Ruqyah and Modern Medicine: They Work Together, Not Against Each Other

What is ruqyah and where does medicine stand in relation to it?

Ruqyah is the recitation of Quranic verses, prophetic supplications and established prayers over a sick person with the intention of seeking healing through the will of God. It is a practice with firm grounding in Islamic scholarship and jurisprudence. This article does not address its Islamic permissibility: that is a matter for scholars of religious law, not a health website.

The question this article addresses is a specific medical one: what is the relationship between ruqyah and seeking medical treatment? Do they conflict? Does practising one require abandoning the other? The position of mainstream Islamic scholarship is clear: there is no conflict. Medical treatment is one of the causes God has permitted, and ruqyah is seeking healing through His words. A believing person takes both the causes available to them and places their trust in God.

The matter becomes a health concern when faith or ruqyah is used as a reason to delay seeking medical treatment for a condition that needs it, or as grounds to stop prescribed medication, or as an opening exploited by some practitioners to harm a vulnerable person financially and medically. That pattern, not the practice of ruqyah itself, is what this article is concerned with.

Does seeking medical treatment contradict putting trust in God?

This is a question many sincere believers ask, and it deserves a direct answer. As Islamic scholars define it, tawakkul, or true reliance on God, does not mean abandoning the means available. It means using those means while the heart depends entirely on God. No recognised scholar of Islamic law argues that seeking medical treatment is contrary to faith. Most explicitly affirm that it is among the obligations a person has towards themselves.

The historical record is unambiguous: Ibn Sina was both a physician and a Muslim scholar. Ibn al-Nafis discovered pulmonary circulation within an Islamic intellectual tradition. The medicine of Islamic civilisation preserved and advanced the medical heritage of humanity for centuries. Combining prayer and medicine is not a modern compromise but a foundational Islamic orientation.

A review published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings examined the relationship between religious involvement and medical outcomes across many diseases and found that faith and spirituality can have positive associations with recovery and wellbeing. Crucially, the authors noted that these positive associations do not remove the need for appropriate medical diagnosis and treatment, and that the two operate alongside each other rather than as alternatives.

When does delayed treatment become a genuine health risk?

Delayed medical care is the only point at which a real and measurable health problem arises. Some conditions are genuinely intolerant of delay. Cancer detected early has survival rates that drop measurably with each week of treatment delay. A stroke has a treatment window of only a few hours before permanent brain damage accumulates. A severe diabetic episode can lead to coma within hours. Heart muscle dies progressively during an untreated heart attack.

A study published in Pediatric Blood and Cancer tracked traditional and complementary medicine use by families of children with cancer in Jordan over a 16-year period. The researchers found that the primary health concern was not ruqyah or prayer per se, but the pattern of delaying the start of conventional medical treatment while pursuing other approaches. Early treatment of childhood cancer produces dramatically better outcomes than late treatment, so delays carry a measurable cost.

A 2025 paper published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies examined religious, spiritual and folk healing practices among oncology patients and noted that the key risk factor was not the spiritual practice itself but whether that practice led patients to delay or discontinue evidence-based treatment. This distinction matters: ruqyah practised alongside medical care is different from ruqyah used in place of it.

Ruqyah and chronic illness: the two can coexist

Many people with chronic diseases practise ruqyah regularly while also taking their prescribed medicines, attending their check-ups and monitoring their blood sugar or blood pressure. This is not a contradiction but a realistic and appropriate way of living with illness. Ruqyah attends to the spiritual and emotional dimensions of the experience while medical treatment addresses the underlying physiological problem.

Studies examining the effect of faith and spirituality on medical outcomes tend to find positive associations. A review of clinical medicine and religious practice published in the Journal of Religion and Health found that religious engagement was generally associated with better adherence to medical treatment, lower rates of anxiety and depression, and improved quality of life in patients with chronic disease. Faith in this framework supports medical treatment rather than working against it.

A Muslim patient who prays, recites supplications, performs ruqyah on themselves and then takes their prescribed medication at the right time is not torn between two opposing worlds. They are drawing on both the spiritual and the material resources available to them, which is a coherent and reasonable position. The problem arises only when one of these dimensions is used to cancel the other.

The risk of exploitative practitioners: a necessary distinction

In every society there are people who misuse what is sacred for financial gain. This is not a judgement on ruqyah itself but a warning about a documented phenomenon. Some who present themselves as practitioners of ruqyah pressure patients or their families to stop or change their medical treatment, present themselves as the only route to healing, and charge escalating fees for sessions without a clear endpoint.

Researchers studying complementary and spiritual healing practices in oncology contexts consistently flag the same concern: the harm comes not from prayer or spiritual healing per se but from the pattern of weakening a patient's commitment to their medical treatment or exhausting their financial resources on unproven claims. The 2025 BMC paper on religious healing practices in oncological disorders made this distinction explicitly.

Distinguishing a sincere practitioner from someone exploiting the label of ruqyah is not complicated. A sincere practitioner does not guarantee recovery because healing belongs to God alone. They do not tell patients to stop prescribed medication. They do not claim knowledge of the unseen. They do not escalate sessions and costs indefinitely. Anyone who does any of these things is a problem to avoid, regardless of what they call themselves or how convincing they appear.

How to tell your doctor about your religious practices

Many patients in Arab countries do not tell their doctors that they are seeing a raqui, taking herbal preparations or using traditional treatments alongside their prescribed medication. A study published in the Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal on rheumatoid arthritis patients found that a substantial proportion of those using complementary and alternative medicine did not disclose this to their treating physician.

This silence creates real risks because some traditional practices interact with prescribed drugs, and some delay the recognition of a deteriorating condition. A good doctor receives this information respectfully and does not dismiss it. If you practise ruqyah, take herbal preparations or see a traditional healer alongside your medical treatment, tell your doctor. This helps them give you better care that respects the full picture of your life.

Research into spirituality and patient satisfaction in hospitals, including a study published in the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, found that patients who felt their spiritual beliefs were respected by their doctors reported higher satisfaction and were more likely to engage cooperatively with their treatment plan. Telling your doctor about your practices is not an admission of weakness; it is completing the picture they need to care for you properly.

Situations where medical help must come first

There are specific situations where no other consideration should delay getting medical help. Children are particularly at risk from delayed treatment because their conditions progress faster and respond far better to early intervention than to late. If a child has a fever that is not coming down, difficulty breathing, seizures or is unresponsive, call for emergency services first.

Conditions with narrow treatment windows, including strokes, heart attacks and severe hypoglycaemia, require medical intervention within minutes to hours rather than days. In a stroke, every minute of delay translates into roughly two million neurons lost. These are the situations where acting immediately on the medical side is an expression of caring for the person God has entrusted to you.

For stable chronic diseases where the patient sees a doctor regularly and takes their medication consistently, combining ruqyah and medical treatment is straightforward and unproblematic. But even in this stable context, do not stop a long-term medication based on advice from a practitioner of ruqyah. Medication changes must go through the prescribing physician.

Spiritual healing and mental health

There is a dimension of ruqyah and Quranic recitation that relates directly to mental health: reducing anxiety, cultivating the certainty that events are in God's hands, and the experience of not being alone in facing illness. This dimension has real value that modern psychological research recognises under the term spiritual and existential support for patients.

Contemporary medicine acknowledges that a sense of meaning, purpose and connection to something larger than the individual self is associated with better adherence to treatment, lower anxiety and improved quality of life in people with chronic and serious illness. This does not mean prayer removes a tumour or repairs a heart valve, but it means that faith is not simply irrelevant to health: it can be a resource that supports the person through treatment.

A patient who sits with a raqui and leaves feeling at peace and reassured may emerge from that experience more able to face the next round of treatment, not less. The problem occurs only when the session becomes a replacement for diagnosis or medication. Otherwise, the spiritual and the medical attend to different dimensions of the same person, and supporting both makes sense.

Protecting yourself from exploitation

A person who is chronically or seriously ill can be at their most vulnerable and most susceptible to promises of complete healing through non-medical means. The medical and sociological literature documents a recurring pattern: people who delay effective treatment and lose significant money in pursuit of a promised cure through approaches that have no evidentiary basis. The suffering that leads to this is real and understandable.

The protective rule is simple: anyone who guarantees you healing from other than God is deceiving you. Anyone who makes stopping your prescribed medication a condition of helping you is harming you. Anyone who multiplies sessions and raises costs while making bigger promises is exploiting you. Keep your doctor, keep your medication, and add whatever legitimate ruqyah you choose to the equation.

If you suspect that someone is exploiting the name of ruqyah to take advantage of you or a family member, consult a recognised religious scholar. Many reputable scholars address this phenomenon directly and warn against it explicitly. Do not isolate yourself from your community, your family or your doctor, and that itself is among the strongest protections against exploitation.

Sources

• Anwar N, Rattani SA, Shams S et al: Exploring religious, spiritual, traditional, and folk healing practices for oncological disorders, BMC complementary medicine and therapies, 2025
• Mueller PS, Plevak DJ, Rummans TA: Religious involvement, spirituality, and medicine: implications for clinical practice, Mayo Clinic proceedings, 2001
• Stewart WC, Adams MP, Stewart JA et al: Review of clinical medicine and religious practice, Journal of religion and health, 2013
• Almuhareb AM, Alhawassi TM, Alghamdi AA et al: Prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine use among rheumatoid arthritis patients in Saudi Arabia, Saudi pharmaceutical journal, 2019
• Yaghmour KA, Abu Sadi R, Badroun F et al: Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Among Patients With Diabetes Mellitus in Saudi Arabia, Cureus, 2023
• Sawalha M, Alnaasan A, Alsharawneh A et al: Two Surveys, 16 Years Apart: Comparing Traditional and Complementary Medicine Use by Children With Cancer in Jordan, Pediatric blood & cancer, 2025