He spoke about those who deal with the jinn and mentioned a story that happened to him.

The Shaykh : And Satan, if the expression is correct, is more cunning than the Americans and the British and others, because they seek help from the jinn devils. That is, when the devils of mankind want to reach some of their illegitimate goals, they place before that a bait, meaning a trap, to catch the prey by offering something their souls desire and their hearts find reassuring. This is how the devils of mankind act. So what can you say about the devils of the jinn, about whom we know nothing except that they may offer some treatments, which, as I said earlier, are considered a trap, a bait, to lure this person who seeks help from the jinn? Therefore, we do not permit a Muslim to seek help from a jinn that deludes the human being that it is a Muslim who believes in Allah and His Messenger, and that it appears to be righteous and that it wants to help its Muslim brothers among the humans. This is a matter of the unseen that a human Muslim cannot be reassured about. And we know by experience that one of us lives with his like among the humans for many years, and then it becomes clear to him that he is a manifest enemy, and he is a human like him. He relies on him and is reassured by him and depends on him, but after a long time it becomes clear that this appearance was all for the sake of reaching a goal of his, a goal that was unknown to the other. And this is between a human and a human, whose nature is the same and whose thinking is the same, and so on. So what can you say about a human seeking help from a jinn? And I consider it, despite the tightness of time, to give you an example that happened to me with one of those who claim that they summon spirits, for example the spirit of Ibn Sirin, the spirit of the doctor Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Arabi the unknown, and so on. In a long story, we will relate its summary to you. I attended a session where the lights were turned off and only a dim light remained, meaning it was difficult to distinguish the person next to you. Then the session began, and it became clear to me later that this summoner claimed it was a medical session. And indeed, when I entered, I found the hall full, its four walls lined with clients: an old man, an old woman, a woman holding a small child in her hand, and so on. All these people came for healing and medical treatment by the spirit of the doctor that this Hakki Bey, a summoner there in Damascus, would summon. The lights were turned off, as we said, and the session began. Hakki Bey Effendi, we heard a word that we were surprised by. He said, "And upon you be the peace of Allah and His mercy and blessings," in a loud voice, and the session, as they say, if a needle were dropped in it, its sound would be heard in the silence. To whom is he speaking? You will know later. "Welcome, doctor." One of them is called by us in the Levant, next to him they call him a "mawkulak." I don't know what you call him? Meaning a flatterer.

The questioner : We call it a "kurs."

The Shaykh : We call it a "mawkulak." He said to him, "Welcome, doctor." The second one says, "Welcome, doctor." He gives a speech... a long one, that may Allah reward you with good. We are accustomed to your favors, and our clients, praise be to Allah, increase more and more because of what? The successful medical prescriptions from this speech. And now we have a small child named such-and-such, son of such-and-such, living in such-and-such area, and so on. And his age, there is a joke here, and his age is seven months. The mother of the boy is holding him. No, doctor, his age is nine, not seven. The "mawkulak" next to the doctor says to her, "Be quiet, I know better than the doctor?!"

The questioner : ... .

The Shaykh : May Allah reward you with good. Be patient. Perhaps what you will hear will be an answer for you and for others.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : If Allah wills. The point is, this man is sitting around a round table with numbers on it and an upside-down cup on its face, and he is placing his finger like this, and his wife is facing him. And the truth is, the wife there is covered, even her face, so nothing of her is seen. We saw this cup playing, going back and forth, right and left, and so on. Then this cup passes over the numbers, it moves like this, one circle, two circles, it stops... he writes symbols they have agreed upon, and he moves the cup two times, three times, and so on. He gives the prescription, he gives the prescription to the specialized employee, he gives it to the woman, and with safety, and so on. For about an hour, a patient enters and a patient exits. An hour, time is up, the session ended. The lights were turned on. The people present, and I was among them, unfortunately, all of them say to him, "May Allah give you health, doctor. May Allah reward you with good." But I was almost bursting with anger, and especially at that time I was young and blond, and the effects of heat and anger were visible on me. So a man glanced at me and said, "What does the professor think? By Allah, professor, doctor, I have two questions if you allow." He said, "Go ahead." I said to him, "You opened the session by saying, 'And upon you be the peace of Allah and His mercy and blessings.' To whom are you saying 'and upon you be the peace' while the people are sitting and no one is speaking...?" He said, "I returned the greeting to the doctor." Which doctor? He said, "The spirit, the spirit of the doctor that we summoned." I said to him, "Is it he who greeted you?!" He said, "Yes." We said to him, "How did you hear this greeting and we did not hear it? Is the structure of your ear different from the general structure of humans?" He said, "No, this is the secret of the profession. This is something you cannot know until you enter it. This is exactly the talk of the Sufis." Okay, and your companion, I cannot, of course, this one who says to you, "with you too." The second one heard with you that when he said, "Welcome, doctor," the important thing is that I entered into a discussion with him from the side that might be called physiological or psychological, but I quickly moved with him to the second question, which is the legal side. Doctor, this spirit that you summoned, is it a dead person or a living one? He said, "No, dead." We said to him, "Dead? How do you summon his spirit while he is between two spirits, there is no third, either happy or wretched? If it is happy, by Allah, it will not enter the world again at all, because it is occupied with its bliss in its grave. And we mentioned some hadiths that indicate that the grave is a garden from the gardens of Paradise or a pit from the pits of the Fire. And if it is a wretched spirit, it is even more so that it cannot get out of its prison surrounding it. How can you still be able to summon this spirit?!" This is legally impossible. Second and finally, and here is the point, suppose that you are able to summon this spirit. What makes you know that this spirit is for the doctor Ibn Sina, for example, the Muslim, with his flaws and deviations, as the knowledgeable scholars who know him say that he was a philosopher and was deviated from many Islamic beliefs? Or was it the old doctor al-Razi, for example? What tells you that this is not a disbeliever and not one who associates partners with Allah? Just because he says to you, "I am the spirit of so-and-so," do you say, "Amen"? Today, transactions between humans, between one state and another, when a state wants to send its ambassador to another state, it sends with the ambassador certificates and records, yes.

The questioner : Credentials.

The Shaykh : Credentials, and also from these conventions, seals and signatures, and so on, so that the state to which this ambassador is sent is reassured that this is truly the ambassador of such-and-such a state. As long as Dajjal is coming to play with this state, and these are human beings among one another, this is a matter of the unseen. How can you know that this is truly Dr. So-and-So? He had no choice but to say, and he was silenced and the argument was established against him. He said, "The truth is, Professor, that this session is medical, and we have a scientific session if you wish to discuss it there, so welcome. I did not believe there was a scientific session. And as I tell my brothers, I am a man who does not make jokes; whenever someone invites me, I always accept. I asked him when, and he said Sunday. We told him, if Allah wills, our appointment is on Sunday. If Allah wills, Sunday came, and I was forced to cooperate with one of our brothers there who was an employee in the Ministry of Education. There was an attempt to correct some books called Islamic Education. The Islamic Education books contain weak and fabricated hadiths, and Hanafi ideas that contradict the Sunnah, and so on. One of them invited me to cooperate with him; he is an employee in the Ministry of Education, and I am not an employee, praise be to Allah, but I have a little knowledge, as you know. I saw that meeting with this person was better than keeping the appointment. But my friend who took me there came to me on the appointed day, Sunday morning, at the Dār al-Kutub al-Dawliyyah (National Library), on the basis that we would meet and go. I told him, "This is my story, such and such, and I cannot go with you. So may Allah reward you with good, go to him and apologize to him, if Allah wills, in another session." The man went, and lo, he was surprised to find that there was no one in the house at all on the appointed day; it was dark, with no light and nothing in it. The next day he came to tell me the story, such and such. I told him, "This is a victory from Allah for us." He said, "Let's go on the second Sunday." Of course, on the second Sunday he went and found, as usual, that they said, "We came." I told him, "Do not tell him that the Shaykh did not come; let it remain vague. We came according to the appointments but did not find you. May it be well, if Allah wills, Dr. Ya Haqqi Bey." He said this to him, truly. He said, "Let's go, this witness, my brothers, and here, take heed, O you who have insight." He said, "Go, you have brought us a big, dangerous Wahhabi who does not love the Messenger, may Allah kill him." He said, "Who told you that? This is a man, our friend, we always attend his lessons." He said, "Allah, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him)?" The one who told me was after I had left, meaning I had left his place. He said, "Summon him, I do not know who, I forgot." And he asked about me and gave him these details that this man is a Wahhabi who does not love the Messenger. So I said, "People, this is the proof that these people seek the help of the devils. There is no such thing as summoning spirits; this is impossible. But truly, the devils attend them and inspire them, as the Lord of the Worlds said: Therefore, I say that if there is any of our brothers who has been afflicted—and I say afflicted because, as the news reaches us, this is truly a place of trial and test—a woman may come to him in a state of being stricken and possessed. He may see it as beneficial to touch her and feel her arm, her neck, and so on. The devil comes through these easy, soft doors at first, and then the matter grows and grows until the great fitnah (trial, discord or temptation) occurs. If there is any of our brothers who is afflicted, let him only recite verses from the Book of Allah or from the supplications for protection established from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) to expel the jinn that is possessing this human being. This is as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: As for asking him, "What is your name? What is your religion? What is your work? Where do you live? Where is such-and-such? And what is the benefit for this particular disease?" and so on, this falls under the general meaning of the saying of the Exalted, which I mentioned earlier: We ask for well-being and safety.