Ruling on going to fortune-tellers who claim knowledge of the unseen
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
In some countries, there are people who read tea leaves, which is a type of sorcery. They ask you for the mother's name or the father's name, then they tell you about some things that happened in the past, and they also tell you about some events that may happen in the future?The Shaykh: But this cup is empty and has no water in it?The questioner: Allah knows best, O Shaykh! I do not know; they simply call it reading tea leaves, and it is one of the types of sorcery.
The Shaykh: It appears to me that this is a type of sorcery and magic, so it is not permissible. And whoever believes someone who informs him about an event that will happen in the future has disbelieved in what was revealed to Muhammad; because if he believes the report about something in the future, he has lied to the Qur'an, as Allah the Exalted said: because He restricted the knowledge of the unseen to Allah alongside His lordship, [Surat al-Naml: 65] So whoever believes the one who says: If he says, "Such and such will happen on such and such a day," he has lied to the Qur'an.And for this reason it came in the hadith: (Whoever goes to a fortune-teller and believes what he says has disbelieved in what was revealed to Muhammad) .
The questioner: O Shaykh! But the question asks: How can he inform about future events that actually happen? Is this a doubt?The Shaykh: This is a doubt we address: it happened, not because he is a scholar; this person guesses until he knows, or he is like the fortune-tellers who were in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance, where a jinn would hear news from the sky and inspire it to this fortune-teller, and then the fortune-teller would add other things to it. So if he was correct in this word that was heard from the sky, they would say: This one is truthful and knows the unseen.
The Shaykh: It appears to me that this is a type of sorcery and magic, so it is not permissible. And whoever believes someone who informs him about an event that will happen in the future has disbelieved in what was revealed to Muhammad; because if he believes the report about something in the future, he has lied to the Qur'an, as Allah the Exalted said: because He restricted the knowledge of the unseen to Allah alongside His lordship,
Say, "None in the heavens and earth knows the unseen except Allah
قُلْ لا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ الْغَيْبَ إِلَّا اللَّهُThe questioner: O Shaykh! But the question asks: How can he inform about future events that actually happen? Is this a doubt?The Shaykh: This is a doubt we address: it happened, not because he is a scholar; this person guesses until he knows, or he is like the fortune-tellers who were in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance, where a jinn would hear news from the sky and inspire it to this fortune-teller, and then the fortune-teller would add other things to it. So if he was correct in this word that was heard from the sky, they would say: This one is truthful and knows the unseen.