IbnTaymiyyah’sfullpassagesonjinnandhumans—thetextsthepermittersrelyon

Abu Hamad of the Laqat al-Marjan site opens by acknowledging that seeking help from the jinn is a disputed question (some scholars allowed it with conditions, others forbade it) and that the best treatment of it is Ibn Taymiyyah’s. He then quotes him at length from three places in Majmū‘ al-Fatāwā. These are the primary texts on which today’s permitters rely, so they are given here in full, together with Ibn Taymiyyah’s own warnings, which the permitters tend to leave out.

From volume eleven: the ranks of humans with the jinn

The jinn stand with humans in several states, Ibn Taymiyyah writes:

The ranks of humans with the jinn

Ibn Taymiyyah’s four states, set out here worst first.

1. 01One who uses the jinn in what Allah and His Messenger forbadeIn shirk, in killing the innocent, in harming people short of killing (making a man ill, making him forget knowledge, other oppression), or in indecency, such as fetching someone for immorality. Such a person has sought their help in sin and aggression. If he seeks their help in kufr, he is a disbeliever; if in disobedience, he is a sinner.A disbeliever, or a sinner
2. 02One whose knowledge of the Sharī‘ah is incompleteWho seeks their help in what he supposes are karāmāt: asking them to carry him on “Hajj”, to fly with him during innovated samā' gatherings, to bear him to ‘Arafāt without performing the Hajj Allah legislated, to carry him from city to city.Deluded, and they have schemed against him
3. 03One who uses the jinn in matters permitted to himCommanding them with what is obligatory on them, forbidding them what is forbidden to them, and employing them in permitted things, is like one who uses humans the same way: at the level of kings who do the like. If such a person is supposed to be a friend of Allah at all, then at best he is like a prophet-king compared with a slave-messenger: Sulaymān and Yūsuf beside Ibrāhīm, Mūsā, ‘Īsā and Muhammad, peace be upon them all.At the level of kings
4. 04One who commands the jinn with what Allah commanded through His MessengerTo worship Allah alone and obey His Prophet, and commands humans with the same: such a person is a deputy and successor of the Messenger in that work.Among the very best of Allah’s friends

Many of those deluded seekers of karāmāt, he continues, do not even realise the jinn are behind it. They have heard that Allah’s friends have karāmāt and wonders, and they lack the realities of faith and the knowledge of the Quran by which the merciful karāmah is told apart from the devil’s deception. So the devils scheme against each man according to his belief: for the idol-worshipper they make the idol seem to benefit him, while his worship in reality goes to the shayṭān —

وَيَوْمَ يَحْشُرُهُمْ جَمِيعًۭا ثُمَّ يَقُولُ لِلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةِ أَهَٰٓؤُلَآءِ إِيَّاكُمْ كَانُوا۟ يَعْبُدُونَ ۝ قَالُوا۟ سُبْحَٰنَكَ أَنتَ وَلِيُّنَا مِن دُونِهِم ۖ بَلْ كَانُوا۟ يَعْبُدُونَ ٱلْجِنَّ ۖ أَكْثَرُهُم بِهِم مُّؤْمِنُونَ

"And [mention] the Day when He will gather them all and then say to the angels, 'Did these [people] used to worship you?' They will say, 'Exalted are You! You, [O Allah], are our benefactor not them. Rather, they used to worship the jinn; most of them were believers in them.'" — Sūrah Saba' 34:40–41

From volume thirteen: each kind inclines to its counterpart

Allah relates the jinn’s own words:

وَأَنَّا مِنَّا ٱلصَّٰلِحُونَ وَمِنَّا دُونَ ذَٰلِكَ ۖ كُنَّا طَرَآئِقَ قِدَدًۭا

"And among us are the righteous, and among us are [others] not so; we were [of] divided ways." — Sūrah al-Jinn 72:11

وَأَنَّا مِنَّا ٱلْمُسْلِمُونَ وَمِنَّا ٱلْقَٰسِطُونَ ۖ فَمَنْ أَسْلَمَ فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ تَحَرَّوْا۟ رَشَدًۭا ۝ وَأَمَّا ٱلْقَٰسِطُونَ فَكَانُوا۟ لِجَهَنَّمَ حَطَبًۭا

"And among us are Muslims [in submission to Allah], and among us are the unjust. And whoever has become Muslim — those have sought out the right course. But as for the unjust, they will be, for Hell, firewood." — Sūrah al-Jinn 72:14–15

Among the jinn, then, are disbelievers, corrupt ones and sinners, and also devout, religious ones with little knowledge, as among humans. And each kind of jinn inclines to its counterpart among humans: the Jews with the Jews, the Christians with the Christians, the Muslims with the Muslims, the corrupt with the corrupt, and the people of ignorance and innovation with the people of ignorance and innovation.

Humans’ use of them is like humans’ use of humans. Some use them in harām (indecency, oppression, shirk, speaking about Allah without knowledge) and may think it a karāmah of the righteous when it is the doing of devils. Some use them in permitted matters: fetching one’s own property, pointing out ownerless money, repelling someone who is harming him, like people helping one another. And the third kind uses them in obedience to Allah and His Messenger, commanding and forbidding them as one commands and forbids humans. That was the state of our Prophet ﷺ and of those of his ummah who follow him: he was sent to both weighty creations, jinn and mankind.

Ibn Taymiyyah then relates the report of ‘Umar calling out from the minbar in Madinah, “O Sāriyah — the mountain!” Allah has soldiers who carry a voice: angels, and the righteous jinn. They conveyed ‘Umar’s voice to his commander Sāriyah far away, calling to him in the likeness of ‘Umar’s voice, since ‘Umar’s own voice could not cross that distance. And he tells the story of a man who reached Madinah with news of an army’s victory before any rider could have: ‘Umar said, “That is Abu al-Haytham, the courier of the jinn — the courier of the humans will arrive in a few days.” A king may tell someone a secret and walk out to find people already repeating it: the jinn heard it and spread it.

Using jinn in permitted matters resembles Sulaymān, but Sulaymān was given a kingdom that belongs to no one after him. When the ‘ifrīt sprang at the Prophet ﷺ to cut off his prayer, the Prophet seized him, choked him off until his saliva ran on his hand, and meant to tie him to one of the mosque’s pillars: “then I remembered the du‘ā of my brother Sulaymān, and I released him.” He did not use the jinn at all. He called them to faith in Allah, recited the Quran to them, conveyed the message and took their pledge just as he did with humans. And what he ﷺ was given is greater than what Sulaymān was given: he employed jinn and mankind in the worship of Allah alone and for their own happiness in both worlds, seeking nothing but Allah’s face, and he chose to be a slave-messenger rather than a prophet-king. Dāwūd, Sulaymān and Yūsuf were prophet-kings; Ibrāhīm, Mūsā, ‘Īsā and Muhammad were slave-messengers, and theirs is the higher rank, as the foremost drawn-near rank above the righteous companions of the right. Yet many who see these strange wonders believe them karāmāt of the saints. (Majmū‘ 13/89)

From volume one: “Do not be deceived until you see him stand at the command and prohibition”

The devils may take visible form for the polytheists, speak to them, carry one of them through the air, tell him hidden things, and bring him money, food or clothing — as happened with the idol-worshippers of the Arabs and others, and as happens in every age to the misguided innovators who oppose the Book and the Sunnah, whether by worshipping other than Allah or by worship Allah never legislated. When such a man produces something extraordinary, it is one of two things only: a satanic state, or a fraudulent trick. The devils attach themselves to their leading figures — and they attach to no one except through some kind of innovation: kufr, or corruption, or ignorance of the Sharī‘ah. The shayṭān’s aim is to lead astray as far as his power reaches: if he can make them disbelievers he does; failing that, sinners; failing that, he chips at their works and religion through an innovation.

This is why the imams said:

“

If you see a man fly through the air or walk on water, do not be deceived by him until you see where he stands at the command and the prohibition.

Many a man is carried through the air by devils and it is no karāmah of Allah’s God-fearing friends. Among them is the man whom the shayṭān carries to ‘Arafāt: he stands with the pilgrims, is carried home the same night, and this ignorant man thinks himself one of Allah’s friends. He does not know he must repent of it — and if he believes it an act of worship and nearness to Allah, then, in Ibn Taymiyyah’s classical ruling, he is called on to repent, and if he refuses, the penalty is death — because the Hajj Allah commanded requires ihrām from the mīqāt, standing at ‘Arafah, the night at Muzdalifah, stoning the jamarāt, the tawāf of ifādah without which Hajj is invalid, the farewell tawāf, and avoidance of the forbidden things. The devils carry one of these deluded men in his ordinary clothes to stand at ‘Arafah and return him the same night, so that he is seen in his town and at ‘Arafah on the same day. And sometimes the shayṭān takes on a sheikh’s form and stands at ‘Arafah — people who know the sheikh see “him” standing there, and when the sheikh says “I did not go to ‘Arafah this year,” they decide an angel was created in his image. It was a shayṭān in his likeness. This and its like happen often — satanic states, every case of it.

The fatwas appended to the page

The source page closes by reprinting, word for word, three fatwas already given in this series: the Permanent Committee’s ruling that seeking jinn help in diagnosis or treatment is shirk, Ibn Bāz’s fatwa on treating with the Quran and never with those who summon jinn, and the fatwa-centre answer on the pious man who “uses jinn only for good” together with the explanation of karāmāt. See the pieces “Ibn Bāz and Ibn ‘Uthaymīn on using the jinn” and “The Permanent Committee’s fatwa — and what a karāmah is”.