Guardingtawhīd:thethreerulingsonquestioningandusingjinn—AbuRa’idal-Maliki

This treatise by Abu Ra’id al-Maliki (written in Makkah and dated Friday 25/5/1418 AH) carries the full title: “The ruling on seeking help from the jinn, a warning against everything that touches the precinct of tawhīd, and a reply to those who attribute to Ibn Taymiyyah the permission of seeking the jinn’s help.”

The treatise’s three rulingsEach has its own section below.

• Asking the jinn and believing themMajor kufr, removing a person from the religion.
• Asking them even without believing themHarām: a pathway to shirk.
• Using the jinn for permitted thingsNo jinn serves for free.

The preamble: everything is tawhīd

Allah created the creation for His worship:

وَمَا خَلَقْتُ ٱلْجِنَّ وَٱلْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونِ

Wa-mā khalaqtu-l-jinna wa-l-insa illā li-yaʿbudūn

"And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me." — Sūrah al-Dhāriyāt 51:56

Worship here means singling Allah out: the meaning of lā ilāha illa Allāh, the “firmest handhold” of Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:256. Every accountable person must know that Allah created us only for His tawhīd, sent the messengers only for it, and revealed the Quran only for it; the scholars said, “the whole Quran is tawhīd.” Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb opened Kitāb al-Tawhīd with the verse above; and once the servant has tawhīd, nothing remains for him but istighfār: “So know that there is no deity except Allah, and ask forgiveness for your sin” (Sūrah Muhammad 47:19). Ibn Taymiyyah writes (Majmū‘ 1/56): the servant’s poverty and want are lifted only by tawhīd; without it he remains poor, needy and tormented in pursuit of what he never obtains; and when istighfār joins tawhīd, he gains his riches and his happiness.

The Prophet’s ﷺ mission was tawhīd at its beginning, in its middle and at its end. The treatise cites the classical texts: the hadith of Ibn ‘Umar, “I have been commanded to fight the people until they testify that there is no deity but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, establish the prayer and give zakāh — when they do that, their blood and wealth are protected from me except by the right of Islam, and their account is with Allah” (Bukhari and Muslim); the sending of Mu‘ādh to Yemen: “let the first thing you call them to be that they single out Allah” (Bukhari; its basis in Muslim); the man who said “What Allah wills and you will”, to whom the Prophet ﷺ said, “Have you made me an equal to Allah? Rather: what Allah alone wills” (Ahmad 2430; al-Adab al-Mufrad); and, in his final illness, his closing warning against what violates tawhīd: “Allah cursed the Jews and the Christians — they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship”; ‘Ā’ishah said: were it not for that, his grave would have been left in the open, “but I fear it would be taken as a mosque” (Bukhari 1244).

Why this treatise was written

Word reached the author that some of those who have devoted themselves full-time to treating jinn possession have gone as far as using the jinn for private purposes, asking them about things hidden from the asker, and seeking their help in treating other patients afflicted by ‘ayn, sihr or mass. He notes in passing that even the practice at its root — devoting oneself full-time to treating possession — has no precedent in the practice of the righteous salaf; but the legal violations now attached to it oblige the callers to tawhīd to condemn and warn. He quotes al-Barbahārī: beware the small innovations, for a small bid’ah keeps growing until it becomes large; every innovation in this ummah began as something small that resembled the truth, so people were deceived into it, could not leave it, and it grew until it became a religion in its own right — so examine everything you hear, and do not rush in until you ask whether the Companions or the scholars spoke of it.

Ruling one: asking the jinn and believing them

It is not permitted to ask the jinn, or to ask those who use them (the sorcerers, soothsayers and fortune-tellers), about a matter of the unseen and then believe what they report. This strikes at tawhīd of Allah’s names and attributes, for none knows the unseen but Allah. Whoever does it has committed kufr that removes him from the religion:

مَنْ أَتَى كَاهِنًا أَوْ عَرَّافًا فَصَدَّقَهُ بِمَا يَقُولُ فَقَدْ كَفَرَ بِمَا أُنْزِلَ عَلَى مُحَمَّدٍ

"Whoever goes to a soothsayer or a fortune-teller and believes what he says has disbelieved in what was sent down upon Muhammad." — Ahmad 9536, from Abu Hurayrah; graded sahih by al-Albani

Ibn Bāz, asked what kind of kufr this is, answered: “It is major kufr, removing one from the religion” (audio commentary on Kitāb al-Tawhīd). And Ibn Taymiyyah (Majmū‘ 19/62): asking the jinn, or asking those who ask them, while believing everything they report and venerating the one asked, is harām.

Ruling two: asking them even without believing them

It is also not permitted to ask them even where no belief in their answer occurs, because it is a pathway to shirk, and the Sharī‘ah has been vigilant to block every door to shirk. The principle of sadd al-dharā’i‘ — blocking the means — is established by texts such as: “And do not insult those they invoke other than Allah, lest they insult Allah in enmity without knowledge” (Sūrah al-An'ām 6:108), and the hadith:

مَنْ أَتَى عَرَّافًا فَسَأَلَهُ عَنْ شَيْءٍ لَمْ تُقْبَلْ لَهُ صَلَاةٌ أَرْبَعِينَ لَيْلَةً

"Whoever goes to a fortune-teller and asks him about anything, no prayer of his is accepted for forty nights." — Muslim 2230

A textual note: some sources add “and believes him” to this hadith, an error flagged by Sulaymān ibn ‘Abdillāh in Taysīr al-‘Azīz al-Hamīd (p. 406). The Lawgiver gave two rulings for the one who goes to a soothsayer: with belief, it is kufr; without belief, it is harām, a sin short of kufr. The forty-nights hadith concerns the asking itself.

From this it is clear that the report about Abu Mūsā al-Ash’arī (the woman in Basrah with a jinnī companion who was asked for news of ‘Umar) proves nothing even if it were authentic, which is far-fetched. Ibn Taymiyyah relates it only with “it is reported”. And in any case the jinnī in it reported no unseen matter but a present fact: “he left ‘Umar branding the charity camels”.

The one allowance: asking for a religious purpose, to test the speaker, when the asker has the means to tell truth from lie and does not know the person to be a soothsayer, for the prohibition concerns going to known soothsayers and fortune-tellers whatever the intent. Ibn Taymiyyah (Majmū‘ 19/62) cites the Prophet’s ﷺ questioning of Ibn Sayyād: “What comes to you?” “A truthful one and a liar.” “What do you see?” “A throne upon the water.” “I have hidden something for you.” “Al-dukh, al-dukh.” “Be off; you will never exceed your station: you are only one of the brothers of the soothsayers.” The author adds: the Prophet ﷺ did not then know Ibn Sayyād was a soothsayer — his predominant thought was that he might be the Dajjāl, as the full Bukhari narrative shows (Bukhari 5707, with ‘Umar asking leave to strike his neck and the Prophet answering: “If it is he, you will not be given power over him; and if it is not, there is no good for you in killing him”), and the account of the Prophet slipping among the palm trunks to listen to Ibn Sayyād unseen, and his public warning: “I warn you of him as every prophet warned his people — but I will tell you a word no prophet told his people: he is one-eyed, and Allah is not one-eyed.”

Ruling three: using the jinn for permitted things

Here the treatise reproduces, word for word, the essay translated in full in the piece “Why using jinn even for permitted things is not allowed” earlier in this series: no jinn serves for free; Ibn Taymiyyah’s passage on the deviant ascetics and the “spiritualities of the planets” (Majmū‘ 19/41), with his verdict that following that road is a species of sihr; the three kinds of jinn-users: those approached unasked; those who ask (forbidden at least by sadd al-dharā’i‘, given the hadith “When you ask, ask Allah” and the pledge not to ask people for anything), and those who compel by force, which ended with Sulaymān; and the correct reading of the sentence “humans’ use of jinn is like humans’ use of humans” that the permitters lean on.

To this the treatise adds further illustrations of how the Sharī‘ah guards tawhīd by blocking the means:

• The prohibition of vows: “It brings no good; it only extracts something from the miser” (Muslim). Qādī ‘Iyāḍ: perhaps the prohibition is because some ignorant people might think a vow repels the decree, so it was forbidden for fear of one who believes that (Sharh al-Nawawī 11/99).
• The prohibition of attributing rain to the stars: “Four matters of jāhiliyyah my ummah will not leave: boasting of lineage, defaming ancestry, seeking rain by the stars, and wailing over the dead” (Muslim). The point is not believing the star itself sends rain (even the polytheists did not believe that: Sūrah al-‘Ankabūt 29:63) but attributing the rain to the star while believing Allah is the doer. Sulaymān ibn ‘Abdillāh: the correct view is that even this is harām, for it is hidden shirk, and the Prophet’s ﷺ prohibition of it was “a guarding of the precinct of tawhīd and a blocking of the means of shirk” (Taysīr al-‘Azīz al-Hamīd, p. 455).
• The Ka‘bah left on Quraysh’s foundations: “Were your people not so new to kufr, I would have restored it upon the foundations of Ibrāhīm” (Bukhari and Muslim): a benefit forgone to block a greater harm.
• The young man and the old man who asked about kissing while fasting: the Prophet ﷺ told the young man no and the old man yes (“the old man controls himself” — Ahmad 6700), while it is authentic that the Prophet himself would kiss while fasting (Tirmidhi 727, hasan sahih). The same act, permitted or blocked according to where it leads.

If asking a capable, present human is discouraged, and the Sharī‘ah blocks even vows and turns of phrase for the sake of tawhīd, what of summoning and petitioning the jinn?

The treatise closes with the Permanent Committee’s fatwa that seeking the jinn’s help in identifying an affliction or its treatment is shirk (Sūrah al-Jinn 72:6; Sūrah al-An'ām 6:128), translated in full in the piece “The Permanent Committee’s fatwa” in this series.