Sihrofseparation(tafrīq)

Sihr of separation, tafrīq, is magic worked with the aim of splitting two people who were joined: most often a husband and wife, sometimes a parent and child, business partners or friends. It is the one kind of sihr the Quran names outright, and it is also the kind most often blamed for a marriage that is failing for reasons anyone in the house could list.

The verse that names it

Allah describes what the people learned from the two angels at Babylon:

فَيَتَعَلَّمُونَ مِنْهُمَا مَا يُفَرِّقُونَ بِهِۦ بَيْنَ ٱلْمَرْءِ وَزَوْجِهِۦ ۚ وَمَا هُم بِضَآرِّينَ بِهِۦ مِنْ أَحَدٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ

Fa-yata‘allamūna minhumā mā yufarriqūna bihī baynal-mar’i wa zawjih, wa mā hum bi-ḍārrīna bihī min aḥadin illā bi-idhnillāh

And [yet] they learn from them that by which they cause separation between a man and his wife. But they do not harm anyone through it except by permission of Allah.

Two things sit in that verse and both are needed. Sihr aimed at a marriage is real, named by Allah, and not a superstition of the ignorant. And it reaches nobody except by His permission, which means the sorcerer holds no marriage in his hands. The classical scholars, Ibn Kathīr among them, discuss tafrīq in the same passage where they set out the kinds of sihr; the background is at sihr, magic and witchcraft.

The Prophet ﷺ himself was affected by sihr, worked by Labīd ibn al-A‘ṣam, until he called upon Allah, was shown where it lay, and was cured (Bukhari 5763, Muslim 2189). If it could reach him, it carries no shame for anyone else.

The signs raqis report

Raqis describe a recognisable cluster, and no single item on it means anything on its own.

• Affection reversing without an event: a spouse who was loved becomes physically repellent, and the change can be dated to a particular week.
• The fault-finding is out of proportion: small habits become unbearable, and the same person is warm and reasonable with everyone else.
• Physical aversion or an inability to consummate, with medical causes ruled out by a doctor.
• A knot of anger or dread that lifts the moment the person leaves the house and returns as they walk back in.
• Repeated separations and reconciliations, each collapse arriving at the same point.
• Reactions during recitation, especially at the sihr verses: yawning, tears, heat, cold, nausea, agitation.
• Sihr objects found in the home: knotted thread, pins in furniture, papers with symbols, clothing with pieces cut out.

The fuller list, and what raqis watch for during and after treatment, is at signs and symptoms of sihr.

The ordinary causes that look identical

This is the section this site exists for. Every sign above is produced far more often by something with an ordinary name, and a couple who spend a year on ruqyah for a problem made of debt and silence will end that year with the same problem and less time.

1. 1MoneyDebt, a lost job, or one spouse controlling the accounts. Financial fear reads as contempt very quickly.
2. 2In-lawsA third party inside the marriage, criticism carried between houses, or a spouse who never chose their partner over their parents.
3. 3Resentment left to hardenYears of unaddressed grievance, an apology never made, a promise broken and never repaired.
4. 4Untreated depression or anxietyFlattened affection, no desire, no patience, withdrawal. It looks like a person turning against you.
5. 5An affairSudden coldness, secrecy, and hostility towards the spouse are the ordinary signature of this before they are the signature of anything unseen.
6. 6ExhaustionSmall children, shift work, illness in the family. Nobody is cruel; there is nothing left at the end of the day.

Add to those the things a marriage is owed and often does not get: time alone together, the five prayers kept in the house, kindness in speech, and a spouse who is spoken to rather than about. Allah placed affection and mercy between spouses as a sign; a house run without any of the means He gave is not evidence of magic.

What to exclude before you call it sihr

1. A medical assessment for both of you, including mood, sleep and anything physical.
2. An honest conversation, or a lawful mediator, about money, family and what each of you is carrying.
3. The obvious question asked plainly, however hard it is to ask, about whether someone else is involved.
4. Prayer, adhkār and the state of the home checked before anything else is blamed.

Only when those have been done, and the pattern still has no explanation, does tafrīq become a reasonable thing to consider. Even then it is treated by recitation, not by investigation.

Nobody is to be accused

The commonest injury this subject causes is not the sihr. It is a family torn apart by a name: an aunt, a mother-in-law, a first wife, a rejected suitor, accused on the strength of a dream, a feeling, or a jinn speaking during a session. A jinn is not a witness, and slander is not a treatment.

يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱجْتَنِبُوا۟ كَثِيرًۭا مِّنَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعْضَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِثْمٌۭ

Yā ayyuhal-ladhīna āmanuj-tanibū kathīran minaẓ-ẓann, inna ba‘ḍaẓ-ẓanni ithm

O you who have believed, avoid much [negative] assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin.

You are not required to know who did it. You are required to turn to Allah for the cure. When the Prophet ﷺ was asked whether he would have the sihr undone by nushrah, he answered that Allah had already cured him, and that he feared to open a door of evil upon the people (Bukhari 5765).

The lawful treatment

• Recite over yourselves daily. Al-Fātiḥah, Āyat al-Kursī, the last two verses of al-Baqarah, the three Quls, and the sihr passages of al-A‘rāf, Yūnus and Ṭā Hā. The five-step routine gives a shape, and the sihr set is at the verse library.
• Recite into water, drink from it and wash with it, as at water recited over with ruqyah. Both spouses, not only the one with symptoms.
• Repair the house. Guard the five prayers, keep the morning and evening adhkār, recite al-Baqarah in the home, remove what should not be there.
• If an object is found, it is destroyed after the sihr verses, al-Falaq and al-Nās are recited over it, and the knots are undone. Nobody goes searching on the word of a jinn.
• Give it weeks, not days. The full range of lawful means, and the ones a raqi should never use, is at treating sihr.

Breaking sihr with sihr is forbidden

There is no version of this where a sorcerer helps you. Going back to the person who cast it, or to another who offers to lift it, is the forbidden kind of nushrah, which the Prophet ﷺ described as the work of Shayṭān (Abu Dawud). It stays forbidden when he recites Quran while doing it, when he is recommended by family, and when it appears to work. He can tell the jinn assigned to you to stop, and you will have paid for the privilege.

The same applies to fortune-tellers: whoever goes to one and asks him about anything, no prayer is accepted from him for forty days (Muslim 2230). Why “white magic” and “good jinn” are the same trade under a softer name is set out at white magic and breaking sihr with sihr, and the warning signs of a practitioner are at the red flags of a fake raqi.

What to do first

Book the medical assessments, have the conversation you have been avoiding, and start reciting over both of you tonight. Give it six weeks before you conclude anything about a cause you cannot see.