Magic and soothsaying in Islam

 

Practicing magic is forbidden in Islam.  Magic is such an evil that happy families are destroyed and sane people go mad.  The differences and disasters of the world are through this.  For this reason, magic has no right to be in human society, so much so that in under Islamic rule, they are to be executed by law. For this reason, Hadhrat ‘Umar (May Allah be well pleased with him) passed a law in his caliphate that magicians should be executed.  It is narrated on the authority of Hadhrat Abu Sha’asha:

 

Translation: One year before the martyrdom of Hadhrat ‘Umar (May Allah be well pleased with him), we received his order that magicians should be executed.  (Sunan Abu Dawood, Hadith No. 3045)

 

When it is proved beyond doubt that someone is harming people with magic and is being blasphemous then that person will be executed, the way dacoits are killed.  As ‘Allama Shami (May Allah shower His mercy on him) says in Radd Ul Muhtaar, Muqaddima.

 

Imam Azam (May Allah shower His mercy on him) says that when a magician confesses to magic or it is proved by the testimony of other people, he/she will be killed and his repentance will not be accepted. 

 

Similarly, those people who go to magicians also deserve strict punishment and it has been said about such people that they have been ungrateful on the bounty of Islam as has been related:

 

Translation: Hadhrat Hubairah narrates on the authority of Hadhrat ‘Abdullah, he says:  The person who goes to a magician or to those who claim to know is hidden or a soothsayer, then indeed that person has denied the Word revealed to the Holy Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam).  (Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaiba)

 

Those who indulge in magic will never be successful in this world or in the hereafter, as Almighty Allah says:

 

Whatever they have wrought is but a deceitful trick of a sorcerer, and wherever a magician may come, he will not be successful.’  Surah Taha (20:69)

 

A soothsayer is a person who falsely claims to know the unseen.  It is mentioned in the Hadith:

 

Translation: It is narrated on the authority of Hadhrat Abu Hurairah (May Allah be well pleased with him) that the Holy Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) said:  The person who has sex (when the wife is) in menstruation, or has anal sex or goes to a soothsayer has denied the Holy Quran and the Hadith.

 

Imam Tirmidhi (May Allah shower His mercy on him) says that in this Hadith a strict warning has been issued and the soothsayer has been warned.  Here denial of faith is not meant in its actual form but as a form of ungratefulness.  (Jame’ Tirmidhi, Hadith No. 135)