Whyaraqichoosesparticularversesforparticularconditions

Raqis are often attacked, especially over things the Sharī‘ah permits and the scholars of the Sunnah have approved. A raqi of long experience opens with an observation: the objector is usually not a practitioner at all. He has never entered the world of the jinn and its treatment; he is like an engineer finding fault with a doctor’s craft while ignorant of it. Ibn Taymiyyah said: “None gives fatwa on the questions of jihad but the people of the frontier posts” — because they see what happens. In that spirit he explains why a raqi selects particular verses to recite and repeat over patients — whether the illness is physical, psychological or spiritual — as the fruit of his experience and his cases. Ibn al-Qayyim writes: “The Quran is the complete cure for all illnesses of heart and body, and the illnesses of this world and the next — though not everyone is fitted or granted success in seeking cure by it… there is no disease of hearts or bodies but the Quran holds the way to its remedy, its cause, and the protection from it, for whomever Allah grants understanding of His Book” (Zād al-Ma‘ād, vol. 4).

A reminder that applies to every practice on this page: the verses are a means. Healing is from Allah alone — and spiritual treatment runs alongside medical care, never instead of it. Anyone with symptoms of illness should see a doctor first.

The fatwas first

Before a raqi offers his own view, he must show he moves only after asking the people of knowledge. Two fatwas of Ibn Jibrīn:

Nine reasons a raqi chooses verses for each condition

The whole Quran is healing. But with much recitation, many different cases, and careful note-keeping, a raqi begins to choose verses that suit the patient’s condition. This is not legislation; it flows from “We send down of the Quran that which is healing”, from the Companions’ and scholars’ own selections, and from experience:

1. 1The ruqyah verses themselves are varied
2. 2The jinn react to verses of punishment
3. 3Precedentthe Companions, the imams and the later scholars
4. 4Patients dream of specific verses
5. 5Reading outside the standard set yields striking reactions
6. 6In group ruqyah, reactions map to the reason for envy
7. 7Verses chosen for the heart are treatment in themselves
8. 8The jinn too respond according to their state
9. 9Verse selection is a diagnostic tool

1. The ruqyah verses themselves are varied. One look at the classical ruqyah set shows its breadth — the matter is wide.
2. The jinn react to verses of punishment. When the opening of al-Sāffāt is recited, the effect on the jinn shows they are tormented by verses of punishment, fire and shooting stars, so the raqi gathers the verses carrying those meanings and finds them strong.
3. Precedent. Research leads the raqi to the Companions’ practice — Ibn ‘Abbās writing verses for the woman in obstructed labour — and to the imams of the Sunnah: Ahmad, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim; and to our later scholars (Ibn Bāz, Ibn Jibrīn, Ibn ‘Uthaymīn), whose fatwas approve reciting the sihr verses over the bewitched and using permitted aids such as sidr.
4. Patients dream of specific verses. A patient says: “I begged Allah to show me my illness and my cure, and I dreamed I was afflicted by ‘ayn and was reciting 'And indeed, those who disbelieve would almost make you slip with their eyes…' (Sūrah al-Qalam 68:51) — and it was as if I was healed.” Such reports recur. One scholar, afflicted by ‘ayn and reciting over himself, dreamed he was reciting Sūrah al-Kahf 18:39 — “Why did you not say, when you entered your garden, ‘What Allah willed [has occurred]; there is no power except in Allah'…” — and took it up in his self-ruqyah.
5. Reading outside the standard set yields striking reactions. The raqi relates: he once recited verses of punishment including “Then into a chain whose length is seventy cubits insert him” (Sūrah al-Hāqqah 69:32), and a patient began to scream and writhe as if bound, most sharply at the words “into a chain”. With repetition, and Sūrah Ghāfir 40:71 (“when the shackles are around their necks and the chains; they will be dragged”), she coughed violently, and then, he reports, brought up from her insides a stone and a broken chain. He adds that this was not the first time, nor unique to him: other raqis report metal and the like being expelled, even confirmed by hospital X-rays. (These are a practitioner’s reports of his own cases, presented as such.)
6. In group ruqyah, reactions map to the reason for envy. A man who had never reacted to ruqyah convulsed only at verses of charity: “the men who give charity and the women who give charity” (Sūrah al-Hadīd 57:18), “and as for the beggar, do not repel him” (Sūrah al-Duhā 93:10). Then he screamed and tore his garment. Afterwards he remembered: his employer envied him his giving; the shopkeeper would turn the poor away while this worker gave his own riyal, and the owner kept demanding “why do you give him?” Others react at the verses of night prayer, and turn out to be envied by relatives for their worship; others at verses of beauty and adornment; one man reacted only at verses of strength, and proved to be afflicted in his body and strength.
7. Verses chosen for the heart are treatment in themselves. Some people meet a disaster in their wealth and run to the raqi convinced they are bewitched: perhaps they are, perhaps not. The raqi who knows the Book of Allah holds the cure must first lift the patient out of his state, adding to the ruqyah verses those that steady the afflicted: Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:155–157 (“And We will surely test you… who, when disaster strikes them, say: Indeed we belong to Allah…”), al-Isrā’ 17:30 (“Indeed, your Lord extends provision for whom He wills and restricts it”), al-Shūrā 42:12 and 42:30, al-Taghābun 64:11 (“No disaster strikes except by permission of Allah — and whoever believes in Allah, He will guide his heart”), al-Isrā’ 17:83, Yūnus 10:107 (“And if Allah should touch you with adversity, there is no remover of it except Him”) — with the hadiths on patience. The distressed man leaves consoled, with an open chest and new hope. And when the raqi senses the patient is given to sin, verses condemning zinā and indecency, Allah’s punishment of the disobedient and the lasting bliss He prepared for the believers, send a man out changed, loving the religion and wanting repentance. The raqi relates: he once recited verses about knowledge over a preacher, who wept so hard the raqi thought him afflicted. Asked, he said: “I thought about how you move through the Book of Allah, and wept with grief at how the Quran has slipped from me — I once had it firmly memorised.” He left resolved to revise it; the healing of hearts comes before the healing of bodies.
8. The jinn too respond according to their state. A jinnī that entered through sihr is shaken when the sorcerers’ repentance passage is recited — Sūrah al-A‘rāf 7:120–126, the sorcerers falling down in prostration, Pharaoh’s threat, and their answer: “Our Lord, pour upon us patience and let us die as Muslims”. Some accept Islam. A Muslim jinnī that entered through infatuation (‘ishq) may weep and leave when the verses of Paradise are recited and described, and the verses on the injustice of the oppressor.
9. Verse selection is a diagnostic tool. Some patients have recited over themselves and been recited over without result. Ask such a person to read the entire Quran attentively and note his reactions: one reacts at the verses of sihr, sorcerers and knots; another at the meanings of hasad; another at the verses of jinn and devils; one only at the word ‘ifrīt; another at verses of graveyards, or the sea, or birds and sky. All of it carries indications for the practitioner and the patient.

A gentle reproach

To some beloved fellow raqis: because of what you wrote, people now quote you that “there are no specific verses” and that everyone else is wrong, and then you contradict yourselves, treating the bewitched with the sihr verses and the possessed with the verses of punishment and Fire. Do not forbid a thing and then do it; may Allah forgive us all.

The essay’s second half, the classical method of matching a verse’s meaning to the condition (the sakīnah verses, Ibn Bāz’s sidr recipe and the scholars’ verse sets), continues in the next piece.