Whodamagesruqyah'sgoodname—acandidlistfrominsidethepractice

A note from us: this essay is an experienced raqi's defence of ruqyah against its critics, written from inside decades of practice. Where he relates recoveries from serious organic disease, that is his testimony of what he witnessed, by Allah's permission — it is not medical evidence, and nothing here replaces doctors. Medical care comes first, with ruqyah alongside it.

Why it was written

In a short preface, the author explains that he had long stayed silent about well-known "doctor-raqis" and TV sheikhs pronouncing wrongly on ruqyah — men the public admires but who, he says, have never actually practised it. He watched them declare things halal and haram by copy-paste fatwa, choosing whichever ruling suited them, until the public was thoroughly confused. He resolved to answer — without naming names, "as is the way of Ahl al-Sunnah" — in defence of "this noble science of ruqyah" from the Book and the Sunnah.

The essay itself opens with the stakes: after generations in which only sorcerers and charlatans were available to the afflicted, Muslims had finally rediscovered the Quran as healing — some reciting over themselves, others going to raqis. He even notes Western researchers studying with astonishment the effect of hearing the Quran on seriously ill patients. And then, he says, came a ferocious campaign against ruqyah and raqis — almost all of it, painfully, from Muslims themselves. He lists the groups responsible, with a remedy for each.

1. Non-Muslims

Jews, Christians and atheists who call the religion itself one of ghosts, superstition and backwardness. The essay spends little time on them: their objection is to Islam, not to ruqyah in particular, and the answer to them is argument, evidence and debate.

2. Muslims who repeat what they hear

People with no Islamic learning and no knowledge of ruqyah who echo the mockers, the hypocrites and the enviers — "speaking without verifying". His remedy: let them learn what they are talking about. He cites Ibn Taymiyyah on reciting over those afflicted by mass: "This is among the best of deeds, and it is the work of the prophets and the righteous, who have never ceased to drive the devils from the children of Adam by what Allah and His Messenger permitted — as the Messiah did, and as our Prophet ﷺ did" (Majmū' al-Fatāwā 19/56–57). How could helping to free Muslims from the grip of devils, and saving them from the doors of sorcerers and astrologers, be anything but righteous work? None of this, he adds, means staying silent about fake raqis — but do not tar all raqis with their brush.

3. The press and TV channels

He catalogues headlines from a single newspaper: "Raqis deceive the people and cannot even recite", "Merchants of Allah's words", "Charlatans in religion's name", "A society of superstition", "Faith in fairy tales"… — mockery not only of raqis but of what the Quran itself affirms about sihr and the jinn. The writers, he says, are often the most ignorant of religion, and channels invite only guests whose hostile views they already know. His remedy: expose and answer such outlets, do not feed them, and return to the fatwas of the scholars.

4. Some doctors — medical and psychiatric

A minority of doctors accept treatment with the Quran, he says, but the majority fight it, especially for organic illness — even while (in his view) many organic illnesses have 'ayn, sihr or mass behind them. He is fair about the cause: some raqis reject psychiatry and its medicines wholesale, "and that is not correct and not to be generalised" — which keeps the war burning from both sides. His proposed remedy is striking: joint clinical work. Open supervised ruqyah clinics inside hospitals; let raqi and doctor follow the same cases — epilepsy, ICU cases, paralysis, cancer — for years, record every result and every change, and archive it honestly. The same in psychiatric facilities, with the raqi contributing a programme where the affliction appears spiritual. (Our note: this cooperative vision — doctor and raqi each in their lane, results recorded — is exactly the spirit of our medical-first rule.)

5. "Energy" and alternative-therapy practitioners

He singles out neuro-linguistic programming, Reiki, "macrobiotics" and energy healing as they reached the Muslim world: practitioners who deny 'ayn, sihr and mass outright, reclassify every case as psychological or physical, and tell the afflicted they need no Quran at all — just sessions of hypnosis or breathing. Worse, some raqis bolted these methods onto ruqyah and came to rely on them more than on the Quran, even declaring a sick person "clear" and treatable by energy alone. His remedy: read the researchers who exposed these systems' roots (he points to Dr Fawz Kurdi's site, alfowz.com), and hear the testimony of former instructors who left them.

6. Some scholars

This section is candid. Some scholars deny jinn possession outright — an old Mu'tazilite position, he notes, that some contemporary figures fell into. Others affirm sihr and 'ayn in theory but have never sat with the afflicted, and still attack raqis in sermons and fatwas: Why do raqis take payment? Why do they devote themselves to it full-time? Isn't ruqyah restricted to transmitted wordings? — rulings that leave the public convinced raqis are frauds. Some even say "first go to the doctor; if your tests are clear, then try a raqi" — forgetting, in the author's words, that Allah's words are a cause of healing that stands before every other cause. He relates — as his own eyewitness testimony — paralysed patients rising after ruqyah, and a patient months in intensive care, declared brain-dead, waking; those who never witnessed such moments, he says, end up talking like everyone else. (Our note: these accounts are related as the author tells them; they are not verifiable medical claims, and no one should decline medical care hoping for the like.) His remedy: let some scholars genuinely sit with raqis — not an hour once in a lifetime, but a standing engagement: study the cases, hear the patients, visit hospitals, and when criticising, first honour the honest raqis, then expose the intruders, and never blur the two: "not everyone who takes payment is a fraud; not everyone who recites over a group does it for money; not everyone who treats with herbs is a sorcerer."

7. The fake "raqis"

The strongest cause of public anger, he says, are the intruders on ruqyah itself — and he is at pains to say he is not attacking raqis, but defending them from imposters. He names the types:

• "Spiritual healers" and astrologers — the people of talismans and magic squares, back in a new costume. They claim to fight sorcerers while claiming knowledge of the unseen, retrieving lost property, "bringing the beloved in three days". They are sorcerers, and should be exposed as such.
• Actors — men with no uprightness and no knowledge who discovered how easy the costume is: grow the beard, wear the thobe, murmur dhikr, recite a couple of verses, then announce "you have a strong 'ayn" or "a mārid is upon you". Some fall into treating women with touching, seclusion and worse, and into inflated fees. Remedy: do as the scholars of hadith did with narrators — accept only raqis known and vouched for, region by region, worldwide.
• Users of the "Muslim jinn" — the time for courtesy is over, he says. Their method matches the sorcerers': they ask the mother's name, report hidden matters, believe in "servants" of surahs and gemstones. Patients end up attached to them for their revelations — many of which prove false. "We must declare ourselves clear of their methods… the measure of ruqyah is no longer only what is recited but who recites" — otherwise any disbeliever reading Quran would count as a raqi.
• Some house-call raqis — not all who recite in homes, he stresses; but the trade attracted men who move between houses and cities far from every eye, and the scandals (seclusion, affairs, sihr) then bring surveillance and bans down on the honest, visible raqis. Remedy: license and vet home ruqyah; investigate complaints like sorcery complaints.
• Some famous raqis — celebrated names who charge (he cites a case he knows personally of 4,000 riyals a session), secretly use jinn, or barely recite two minutes before writing a "prescription"; and quick-rise "veterans" of five or seven years with rented halls and crowds at the door. When their masks fall, the whole society despairs of every raqi. Remedy: sifting — ideally by the state, otherwise by the known raqis exposing the manipulators.
• Internet raqis — self-taught from forums, their answers a scatter of "sihr, hasad" guesses; most hide behind kunyas ("Abu So-and-so"). Let them publish their real names so people can know whom to trust; and let the real test be the testimony of patients who have knocked on many doors.

His closing word

"What I have written is a drop from a flood," he says — two days spent weighing every word. He asks readers not to rush to judgement, promises detail on each type, and insists these are facts gathered across his years of treatment. The intruders, not ruqyah, are the scandal; and protecting ruqyah means naming the difference loudly.

Our closing word: this list doubles as a checklist for you. Anyone who asks your mother's name, claims the unseen, secludes himself with women, sells guaranteed cures, or rushes a two-minute recitation before diagnosing you — walk away. See our guide to choosing a trustworthy raqi.