Ruqyah from the Qur’an and the Sunnah

What ruqyah is

Ruqyah is recitation over a sick or afflicted person seeking Allah's cure. The Prophet ﷺ practised it, permitted it, and was treated with it. The rule the scholars derive is that a ruqyah is permitted when three conditions hold: it is in the words of Allah or His names or the supplications of the Sunnah; it is in a language whose meaning is known; and the one reciting believes the cure is from Allah alone, not from the words themselves.

The standard recitation

• Surah al-Fatihah.
• Ayat al-Kursi (al-Baqarah 2:255).
• The last two verses of Surah al-Baqarah.
• Surah al-Ikhlas, al-Falaq and an-Nas — three times each, blown into the palms and wiped over the body.

The Prophetic supplications

O Allah, Lord of mankind, remove the harm and cure — You are the Healer; there is no cure but Your cure — a cure that leaves no illness behind.

What is not permitted

• Amulets containing anything other than the Qur’an, the names of Allah, or masnun supplications.
• Anything requiring the sick person to do something unlawful, abandon a prayer, or pay a fee for a promised outcome.
• Claims to knowledge of the unseen, of who has done sihr and where it lies. That is soothsaying, and the hadith on it is severe.

Alongside medicine, not instead of it

Servants of Allah, seek treatment — for Allah has not sent down a disease without sending down a cure for it.

Ruqyah does not replace a doctor. Someone who is ill should be treated, and the recitation accompanies the treatment. Anyone who tells a sick person to stop their medicine is doing them harm, whatever they recite.