HowseriouslyIslamtakessorcery—theclassicalrulingonsihrandthesorcerer

People sometimes imagine that Islam treats sorcery as a colourful superstition. The classical law books tell a different story: the scholars of every madhhab ranked sorcery among the very gravest crimes a person can commit — alongside shirk itself — and debated its penalties with the same gravity they gave to murder. What follows is a faithful account of those classical rulings. It is presented so you understand how serious this matter is in Allah’s religion; it is history and law, not instructions — penalties in Islamic law belong to courts and rulers, never to individuals.

Learning, teaching and practising sihr is forbidden

The Hanbali texts state: it is forbidden to learn sihr, to teach it, and to practise it, because of the harm in it. Sihr is “knots, incantations and speech — spoken or written — or an act that affects the body, heart or mind of the bewitched without direct contact. It is real: some of it kills, some sickens, some takes a man away from his wife and prevents him from her, some binds the newly married man so he cannot approach his wife” — like the deed of Labid ibn al-A‘sam, who bewitched the Prophet ﷺ with a comb and combed-out hair, so that “it would seem to him that he had done a thing when he had not.” Some sihr drives its victim to wander with the wild beasts; some separates a man and his wife, or makes them hate one another, or engineers love between two people.

Some scholars said sihr has no reality — only illusion, citing “it seemed to him, from their sihr, that they were moving” (Ta-Ha 20:66). The answer given is Sūrah al-Falaq itself: “Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of daybreak… from the evil of the blowers in knots” — the sorceresses who tie knots in their sihr. Were sihr not real, Allah would not have commanded us to seek refuge from it.

The classical penalties — and why they existed

The Hanbali text continues: the sorcerer disbelieves by learning and practising sihr, whether he believes it forbidden or permitted — such as one who rides through the air on a broom, or claims the stars address him — citing “It was not Sulayman who disbelieved, but the devils disbelieved, teaching people sihr… and the two angels teach no one without saying: we are only a trial, so do not disbelieve” (al-Baqarah 2:102). And in classical law the Muslim sorcerer was executed by the sword. The evidence cited: the narration of Jundub, “The hadd of the sorcerer is a blow of the sword” — related by al-Tirmidhi, who graded it weak and said the correct position is that it is Jundub’s own statement, not the Prophet’s ﷺ; the letter of ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, reported by Bajalah ibn ‘Abdah: “Kill every sorcerer and sorceress” — “and we killed three sorceresses in one day”; and Hafsah (may Allah be pleased with her), who had a slave-girl of hers executed who had bewitched her. The like is reported from ‘Uthman and Ibn ‘Umar. And whoever among the Muslims believes sihr to be lawful is judged to have left Islam altogether, for he has declared lawful what is forbidden by necessary, unanimous knowledge.

Read those lines for what they are: evidence of how the first generations weighed this crime. Sorcery was not an eccentric hobby to them; it was treason against tawhid and a knife at the community’s back.

Where the madhhabs agreed and differed

Al-Mawsu‘ah al-Fiqhiyyah summarises:

• The jurists agree that whoever believes sihr is permissible has left Islam.
• They differ over the one who learns or practises it: the majority — Hanafis, Shafi‘is and Hanbalis — do not judge him outside Islam by the mere learning or practice, unless it contains disbelief in itself; the Malikis judge the sorcerer to have disbelieved unconditionally, because of the veneration of other than Allah in it and the attributing of events and destinies to other than Him.
• The Hanafis held the sorcerer is executed for the corruption he spreads in the land — as a hadd, which once established is not lifted by repentance; the Hanbalis limited execution to the sorcerer whose sihr constitutes disbelief; the Malikis: if he practised openly he is executed unless he repents, and if he practised in secret he is executed regardless and his repentance is not accepted.

Practising sihr is forbidden, full stop — al-Nawawi records consensus on it — and it is one of the major sins. The evidence includes: “What you have brought is only the trick of a sorcerer, and the sorcerer does not succeed wherever he goes” (Ta-Ha 20:69); “but the devils disbelieved, teaching people sihr… and they learn what harms them and does not benefit them” (al-Baqarah 2:102); the repentance of Pharaoh’s magicians — “that He may forgive us our sins and what you compelled us to do of sihr” (Ta-Ha 20:73), which shows it is a sin; and the Prophet’s ﷺ words: “Avoid the seven destroyers: shirk with Allah, and sihr…” — Bukhari 2766, Muslim 89.

Some jurists made an exception for sihr that is mere trickery and sleight of hand: as a kind of entertainment it is permitted, they said, so long as it leads to nothing forbidden — no harming or terrifying people. Al-Baydawi: what conjurors do with devices, drugs and quick hands is not blameworthy; calling it sihr is only loose usage.

Ibn Hubayrah’s comparison of the four imams

The vizier Abu al-Muzaffar ibn Hubayrah, in al-Ishraf ‘ala Madhahib al-Ashraf, records:

• All agreed sihr has a reality, except Abu Hanifah, who held it has none.
• On the one who learns and uses it: Abu Hanifah, Malik and Ahmad — he disbelieves thereby. Some Hanafis: if he learned it to guard against it or avoid it, he does not disbelieve; if he learned it believing it permissible or beneficial, he disbelieves — as does whoever believes the devils do for him whatever he wishes. Al-Shafi‘i: we ask the sorcerer to describe his sihr; if what he describes entails disbelief — like the people of Babylon’s devotion to the seven planets — he has disbelieved; if not, then only if he believes it permissible.
• Is he executed for the mere practice? Malik and Ahmad: yes. Al-Shafi‘i and Abu Hanifah: no. If he kills a person by his sihr, he is executed according to Malik, al-Shafi‘i and Ahmad; Abu Hanifah required repetition or confession concerning a specific victim. Al-Shafi‘i alone counted that execution as qisas (retaliation for the killing), the others as a hadd.
• Is the sorcerer’s repentance accepted? Malik, Abu Hanifah and Ahmad (in the well-known narration): no. Al-Shafi‘i, and Ahmad in the other narration: yes.
• The sorcerer from the People of the Book: Abu Hanifah — executed like the Muslim sorcerer; Malik, al-Shafi‘i and Ahmad — not executed, because of the case of Labid ibn al-A‘sam, the Jew who bewitched the Prophet ﷺ and was not executed. Al-Zuhri put it: “The sorcerer of the Muslims is executed; the sorcerer of the polytheists is not — for a Jewish woman bewitched the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and he did not kill her.”
• The Muslim sorceress: Abu Hanifah — not executed but imprisoned; the other three — her ruling is the man’s ruling.

Al-Qurtubi adds from Malik: the dhimmi sorcerer is executed if his sihr kills; and two narrations from Ibn Khuwayz Mindad — that he is called to Islam and executed if he refuses, or executed regardless. And if a sorcerer’s sihr kills a man: al-Shafi‘i said, if he says “I did not intend to kill,” it is accidental killing and blood-money is due.

Can sihr be undone by sihr? The nushrah question

Here the compilation reaches the question people still ask a raqi every week: may the sorcerer be asked to undo his own sihr — the practice the classical books call nushrah?

• Sa‘id ibn al-Musayyib permitted it, as al-Bukhari relates from him; ‘Amir al-Sha‘bi said, “There is no harm in nushrah”; while al-Hasan al-Basri disliked it.
• In the authentic hadith, ‘A’ishah said: “O Messenger of Allah, will you not do nushrah?” — that is, undo the sihr worked against you. He replied: “As for Allah, He has cured me; and I feared to open a door of evil upon the people.” — Bukhari 5765 (wording per Muslim 2189)

The Prophet’s ﷺ answer is the anchor: he declined the route that would “open a door of evil.” Undoing sihr with sihr means dealing with sorcerers and their devils — the very evil being cured. The lawful alternative is what the scholars preserved beside it:

• Wahb’s remedy, related by al-Qurtubi: take seven leaves of sidr (lote-tree), grind them between two stones, stir them into water, recite Ayat al-Kursi over it; the bewitched person drinks three mouthfuls and washes with the rest — “and it removes what he suffers; and it is good for the man kept from his wife.”
• Ibn Kathir’s judgement: “The most beneficial thing used to remove sihr is what Allah revealed to His Messenger ﷺ for that purpose — the two Surahs of refuge (al-Falaq and al-Nas). In the hadith: ‘No one who seeks refuge has sought it with anything like them.’ And likewise the recitation of Ayat al-Kursi, for it drives the devil away.”

Al-Qurtubi closes by affirming: sihr is real, and Allah creates what He wills at its occurrence — against the Mu‘tazilah and al-Isfarayini, who called it illusion. Some sihr is sleight of hand; some is memorised words and incantations of Allah’s names — and some is by pacts with the devils, or drugs and fumes. And on the hadith “Indeed some eloquence is sihr,” he preferred that it is a censure of overpowering rhetoric, not praise — because eloquence can dress falsehood as truth, as in the Prophet’s ﷺ warning: “Perhaps one of you is more persuasive in his argument than the other,” and so wins a judgement he has no right to.

What to take from this page

• Sorcery is a major sin by consensus, and classical law treated it as a capital crime — that is how seriously the scholars weighed the harm sorcerers do.
• Nothing here is a licence for individuals to act. Hudud belong to legitimate courts; your task, if you fear sihr, is protection and lawful treatment.
• Never hire one sorcerer against another. The Prophet ﷺ refused nushrah as “opening a door of evil.” The lawful cure is Quran — al-Falaq, al-Nas, Ayat al-Kursi — du‘a, and the simple lawful remedies the scholars recorded.