Amanrecitingoverawoman

The ruling and its conditions

A man may perform ruqyah over a woman who is not his wife or maḥram where the controls of the Sharī‘ah are observed, and those controls are the ruling, not a footnote to it.

There must be no seclusion. A man and a woman alone in a room is forbidden, and being unwell does not suspend it: a maḥram present, or a woman raqi, or nothing. There must be no touching, and this is the point to hold on to, because recitation requires no touch at all. The hand on the place of pain is established, and it belongs to a spouse or a maḥram; where they are absent the recitation is complete without it. Nothing is removed. “So the recitation reaches” is a sentence used by men who are not treating anybody, and recitation reaches through cloth. And the ordinary rules of dress and conduct continue to apply on both sides as they do everywhere else.

Why this page is blunt

Because this is where the documented harm is. The material this site draws on describes practitioners who entangled women who came to them for help. British research on spiritual healing found that healers encouraged physical contact as a mark of reverence. The safeguarding literature treats a man alone with a vulnerable woman as a risk in every other setting, and there is no reason ruqyah should be the exception.

A frightened person in a room with somebody they believe can help them is not in a position to object to anything. That is no slight on her: it is what a vulnerable situation means, and it is why the safeguards are external rather than left to the judgement of the two people in the room.

What a woman should expect

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• To be asked whether she wants a maḥram present, and to be believed when she says yes.
• To be told beforehand what will be recited and for roughly how long.
• Not to be touched.
• Not to be asked to remove anything.
• To be able to stop it at any moment, with no argument.

Where any of those is missing the correct response is to leave, and the discomfort of leaving is a much smaller thing than what has gone wrong for other women who stayed.

For a man who recites

If you are in a position where the controls cannot be met, you do not recite: not for this case, not this once, and not because it is urgent. There is always an alternative: her own recitation, a woman relative, a recording, or nothing tonight. None of those is worse than a session that should not have happened.