Magic, jinn and Satan hadiths: 6 reports that critics cite

The report comes from Aisha. She said that a spell was cast on the Prophet, and that for a time he seemed to himself to have done things that he had not done. In the narration a man of the Banu Zurayq, Labid ibn al-Asam, had put hair from a comb into a date-palm spathe and dropped it into a well. The Prophet went to the well, the object was found, and the well was filled in. He said he disliked stirring up evil among the people.^[1]

Both al-Bukhari and Muslim record it, so by the usual method of grading it is sahih, meaning sound in its chain. Critics are right on this point, and an answer that called the report weak would be mistaken. Those who accept it do so on the strength of its transmission. The question is what it implies.

Aisha’s wording is that he imagined he was doing something while he was not doing it. Commentators on the two Sahihs, among them al-Nawawi and Ibn Hajar, read this as an effect on his body and on his private affairs. Nothing in the report says that his recitation changed, that he forgot or altered a verse, or that he taught anything under the influence of the spell. The Quran says God will protect him from the people (5:67), and the commentators took that promise to cover the delivery of the message.^[2]

The Quran also records that prophets suffered in the body. Job says that Satan has touched him with distress and torment (38:41), and nobody concludes from this that Job’s message was unreliable.^[3] A minority of scholars still reject the report. Al-Jassas among the classical authorities, and Muhammad Abduh in the modern period, argued that a single-narrator report cannot be allowed to cast doubt on the Prophet’s protection. The majority reply that the chain is too strong to set aside and that the limits above answer the worry.^[4]

The Quran itself speaks of magic. It says that people learned from the two angels Harut and Marut what separates a man from his wife, and adds that they harm no one except by God’s permission (2:102). It tells of Moses seeing the ropes of the sorcerers appear to move (20:66). The verb there is from the same root as Aisha’s phrase for what the Prophet imagined. If a prophet could be deceived in his sight by magic, a prophet could be affected in his feeling.^[5]

The strongest objection comes from the other side. The Quran says that the disbelievers called him “a man bewitched” (17:47, 25:8) and rejects the charge. A critic asks how the hadith can then say that he was bewitched. The scholars who accept the report answer that the disbelievers meant that his message was the product of a mind under a spell, while the report describes a temporary affliction that left the message untouched. The overlap in wording is the best reason the minority view exists, and it deserves to be stated as a real difficulty.^[6]

Critics list five. Yawning is from Satan, so one should suppress it as far as possible. A man who slept until morning had Satan urinate in his ears. Satan ties three knots at the back of the head of a sleeper, and they are undone by remembrance of God, ablution and prayer. Satan spends the night in the nose, so one should clean it after waking. Satan turns his back and passes wind when the call to prayer is made. All five are in al-Bukhari.^[7]

Their chains are sound, so the answer concerns meaning. Arabic idiom treats heavy sleep as a seal on the ears and laziness as a knot, and many commentators took the sayings in that sense. Ibn Hajar records both the literal and the figurative readings and does not force a choice between them.^[8] Whichever is taken, each saying is attached to a plain act: close the mouth, rise and pray, wash the nose, answer the call. None prescribes a charm, an incantation or a fee. A reader who rejects belief in the unseen will reject these sayings, and that disagreement is over worldview, which grading cannot settle.

Abu Hurayra reports that he carried water for the Prophet, who asked him for stones to clean himself and told him to bring neither bone nor dung. Another narration gives the reason: bones are provisions for the jinn, and dung is fodder for their animals.^[9] The ruling that follows is about hygiene and respect. The report makes no claim that anyone could test, and scholars have long said that the unseen is not measured by the rules of ordinary eating.

A second report in Muslim says that each person has a companion (qarin) from the jinn. When asked whether the same was true of him, the Prophet said yes, but that God had helped him against it so that it submitted, or so that he was safe, since scholars record both readings of the verb. The Quran speaks of such a companion in 50:23 and 43:36.^[10] Critics also point to 46:29-32, where a group of jinn hear the Quran and tell their people. This is a claim about the unseen, offered as a report. The authority of the Quran rests on the case for revelation as a whole.^[11]

Critics say that Aisha called him possessed, or that her remark about a devil shows demonic control. The report usually cited is in Muslim. Aisha, jealous, followed the Prophet at night and returned ahead of him. He asked whether her devil had come to her. She asked whether she had one, and he said that everyone does, himself included, and repeated the teaching about the companion from the jinn.^[12] The words are his, in answer to her, and they restate the hadith in the previous entry. If a critic cites another narration in which Aisha uses such a word, it has to be read in its own chain and context.

Aisha’s reports are also a main source for how revelation came. They record heaviness, sweat on a cold day, and his fear and trembling after the first encounter, when Khadija took him to her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal.^[13] The sources keep these details in plain view. The Quran records the charge that he was mad or had a jinn in him and denies it (81:22, 68:2, 7:184), so the accusation is as old as the message. The early community heard it, weighed the man, and followed him.^[14]