A talk on treatment through diet.

Another questioner : How do we know if a person has a split personality or if he is possessed by a jinn?

Another questioner : First, the symptoms. In the case of possession, the pain moves around; sometimes he complains of his head, sometimes of his stomach, sometimes of his back, and sometimes of his legs. This is due to the movements of the jinn in the body.

Another questioner: Yes.

Another questioner : I once read over a person afflicted by a jinn in his body. I struck his chest and followed it with my hand; that is one sign. Second, he sees terrifying dreams in his sleep, usually attacks. This is constant, and he sees ghosts chasing him. Most often, the one who sees these things has something in him. One man came to me and said, "I saw a snake chasing me in my dream, and it bit my leg." When I examined him, I found...

The Shaykh : Doctor, as I told you earlier, this is a treatment for which I have experience. It happened in Damascus. The treatment is medical fasting, fasting for forty days on water only. Of course, modern medicine today does not believe in this treatment as a medical system; most of them do not believe in it, though some have. The experience happened to one of our acquaintances there in Damascus, who had the merit of donating a venue for my lectures there. He built a structure and made the ground floor a temporary endowment for my lectures in that place, and he only raised the columns of the building. This man was afflicted with exactly what I described. He would be with his family, his conversation sweet, joking, and cheerful, and he was as good as it gets. Suddenly, you would see him turn into a madman, breaking everything around him, completely out of control. He was treated at Ibn Nafis Hospital, which is outside Damascus, near it. Then he went to the American University in Beirut to be treated there with electric shocks, but it did not help. After my experience in Damascus, indeed in Syria, based on my conviction from reading a book called *The Healing of Fasting* by an Austrian, who wrote it in a foreign language and then a Maronite priest translated it into Arabic. When I read this book, I was convinced by the experiments he recounted. I myself did not complain of anything very troubling, but it was not free from being an illness. I complained of an abnormal condition here in my chest and then in my stomach. I had a doctor, as they say today, a family doctor, in the village of Douma, outside Damascus, about fifteen kilometers away. So I would visit him. I had a motorcycle at the time, before I used a car or a car became available to me. I would ride and cover the distance back and forth. He would treat me and give me, as you know, a prescription, and I would follow it for a week. He would tell me to come back. He would say to me, "You have three centers here that have some illness." When I used the treatment and went back to him, he would say, "Ah, one center is healed, two remain." He would renew the prescription a second time. Then, as you know, I was among the most impatient patients, and I was one of them at the time, especially since he was far from the town. I would leave the treatment, and after a year or two, the same complaint would return. When I read the book, I was completely convinced that this treatment cures many diseases that have baffled doctors. He mentions many, many cases. I fasted, and praise be to Allah, as He the Exalted said: I am done; I am going to fast for forty days, and nothing will enter my body at all, according to the description in the book, except pure water. And yet I was active. It was my habit every month to travel from Damascus, of course by cars and large buses, to Aleppo and to Latakia, and between them Idlib, in the path of da'wah, praise be to Allah. So I did not change my habit. Perhaps on the twenty-second or twenty-third day, I traveled by bus from Damascus to Homs. There is a station where it stops to drop off and pick up new passengers until it reaches Aleppo. I got off some passengers, and he said, "In half an hour, we will move on, we will travel, we will continue the road. No one should be delayed in this half hour." I got off the bus. Subhan Allah, for the first time I was tested after abstaining from all the delights of food and drink. Near the station were fried falafel and liver, and the like. I was surprised by the smell entering my nose; I almost exploded. Allahu Akbar. Whereas when I was at home, my life was very normal. I consoled myself with the intention of moving back and forth, just to satisfy myself with what? With the smells. I spent the half hour in a very strange way, struggling against my soul. We went on, and I delivered my lectures and classes for two or three days there in Aleppo. Then I headed toward Idlib. There are very cultured young men there who were studying at the Syrian University in Damascus. Some of them were studying medicine. They saw that I had changed, and I had not changed. Abu Yahya, every day I would lose half a kilogram of my weight. In twenty days, I lost about ten kilograms, or more. They saw that I had changed. May it be good, if Allah wills. I told them what I was doing regarding treatment by hunger, and this is the correct expression, not by fasting, because whenever I wanted to drink, I could drink. And I was determined and continuing to carry out the medical prescription in this book for forty days. They said, "Beware!" "Good?" They said, "Our doctors say that a person cannot endure without food and drink for more than thirty days." Yes.

The questioner : ...three months...

The Shaykh : No, according to the book, it is forty days. As for these young men, it is only thirty days for them. The important thing is, by Allah, I feel that my energy is very normal, and nothing has changed in me except this desire. And I am proceeding, if Allah wills. They warned me, and I did not care about them, because this is what the author of the book and the one who conducted experiments in the tens, if not hundreds, did. And I do not feel anything troubling, as they say, without a long story. I completed the journey of forty days. Nothing entered my body except a little food. The witness is not here, but the whole story is in the one who fasted for forty days. I returned to the family doctor in Douma. I rode the motorcycle.

Another questioner : Excuse me for the interruption. Did food enter your body or not?

The Shaykh : I say that nothing entered my body, no drink, no tea, no anything, except pure water. This...

Another questioner : Forty days!

The Shaykh : This is it. We are telling this story now to test this person, and I believe it will be successful, if Allah wills. I went to the family doctor; it has been forty days, meaning I have lost twenty kilograms. My body has changed. May Allah do you good? I told him, "Please, examine me." At first, he said, "Every place is fine; there is nothing wrong with the heart at all!" Regarding the indigestion I had been complaining about, he told me, "It is much better, but there are still some remnants." And indeed, despite this, I felt that there were still things there. The point I want to remind the brothers of, as a tangible treatment, is that its benefit is that for forty days, no food or drink entered my body except drops of water. Because we all know by experience that the more a person eats, the more they drink, and vice versa; if one does not eat, there is no need to drink water. Therefore, my water intake was very small. Yet, when I excreted, there were still wastes coming out. The point is that the author of the book explains the topic and attributes it to the fact that many of the diseases people suffer from are caused by the accumulation of food waste on the walls of the intestines and stomach, and so on. So when he starves himself and restricts himself to water, the walls become what? They get cleaned. So the intestines return to being very normal. When he returns to food, the food distributes the beneficial nutrients, and the blood is formed from it and takes its natural course, and so on. So I really saw that the wastes decreased as time went on. I wondered, "Where are these wastes coming from, brothers, when I am not eating or drinking?" The answer is in the book: the deposits that had settled over the days are dissolving and coming out. This is the reason this starvation is a successful and beneficial treatment. In any case, after two months, I think, or three, I no longer felt any indigestion at all. The point is, whenever someone complained to me about an issue, I would tell him, "My brother, try fasting." The owner of the house where we used to give the lesson had seizures, as I mentioned to you. He was sitting with his family, and this fit would come, and he would break everything. He was treated at Ibn Nafis Hospital and the American University Hospital, with no benefit. I told him, "O Abu Sulayman—his name is Abu Sulayman—you have tried everything. What prevents you from trying fasting? Starve yourself." He said to me, "By Allah, I have no objection." He fasted for six days but could not hold out. The Al-Albani fast is to complete forty days. But what encouraged him to break the fast was that he found benefit in it. He found benefit in it. He fasted for six days, then he repeated it. Each time he was encouraged and fasted longer and longer. And this is the face of the guest, the man. Look at the last fast he did; I think it reached about thirty-one or thirty-two days, and he did not see this epilepsy at all.

Another questioner : Our Shaykh, this is your student!

The Shaykh : The point is not here. The point is that this is very good, and it is suitable for the condition of the man you referred to. This is my joke. Our friend, one day, a friend of his visited him and complained about his mother’s illness, as she had become bedridden, and there was no one to treat her except her two daughters, who were nurses in the hospital. What were they calling it? The university one that became the National Hospital, yes. The two nurses were tired of treating whom? Their mother. And the mother was bedridden. It had been weeks, months, and by Allah, I no longer remember the details. What did our friend tell him? "Fast her. Fast her." The friend, who is the old woman’s son, said, "What do you mean, fast her? She will die from lack of food and drink and rest, and so on." He said to him, "What is wrong with you? Do you believe that she will die and you will be rid of her? You say she will die! Bring her a table and hang a pitcher and a glass." He said, "She will scream and cry." "Let her scream and cry. What does it matter to you? She will not die. We have tried it, and there is a book and a man, and so on." By Allah, they really put the table and a pitcher of water and a glass of water, and the old woman was screaming, "I am hungry, bring me food." No one responded to her. For six or seven days, she began to treat herself and went to relieve herself, and it was the best it could be, and she was cured. And experiences of this kind, the last of which isThe Shaykh : Do you hear his coughing?