recovery; a patient whose condition is really psychological; or a patient who has in fact partly recovered but does not recognise it. The claim needs unpacking.

Healing comes in degrees

Most people assume healing must be total — 100% — or it is not healing. That is wrong. Complete recovery is what every patient hopes for, and it happens for some; but healing can also be 70%, 50%, or a 20% improvement. Two examples:

A broken leg. After treatment, one person walks exactly as before; another walks with a slight limp; a third ends up with a walking stick. All three healed — the first completely, the others in part.

A person afflicted by sihr, mass or 'ayn. One loses every symptom; another is relieved of most things; a third improves in some symptoms by some degree. In every case healing occurred — total or partial.

The Prophet's own example

The Prophet ﷺ taught the du'ā that asks for the highest degree:

"A healing that leaves no illness behind" — that is complete healing, and it may be given or it may not. The Prophet ﷺ himself carried the effect of the poisoned sheep of Khaybar for three years. 'Ā'ishah relates that in his final illness he said: "O 'Ā'ishah, I still feel the pain of the food I ate at Khaybar; this is the time my aorta is being cut from that poison" (Bukhari, in the account of his final illness). Ibn Sa'd records that whenever he felt its effect he would be treated with cupping — evidence, he notes, that an illness may remain and keep needing treatment, exactly as happens today with diabetes, kidney disease or blood pressure, and likewise with 'ayn, sihr and mass.

Ubayy ibn Ka'b asked the Prophet ﷺ what fever earns, and was told: "Good deeds flow to the one it touches." So Ubayy prayed, "O Allah, I ask You for a fever that does not stop me going out in Your path" — and fever never left him until he died of it. And whole ranks of the Companions died in the plague of 'Amwās — Abu 'Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrāh, Mu'ādh ibn Jabal and others — although the Prophet ﷺ had said: "The plague is martyrdom for my ummah, and the pricking of your enemies among the jinn; whoever dies in it is a martyr" (as the essay cites it). They were not healed, though they stood, bowed and prostrated in prayer — and their reward was martyrdom. Being righteous does not guarantee the 100% degree; and not receiving it is not a verdict on your faith.

The illness you want cured may itself be a cure

A person complains of sihr or 'ayn and begs for shifā' — not knowing that Allah sent this trial to heal him of far worse diseases. Take fever: everyone rushes to bring a temperature down, yet Ibn al-Qayyim writes: "The body may benefit from fever enormously, in ways medicine cannot match… and as for its cleansing of the heart from its filth, that is something the physicians of hearts know, and they find it exactly as their Prophet ﷺ told them. Fever benefits body and heart — and to curse it is wrong and transgression." The author adds a dated aside from the medical literature he was quoting: into the early twentieth century "fever therapy" was used for various diseases, and in 1990 American television even reported it being explored for AIDS. (That is medical history, not present-day medicine — but his point stands: what feels like pure affliction can carry benefit.)

The Quran states the principle openly: "We have already sent [messengers] to nations before you; then We seized them with poverty and hardship that perhaps they might humble themselves" (al-An'ām 6:42); "…and We tested them with good and evil that perhaps they would return" (al-A'rāf 7:168); "Corruption has appeared on land and sea for what men's hands have earned, that He may let them taste part of what they have done, that perhaps they will return" (al-Rūm 30:41).

The author describes asking patients who had spent long months in treatment programmes — daily al-Baqarah, night prayer, fasting, charity: Did you ever worship Allah like this before your illness? The answer is no. And if Allah heals you, will you keep it up? The honest answer, again, is often no. The real healing, he says, is the return to Allah itself — and the scholars before him said the same: the healing of hearts comes before the healing of bodies.

Doctors talk in percentages too

Ask a surgeon what an operation will achieve and you will hear "a 50% improvement", "20%". A cancer patient has organs removed, takes anti-tumour drugs for the rest of his life — and everyone says, rightly, "he was cured of cancer". Nobody holds medicine to the 100%-or-nothing standard. Hold ruqyah to the same honest standard.

Al-Shāfī: the One who heals

The essay closes by reproducing, "as a gift", the section on Allah's name al-Shāfī from Sheikh Sa'īd ibn Wahf al-Qahtānī's commentary on the beautiful names. Its heart:

• Healing belongs to Allah alone. 'Ā'ishah relates that the Prophet ﷺ would wipe with his right hand and say: "O Allah, Lord of mankind, remove the harm and heal him — You are the Healer; there is no healing but Your healing, a healing that leaves no illness" (Bukhari; Muslim).
• Allah's healing is of two kinds: healing of hearts — the Quran is "a healing for what is in the breasts" (Yūnus 10:57), "a healing and a mercy for the believers" (al-Isrā' 17:82), for those who believe and act on it, while it only increases the wrongdoers in loss; and healing of bodies — the Companion who treated a scorpion sting by reciting al-Fātihah over the stung tribesman until he recovered, and the Prophet ﷺ approved: "How did you know it is a ruqyah?" (Bukhari; Muslim); the Prophet's own practice of reciting al-Mu'awwidhāt over himself in illness (Bukhari; Muslim).
• Honey: "There emerges from their bellies a drink, varying in colours, in which there is healing for people" (al-Nahl 16:69) — and the man with the loose bowels whom the Prophet ﷺ treated with honey, saying: "Allah has spoken the truth and your brother's belly has lied" (Bukhari; Muslim).
• Ibrāhīm عليه السلام said: "And when I am ill, it is He who cures me" (al-Shu'arā' 26:80) — attributing illness to himself out of adab, and cure to Allah alone.
• The Prophet ﷺ taught the sick to say, with a hand on the place of pain:

• And for visiting the sick: "Whoever visits a sick person whose time has not come and says seven times: As'alu Llāha l-'Aẓīm, Rabba l-'Arshi l-'Aẓīm, an yashfiyak ('I ask Allah the Magnificent, Lord of the Magnificent Throne, to heal you'), Allah will cure him of that illness." — Abu Dawud 3106; graded sahih (see Sahih al-Tirmidhi).
• "Allah has not sent down a disease without sending down a cure for it" (Bukhari 5678) — "known by those who know it, unknown to those who do not" (Ahmad; Ibn Majah). Ibn al-Qayyim comments: these hadiths affirm causes and means, and may well cover even the diseases medicine cannot yet cure — Allah has made cures for them but veiled the knowledge from people. So take the lawful means, and depend on the One who heals.

The point to carry away: healing is Allah's alone, it comes in degrees, and the deepest healing is the heart's return to Him. Be patient with partial progress, thank Allah for every percent, keep taking the means — medical and prophetic — and never let an incomplete recovery drive you to a sorcerer's door.