IbnBāzandIbn‘Uthaymīnonusingthejinn

Ibn Bāz: treat with the Quran — never with those who summon jinn

Sheikh Ibn Bāz was asked about treating illness with the Quran, blowing recitation into water, and the like. His answer: treating the possessed and the bewitched with Quranic verses and permitted medicines is perfectly fine, when done by someone known for sound creed and commitment to the Sharī‘ah.

But treatment with those who claim knowledge of the unseen, or who summon the jinn, or the charlatans and unknown practitioners whose state and methods no one knows — going to them, asking them, and being treated by them is not permitted. The Prophet ﷺ said:

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

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

"Whoever goes to a fortune-teller or a soothsayer and believes what he says has disbelieved in what was sent down upon Muhammad." — Ahmad and the Sunan compilers, with a good chain

All the hadiths in this chapter, Ibn Bāz says, forbid asking fortune-tellers and soothsayers and believing them, and these are the people who claim the unseen or seek the help of the jinn; their practices give them away. About them and their like came the well-known hadith of Jābir: the Prophet ﷺ was asked about nushrah (undoing sihr with sihr) and said, “It is of the work of Shayṭān” (Ahmad and Abu Dawud, with a good chain). The scholars explained nushrah as the pre-Islamic practice of dissolving sorcery by means of sorcery like it — and attached to it every form of treatment that relies on soothsayers, fortune-tellers, liars and charlatans.

So the treatment of every illness, including the kinds of possession, is lawful only by legitimate, permitted means: among them reciting over the sick person and blowing upon him with verses and lawful supplications. The Prophet ﷺ said, “There is no harm in ruqyah so long as it involves no shirk” (Muslim 2200), and, “Servants of Allah, seek treatment — but do not treat yourselves with what is harām.”

Ibn ‘Uthaymīn on the three cases

Asked about the “service” between jinn and humans, Ibn ‘Uthaymīn first relayed Ibn Taymiyyah’s three cases from volume eleven of Majmū‘ al-Fatāwā: using a jinnī in obedience to Allah (a believing jinnī carrying the Sharī‘ah to his own kind: praiseworthy da‘wah); using one in permitted matters (allowed only if the means is permitted, not if the jinnī will serve only for a sacrifice, a bow or a prostration); and using one in forbidden matters such as robbing and terrifying people (harām, and worse if the means is shirk).

But then comes the decisive passage, transmitted in Abu al-Mundhir Khalīl ibn Ibrāhīm’s treatise al-Ruqyah wa’l-Ruqāt, which carries an introduction by Sheikh Sālih al-Fawzān and had the endorsement of Ibn Bāz in his day. Some raqis, it says, have leaned on Ibn Taymiyyah’s words to legitimise “help from the Muslim jinn” in treatment as a permitted matter — and there is nothing in Ibn Taymiyyah’s words to give them that. It is a given that the jinn belong to the unseen world: they see us and we do not see them; lying is their dominant trait; they are aggressive, oppressive and unjust; their integrity is unknowable, which is why their narration of hadith is ruled weak. By what measure, then, would anyone determine that this jinnī is Muslim, that one a hypocrite, this one righteous and that one corrupt?

Therefore seeking the help of “Muslim jinn” (as some claim) in treatment is not permitted, for four reasons:

1. 1No precedent, though every occasion for one existed
2. 2It attaches the raqi’s heart to the jinnī
3. 3The line between raqi and sorcerer must stay absolute
4. 4They are made of firea friend can flip into the bitterest of enemies

1. No precedent, though every occasion for one existed. The Prophet ﷺ performed ruqyah, had it performed on him, and commanded his Companions to use it — his practice, his command and his approval all combine on it. If help from “Muslim jinn” were a virtue, Allah would not have withheld it from His Messenger ﷺ on the day the Jews bewitched him, nor from his Companions (the best of creation after the prophets), among whom were those struck by epileptic seizures, those struck by the ‘ayn, and those beset by illness from every side. Yet the books of the Sunnah record not one raqi among them who sought the jinn’s help.
2. It attaches the raqi’s heart to the jinnī. That opens the door to the spread of jinn-use, Muslim and disbelieving jinn alike, and so becomes one of the avenues of shirk and a tear in the garment of tawhīd. Whoever has grasped the purposes of the Sharī‘ah sees the danger at once: the principle of sadd al-dharā’i‘ (blocking the paths that lead to harm) exists for this.
3. The line between raqi and sorcerer must stay absolute. The sorcerer (Allah’s curse be upon him) is someone whom jinn help and serve and for whom they run errands. When a raqi does the same, people of little knowledge can no longer tell the Quran-reciter from the sorcerer, and the sorcerers’ market is promoted. This is an enormous corruption of people’s creed.
4. They are made of fire. The jinn were created from fire, and fire burns: oppression, aggression and rapid change of state dominate their nature. A friend can flip into the bitterest of enemies, and make his former companion taste the worst of it, because by then he knows his weak points intimately. As the verse of poetry has it: “Beware your enemy once — and beware your friend a thousand times, for a friend who turns knows best how to harm you.”

Whoever wants to be rid of this whole business, the passage concludes, should hold to the way of the Prophet ﷺ, his Companions and the imams of guidance who followed them, and abandon every path that departs from theirs, whatever it may be — for what is there beyond the way of Allah and His Messenger except the way of Shayṭān?

“Who? Why? How?”

The treatise closes with a final remark of Ibn ‘Uthaymīn on this question, apparently from a sitting in 1412 AH: seeking a creature’s help in what it is able to do is, in principle, unobjectionable.

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But believing or disbelieving what the jinn say is another matter entirely, and must be examined. In short, the affair is not simple: who is seeking their help? Why? And how? All of it needs scrutiny — so let the matter be verified.