The effect of jinn and magic on people's lives — between denial and affirmation

The "Al-Wasatiyya" programme gave its thirtieth episode to the effect of jinn and magic on people's lives, between denial and affirmation. The presenter, Tareq al-Suwaidan, said he knew it was a secondary matter and that the community faces bigger political and economic questions, but that it had spread extraordinarily: it now has satellite channels and newspaper pages, and books on magic and jinn are the best sellers at book fairs, ahead, he said, of books on Palestine and on the Prophet ﷺ's life. ^{1 2} He limited the episode to magic and jinn, leaving aside envy, dream interpretation and other matters of the unseen, and framed its question as: what has this to do with religion, and what is permitted in it so that charlatanry does not come in under the name of religion? ^{2 7 8} He said that seeking protection and praying to be kept safe from jinn and devils are called for, but asked how this has turned today into a "legal ruqya" with its treatments and practitioners. ⁹ He made clear that the existence of jinn and magic is settled for Muslims who believe in the Qur'an, that those who doubt it are not the episode's subject, and that the question is how far their effect goes. ^{10 3}

• He asked the audience whether magic and jinn have a direct effect on people's lives: 68% said yes and 32% no; he said he had expected yes to be close to 90%. ^{11 4 12}
• He asked where most people got their knowledge of jinn and magic, from scholars of the sharia or from stories and inherited lore: only 15% said from scholars of the sharia, a result the presenter called astonishing. ^{13 5 14}

These are the votes of that episode's studio audience, not representative surveys.

One young man said he believes magic exists but sees no direct effect on someone going about a normal life; another said he believes in jinn and magic and their effect, but only by God's power. ^{12 15 16}

The presenter questioned Dr Isma'il Abu al-'Ala, a practitioner of ruqya. ¹⁷ He said a jinn harms a person in one of two ways: the person harms a jinn without knowing, for instance by pouring hot water somewhere without saying God's name, and the jinn retaliates; or the jinn wrongs the person unprovoked, which he illustrated with the hadiths on naming God when entering the house, eating and lying with one's spouse. ^{18 19 20 21} The presenter pointed out that this is an argument from the contrary implication (mafhum al-mukhalafa), a principle not every school accepts. ²² The practitioner said magic acts either through a jinn the sorcerer employs or through incantations, knots and writings that affect the victim's body and mind by God's decree, citing the verse of al-Baqara on learning what separates a man from his wife (al-Baqara 102). ^{23 24 25}

The practitioner said the media exaggerate the subject and that many who come to him believe they are bewitched when their condition is in fact psychological, nothing more. ^{26 27} He said he recites over each person alone, that some practitioners recite over a hundred people at once, and that he had heard of one who sees as many as 65 a day (his report of others). ^{28 29} He said anyone can treat himself with the Qur'an, and that al-Fatiha is the greatest ruqya in God's Book. ³⁰ He related that thirty years earlier, at the start of his sharia studies, he asked his neighbour and teacher Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani to learn this work, and was told it is a path needing deep study. ³¹ He listed a practitioner's conditions: grounding in the sharia sciences, since he will meet questions of creed and law and may go astray and do harm; sincerity; strength and intelligence; and a medical background even if not a physician, adding that he himself has studies in medicine and psychiatry. ^{32 33 34 35} Pressed by the presenter, he acknowledged that he did not learn the treatment from any particular specialist but studied it himself and consulted his teachers; he said the field had been held by charlatans, so young men took up treatment with the Qur'an by their own effort, and that he draws on the works of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim and the fatwas of Ibn Baz and Ibn 'Uthaymin. ^{36 37 38 39} He described his steps: first a study of the case and referral to doctors and tests, with no objection to combining medical treatment and the Qur'an; then, if the condition proves neither psychological nor organic, reciting the legal ruqya from the Qur'an and established supplications and giving the patient a Qur'anic programme. ^{40 41 42 43} He advised people to treat themselves and go to practitioners only when that fails, estimating that 20% of the cure lies with the practitioner and 80% with the person. ⁴⁴ He said his visitors come from every class, university heads, doctors, students and ordinary people, from around the world and not only Arabs; that women outnumber men by about 60 to 40; and that the last conference on magic was held in France three years earlier (needs_source). ^{45 46 47}

Dr Mahmud Abu Dannun, director of the Islamic Hospital and former director of the psychiatric hospital, said psychiatric illness in our societies is close to 20%, and that in his clinic he used to see about 30 patients a day (his figures). ^{48 49}

Dr Muhammad al-Khatib, a specialist in creed, said the jinn have their own world, unseen by us, as humans have theirs, and two powers: whispering, and the ability to enter the human world. ^{50 51 52} He said the jinn were created from smokeless fire, a subtle, non-dense substance, and the subtle can pass through the dense, like rays, so they can affect a person, though not greatly; their strength lies in people's inability to see them. ^{53 54 55 56} He explained the phenomenon's frequency in Arab societies by distance from religion; the presenter objected that the West is further from religion and that in seventeen years in America he met only one person who said he had a jinn in him, and that person was a Muslim; al-Khatib replied that the phenomenon has become worldwide. ^{57 58} Dr Abd al-Karim Obeidat, also a specialist in creed, agreed that jinn affect the human body and may possess and control a person. ^{56 59} The presenter mentioned that one of the two guests wrote a master's thesis on the jinn of about 600 pages and a doctorate on reason and its role in the sharia. ⁶⁰

The hadith that Satan runs in a person as blood runs was cited for the possibility of entry; the presenter explained its context: Safiyya bint Huyayy visited the Prophet in the mosque at night and he walked her back; two men passed, and he said this to them so that nothing would settle in their minds; the presenter took it to concern whispering, not possession. ^{61 62 63} He said the apparent sense of the text is that it runs, but we have no conclusive evidence of how. ⁶⁴

The presenter asked whether magic is real or illusion, noting that the verse on Pharaoh's sorcerers says it was made to seem to him by their magic that the ropes were moving. ⁶⁵ Dr Abd al-Karim Obeidat said magic is a reality by the text of the Qur'an and Sunna and that its effect is a cosmic decree God made a trial, like whispering; it affects the victim's body so that he imagines he did something he did not, and may cause headache or lethargy. ^{66 67 68} He cited the hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari on the Prophet being bewitched, divided magic into real magic tied to jinn and figurative magic, the charlatanry that exploits the properties of materials, and mentioned a view that Pharaoh's sorcerers filled their staffs and ropes with mercury, then called it a weak view he does not adopt. ^{69 70 71 72} He said magic may affect the mind and sight and may lead to illness, and that he believes jinn possess people and may control the brain. ⁷³ Dr Muhammad al-Khatib partly differed: magic is an illusion worked by a jinn on a person's senses, with real results; it affects the psyche but causes no tumour or organic illness. ^{74 75 76}

Dr Jamal Abu Hassan, professor of exegesis and Qur'anic sciences, said the matter is settled for him: God gave Satan power over people only in whispering. ^{14 77} He argued from the difference between prepositions in the hadiths on Satan and the companion-jinn, holding the view that prepositions substitute for one another to be weak among grammarians and rhetoricians. ^{78 79 80} He said no verse in the Qur'an explicitly indicates possession; he read the verse on those who consume usury, whom Satan "confounds by touch" (al-Baqara 275), as describing inner conflict and the turmoil of one who falls into usury, and took "confounds" to mean going astray, not being knocked about. ^{81 82 83} The presenter said he had read thirty works of exegesis on this verse; Abu Hassan did not accept reading it as possession and called that projecting preconceptions onto the verse. ^{84 85} He said the hadiths on the subject are either sound but not explicit about possession, or explicit but not sound, and that the words "Get out, enemy of God" in the hadith of the boy are not authentic as far as he knows. ^{86 87 88} He said he found no lexicographer who explained mass (touch) as entering and controlling, and cited Ayyub's words that Satan had touched him, which no one takes to mean he was possessed. ^{89 90} He said he had traced the report that Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim and later writers transmit from Imam Ahmad affirming possession and found no sound chain for it; if hadiths are rejected for a weak chain, a saying of the imam is rejected all the more. ^{91 92 93} He cited Satan's words on the Day of Judgement that he had no power over people except to call them and they answered (Ibrahim 22). ⁹⁴

Dr Mahmud Abu Dannun said Satan is man's enemy and harms him; illness is when a natural function becomes unnatural, and every function of body and mind has its centres. ^{95 96 97} He said he studied medicine for seven years, specialised for four and practised for twenty, and still cannot reach the brain's centres without a specialist surgeon, so to say a jinn knows anatomy and tampers with cells is to load the jinn with what is not right; he cited the verse that the jinn, had they known the unseen, would not have stayed in humiliating toil (Saba' 14). ^{97 98 99 100} On stories of speaking foreign languages, he told of a woman said to have a Sri Lankan jinn speaking through her; she was taken to the Sri Lankan embassy, where the interpreter said her words were meaningless. ^{101 102} The presenter mentioned in reply a story told by Shaykh Zuhayr al-Shawish of a man who spoke Hebrew words. ¹⁰³ Abu Dannun said that all who go to non-medical healers suffer from classified psychiatric illnesses, that the international classification of psychiatric disorders has more than a thousand headings, and that of every hundred patients with depression about thirty recover without treatment, thirty with treatment and thirty not at all (his figures). ^{104 105} He said a doctor follows a patient for a year or two and so knows whether he improved, and that most psychiatric illnesses have treatments by medication, electrical therapy, psychotherapy or behavioural therapy, while science has not yet reached some. ^{106 6}

The presenter said he had told the director and management from the start of his preparation that one episode could not hold the subject, and announced that time was up and the debate with the supporters, the opponents and the psychiatric specialists would continue in the next episode. ^{6 107} The next episode in the Assabile archive is on another subject, so the second part of this debate is not in the archive. The presenter gave no summing-up of his own view in this part, beyond his challenge from his years in America noted above. ⁵⁸

The medical and therapeutic statements on this page are attributed to those who made them in the episode; they are not medical information from the museum.