Ruqyah and possession — examining disputed claims

Introduction

Ruqyah seeks Allah's protection and healing through recitation and supplication. Its place in Islam does not mean that every claim made by a practitioner is correct. The Prophet ﷺ permitted ruqyah free from shirk, giving us a foundation for examining both its words and the beliefs attached to it.^[1]

This episode considers two well-known practitioners: Ali ibn Mushrif al-Umari and Wahid Abd al-Salam Bali. Both became associated with accounts of withdrawing from regular treatment. Ahmad Dadoosh asks what they actually rejected, how their statements were reported, and whether their experiences justify broader conclusions. He begins by affirming that disagreement should aim at truth while respecting the people involved.^[2]

Several questions run through the discussion. Does leaving a practice mean rejecting ruqyah itself? What can a personal experience establish? When does a suggested recitation become a claim about religious authority? These questions require separate answers.

Shaykh Ali ibn Mushrif al-Umari

Withdrawal and the meaning of rejection

Dadoosh recalls hearing about al-Umari as a child in Saudi Arabia. His account describes a teacher of hadith whose reputation as a practitioner spread widely, followed by public criticism of the practices with which he had been associated.^[3]

The first discussion, dated by Dadoosh to 2011, reportedly rejected the idea that a jinn speaks through a patient's tongue. A later discussion, which he dates to 2013, reportedly clarified that al-Umari did not deny every form of satanic influence. Those original recordings have not yet been independently checked, so the precise development of his position remains open.^[4][5]

A newspaper account can be checked directly. On 20 January 2016, Okaz described al-Umari as a retired practitioner who rejected possession and speech through patients, and encouraged psychiatric consultation. Dadoosh argues that this flattened a more qualified position. The article confirms what the newspaper reported; deciding whether its summary was fair requires the original statements too.^[6]

A practitioner's visitors are not everyone

One reported argument concerns the kinds of people who sought al-Umari's help. Dadoosh objects to concluding that an experience affects only a particular social group because that group attends one practitioner's sessions. People who interpret their symptoms differently may seek help elsewhere.^[7]

He also reports hearing of Christians seeking ruqyah from Muslim practitioners. Such accounts challenge the assumption that everyone involved must already share the same religious expectations. They remain anonymous testimony, however; they do not independently establish the cause of symptoms or the reason for an improvement.^[8]

The same distinction applies to an unsuccessful treatment. Failure in a particular case does not settle every question about ruqyah. Equally, an apparent improvement does not validate everything the practitioner believes or does. Dadoosh makes a related argument about alleged fraud in televised sessions, while acknowledging that he had not investigated those programmes himself.^[9][10]

The woman who reacted to poetry

In another reported incident, al-Umari recited poetry in a style resembling Qur'anic recitation. A woman reacted as though he were reading the Qur'an, and he reportedly used this to challenge her interpretation of her illness.^[11]

Dadoosh accepts that she may have been mistaken. His objection is to treating one incident as a conclusion about all other patients. This is an important qualification in his response: he says he does not know her case well enough to decide it. A reported reaction, whether to poetry or scripture, is not by itself a reliable diagnosis.^[11]

Whispering, illness and the texts

The discussion invokes Surah al-Nas, which teaches us to seek refuge from the whisperer, and the hadith describing Satan's movement through a person like blood. In the latter report, the Prophet ﷺ identifies Safiyyah to two men to prevent suspicion. Its immediate setting concerns thoughts and misunderstanding.^[12][13]

Qur'an 2:275 also appears in the debate. Its warning about riba includes a comparison with a person disordered by Satan's touch. The verse belongs to a discussion of unlawful gain; applying it to a particular person's symptoms requires more than recognizing similar language.^[14]

Dadoosh argues that a chemical or genetic explanation would not logically exclude spiritual involvement. He goes further and attributes clinical obsessive symptoms to Satan. That further claim is his interpretation, not a medical finding. OCD, psychosis and ordinary unwanted thoughts should not be treated as interchangeable terms.^[15]

NIMH describes OCD through recurring obsessions and compulsions that cause distress or disrupt life. Its causes are not fully understood, and treatment can include medication and psychological therapy, including exposure and response prevention. Seeking appropriate care is compatible with taking spiritual life seriously; this debate offers no basis for stopping prescribed treatment.^[16]

Ibn Hazm's position needs precision

Dadoosh reports a quotation from Ibn Hazm rejecting a devil's speech through a patient, and contrasts it with other scholars' views. The exact wording still needs checking against a reliable edition.^[17]

The related chapter of Ibn Hazm's al-Fasl makes a narrower position visible. He affirms jinn and discusses a satanic touch affecting an afflicted person, while rejecting additions he considers unsupported. It would therefore be inaccurate to summarize him as denying every satanic effect. Disagreement about the mechanism should not erase what an author explicitly accepts.^[18]

Shaykh Wahid Abd al-Salam Bali

Books, experience and a later interview

Dadoosh names two books associated with Bali's influence: Wiqayat al-insan min al-jinn wa-l-shaytan and al-Sarim al-battar fi al-tasaddi li-l-saharah al-ashrar. He remembers them from his family's home and describes their mixture of protective recitations and personal accounts. The original editions and those accounts have not yet been checked here.^[19][20]

The later interview with Haitham Talaat was published on Talaat's channel on 19 June 2026. In the inspected passages, Bali says he stopped regular treatment roughly thirty years earlier and was occupied with da'wah. He nevertheless recounts past ruqyah experiences. Leaving regular practice should therefore not be described as a simple rejection of everything he previously believed.^[21][22]

What can be known about the unseen?

Bali's opening principle is that claims about the unseen should rest on the Qur'an and Sunnah, rather than circulating stories. He invokes Qur'an 7:27, which describes Satan and his company seeing us from where we do not see them.^[23][24]

Dadoosh responds by distinguishing the absolutely unseen from what is hidden from a particular observer. He argues that an experience can reveal something without making the whole unseen world accessible. He refers to dreams, encounters and altered states discussed in earlier episodes.^[25][26]

The disagreement concerns the authority of these experiences. Recognizing that people report them does not establish every interpretation, and accepting that jinn exist does not certify each claimed message from one. The hadith of Abu Hurayrah and the visitor who taught him about Ayat al-Kursi includes the Prophet's confirmation of that particular statement; it does not make alleged messages generally trustworthy.^[27]

Repetition and religious authority

The original interview distinguishes personal recitation choices from prescribing particular routines for everyone. Bali objects to turning a personal experience into an established religious instruction without evidence. Dadoosh replies that a suggested practice need not be presented as a Sunnah, an obligation or a guaranteed result.^[28][29]

Dadoosh's cited Islamweb answer can be identified precisely: fatwa 400630, dated 4 July 2019. It allows particular supplications and repetitions under conditions: their meaning must be known, their content permissible, and their benefit known through experience. It also emphasizes that ruqyah works by Allah's power and warns against charlatans. This is the site's legal opinion, not a clinical study or proof that every suggested routine succeeds.^[30]

The report of a Companion treating a bitten or stung chief with al-Fatihah supplies another part of the argument. The Prophet ﷺ approved what had occurred. Dadoosh takes the Companion's initiative as support for learning through experience; how far to extend that example to later practices remains an interpretive question.^[31][32]

Reports and analogies should remain distinct

The episode refers to prophetic expulsion reports. One identifiable report is Ibn Majah 3548, concerning Uthman ibn Abi al-As; the consulted edition displays a sahih grading attributed to Darussalam. A separate detail about a small black animal emerging is not in that report and should not be silently combined with it.^[33][34]

Bali's interview also contains his own account of threatening continued recitation against an alleged jinn. Dadoosh discusses an analogy with the hadith concerning a house snake. The inspected version, Muslim 2236a, specifies a warning over three days in its Medina setting. It concerns a snake, not permission to strike or otherwise harm a human patient.^[22][35]

Mirrors: a religious restriction or a distressing experience?

Bali rejects unsupported religious restrictions on looking into mirrors. The original question mentions prolonged looking, the evil eye and possible harm; it is broader than a question about managing a diagnosed illness. Dadoosh's reply focuses on a different distinction: avoiding something that provokes distress need not mean declaring it religiously forbidden.^[36][37]

The strange-face-in-the-mirror phenomenon is a real research topic. A 2012 study compared 16 participants with schizophrenia and 21 healthy controls, using a seven-minute task followed by assessment. Its abstract reports more intense unusual face perceptions in the patient group; it also describes the phenomenon in healthy observers. The study does not identify jinn as the cause, establish a possession test or recommend that everyone avoid mirrors.^[38]

Salt, visions and claims of special sight

In the original interview, Bali questions how a practitioner knows that salt repels devils, particularly when the claim comes from an alleged jinn. Dadoosh's broader response defends room for experience beyond explicitly prescribed methods. Neither argument supplies a measurement of the claimed absorption of spiritual energy.^[39]

The final dispute concerns claims to see signs of magic or the evil eye on another person. Bali doubts their source. Dadoosh replies that non-prophetic inspiration or an extraordinary gift is not automatically demonic. The hadith about inspired people, naming Umar, establishes a religious category; it does not certify a modern practitioner's diagnostic sight.^[40][41][42]

Bali adds an important warning in the original interview: visions purporting to identify a relative or neighbour as the author of magic can produce false accusations and family conflict. Such a vision is not evidence against that person.^[40]

Dadoosh, too, warns against pursuing unusual perception as an attractive power. The believer's concern is protection, worship and well-being. We can seek Allah's help, respect sincere disagreement and examine each claim without making a frightened person's experience into a verdict about them or anyone else.^[43]

References