Doesrecordedruqyahwork?Listening,reciting,andhowtouserecordingswell

Some sincere people reject every new thing in ruqyah for fear of falling into the forbidden — a caution that is right and praiseworthy in itself, the author writes, but not to the point of forbidding what Allah has allowed. One of those disputed things is recorded ruqyah: on tape, computer, phone, or anything heard, even down a telephone line. Too often a critic runs to a mufti with a badly framed question (“what is the ruling on using tapes and loudspeakers in ruqyah?”) and receives a hasty answer; a question like this needs deliberation, research, and asking many raqis, not one, about the real effect of this kind of ruqyah.

Safety first

Where the idea came from

1. Patients were already reacting to ordinary Quran tapes: “I was listening to a recitation tape and suddenly my state changed; I lost awareness”, “I felt a shudder and trembling”.
2. A recording carries the very same verses by another route, and both routes reach the patient by hearing.
3. Genuine raqis are few and demand is great; recordings widen access.
4. They loosen the unhealthy attachment of patients to particular raqis: people travelling country to country for the sake of Sheikh so-and-so.

Listening to recorded Quran is permitted

Listening to recorded recitation is plainly permitted; recitation tapes sit in every Islamic media shop beside sermons and lectures.

The observed effect

The effect of recordings, the author says, is clear, and only someone with no experience of the field denies it. He points to:

1. The reports of patients themselves: a large proportion of afflicted listeners feel something, whether small or great.
2. What happens during listening: some patients vomit what is taken to be the sihr; some feel the jinnī leave, or heat, or hear screaming inside; some tremble; it even reports comatose patients in intensive care waking. (These are the practitioners’ and families’ reports, presented as reports.)
3. An inconsistency it points out in the critics: when studies from America said Quran recitation heard on tape strengthens the immune system, people celebrated, but at the word “ruqyah” they balk, though the default in treatment is permissibility.
4. Hospitals in Saudi Arabia, government and private, play Quran recitation even in intensive care units because they consider it beneficial.

The study the author cites

• 0%of listeners showed measurable physiological change indicating reduced nervous tension
• 0%the calming effect measured for the Quranic passages against matched Arabic ones
• 0trials on healthy non-Muslim volunteers aged 17–40, over 42 sessions

Dr Ahmad al-Qadi’s reported Cairo study, reproduced as the author presents it. The claims are the study’s own, not established medicine.

The source reproduces an account of research by Dr Ahmad al-Qadi (chairman of the Islamic Medicine Institute for Education and Research in the USA, an Egyptian cardiologist), presented at a Cairo medical conference: in his trials, 79% of subjects who listened to Quranic recitation (Muslim or not, Arabic-speaking or not) showed measurable physiological changes indicating reduced nervous tension. Since stress lowers immunity, he argued, the Quran’s calming effect supports the immune response. A second phase used a stress-measurement device (“Medac 2002”, from Boston University’s medical centre) in 210 trials on healthy non-Muslim volunteers aged 17–40, over 42 sessions in which Quranic recitation was interleaved with non-Quranic Arabic passages matched for sound and cadence; the volunteers could not tell them apart, yet the calming effect of the Quranic passages measured at 65%. (This study is reproduced as the author presents it. Its claims, particularly about immunity, are the study’s own, not established medicine; nothing here is a substitute for medical treatment.)

The counter-fatwa and the author’s reply

A fatwa of 27 Shawwāl 1423 (1 Jan 2003) ruled that while listening to recorded Quran and ruqyah is good, the ruqyah proper is not achieved by it: ruqyah has three pillars (the raqi, that which is recited, and the one recited over), and the raqi’s righteousness and taqwā affect his ruqyah, none of which obtains in a recording, whether played over a person, water or oil.

The author’s reply: that is ijtihād, and reality contradicts it. The intended result has occurred, repeatedly, through recordings — among Arabs and non-Arabs, and even among the jinn: some jinn accepted Islam after hearing ruqyah tapes and the recording “Advice to the jinn”, pronounced the shahādah, revealed where the sihr lay, and left the body. Brothers abroad take a player and the tapes to patients afflicted by sihr and jinn; within moments the non-Arab patient reacts. Two incidents were captured on video: in one, a man listening to the sihr ruqyah and its du‘ā brings up the substance of the sihr.

What listeners report

From the responses the author collected on the “Advice to the jinn” recording and the ruqyah tracks, kept as the listeners wrote them:

• “The first time I heard it: light sleepiness, then crying, and involuntary movements in my body.”
• “The same symptoms that always accompany me: pricking in the head and shoulders and hips.”
• “Heat and heaviness in the legs, tingling that spread through the whole body to the head; later, reading Quran, I felt something moving on my left shoulder.”
• “Two feelings at once — humility, and rage: ‘if you were in front of me I would hit you’; when you cursed Iblīs I felt screaming inside me, pain in the back between the shoulders, yawning, drowsiness, eyes full of tears.”
• “My four-year-old daughter could not control her bladder; with the ‘ayn ruqyah, and sidr alongside it, it faded step by step — now she is better than ever, and the neighbours and relatives see the difference.”
• “A close relative had womb pain she blamed on her contraceptive; three days after listening to the “burning verses” ruqyah the pain vanished — after Allah’s grace — and has not returned.”
• One woman describing three sessions with the “burning verses”: her left foot striking the ground hard while fully conscious; a strong internal agitation on waking, then a violent episode after listening; and, while she listened with a small girl in the room, a sensation of something being pulled out of her hand, at which the child screamed that she saw “a monster leave your hand” and go to the shelf behind. (Reports, as given.)
• “I listened three times in a row: racing heartbeat, headache, tightness, and a feeling of something wanting to come out of my mouth.”

Accompanying effects reported with continued listening: distress, loud crying and sadness; pain in the feet and hands, especially on waking; frequent urination or diarrhoea as soon as the ruqyah is switched on; spots appearing on face and body; increased aversion towards a particular family member. They vary with the patient’s resolve and persistence.

How to listen

With concentration, and with continuity, for example seven or eight times a day. You are replacing a live raqi with a playback device, so the effort must be multiplied.

Reciting against listening

Minute for minute, your own recitation is stronger, if it is focused and concentrated. But recordings win on volume: three hours of listening outweighs ten minutes of reading. Where the durations are equal or close, recitation is the stronger.

When recordings are the right tool

1. 1Where raqis are absent or few
2. 2For those who cannot recite wellThe unlettered, non-Arabic speakers, small children, those without sound mind.
3. 3To intensify the treatmentWhen the patient cannot keep up continuous recitation himself.
4. 4During sleepWhere the effect is remarkable and where a patient cannot recite over himself.
5. 5As homework a raqi sets before a sessionTo help weaken a sihr or exhaust the jinnī beforehand.
6. 6In hospitals and psychiatric institutionsAlready done in practice.
7. 7In houses troubled by jinnContinuous playback through a recorder or computer running without pause has a clear effect, with satisfying results reported by the families themselves.