How to Perform Self-Ruqyah at Home – Complete Islamic Guide
If you are reading this, something is wrong and you are looking for a way to put it right yourself.
I know that position because I was in it for years. I will come to that at the end.
This guide gives you self-ruqyah in full, as it should be performed. It also tells you plainly what that practice is for and what it is not for, because that is the part almost nobody explains, and it is the reason so many people recite for years and see nothing change.
Protection is not treatment
There is a narration people quote often. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas narrated that the Prophet ﷺ said whoever eats seven ajwa dates in the morning will not be harmed that day by poison or sihr. It is recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.
The narration is sound. There is no doubt in it at all. But look carefully at what it describes.
It is not a cure. It is a firewall.
It is a prescription that keeps something from getting in. If a person who already has sihr eats seven dates, will it lift? No. The firewall does not remove what is already inside. Once the virus is in, the firewall is not the answer. The antidote is something else.
This is the single most misunderstood thing in the whole subject, and most of the difficulty people run into comes from it. The protective practice is real, it is Sunnah, and every Muslim should have it. It is simply not a treatment.
People take a protective prescription and expect it to do the work of a treatment, then conclude that nothing works for them. What they were holding was never a treatment in the first place.
Why self-ruqyah cannot lift a real affliction
Four reasons, and none of them is about how sincere you are.
You are trying to lift it with the faculty that has been weakened
If you are afflicted, your spiritual state is already compromised. That is what affliction does. So you are attempting to pull something out of yourself using the very thing it has damaged.
It needs an external person to direct it away from you.
That is not opinion. When the Prophet ﷺ was ill, Jibreel recited over him, as recorded in Sahih Muslim. A'ishah, may Allah be pleased with her, narrated that when his pain intensified she would recite over him and wipe him with his own hand, hoping for its blessing, and that is in Sahih Muslim. He recited over himself, and he was also recited over by others.
Your own state is what sets the ceiling
Sāhirs know that Muslims recite these verses. They also know the level of the person they are working against, and how far that person is able to go.
So self-recitation reaches a certain height and stops. That height sits below the threshold that has been set against you.
The words of the Qur'an are not weak. Nothing about this is a comment on the Qur'an. It is that your own state has been compromised, and pulling yourself out of that without external guidance is the constraint.
The moment you counter, you get countered
This is the part almost nobody mentions.
The moment you begin ruqyah on an affliction, you are countering what has been put in place. You will get a response. If your own spiritual level is not strong, you can be overpowered by it.
That is a real risk, and it is why grounding matters before method.
It can harm you
Ask why Raqis themselves sometimes fall ill while treating people. It is the sheer weight of what they are directing away from someone else.
I know a scholar who decided to learn ruqyah on his own, without training under a Raqi, and began treating people. Six months in, things started coming back on his household. It reached the point where his son was pushed down the staircase. By the mercy of Allah he was not badly hurt, but it could have been far worse. That was where the man drew his line, and he stopped.
He was a scholar. He was sincere. He simply had no grounding under him.
This is happening now. People recite over anyone who asks, with no foundation, and then their own difficulties begin.
There is also a practice of reciting in order to burn jinn. Jinn are creations of Allah. Setting aside whether that is achievable at all, consider what follows from it, and who else may respond. That is not something to attempt from a video.
If you have been doing this for years
Let me say this plainly rather than dress it up.
You were not foolish for trying. Trying was the right instinct. You went looking for an answer and you did the work.
The knowledge you were given was not correct, and that is why nothing changed.
Look at what is in front of you. If self-ruqyah were lifting these afflictions, the number of people doing it would be falling every year. It is growing. It grows because people arrive, recite for two or three years, find no relief, and stay.
That is not a judgement on anyone's sincerity. It is the plainest evidence available, and it comes from your own experience rather than from me.
One thing worth changing while you wait
There is a pattern we see often. A person has been afflicted for years, has tried everything, and cannot read the Qur'an in Arabic.
I am not saying that is why they were afflicted. The Prophet ﷺ was afflicted, and he was the Qur'an itself. Affliction is not a punishment and it is not a verdict on anybody's worth.
But affliction is a moment to pull your socks up. If Allah has put something in front of you, there are things in your life that are worth putting right, and being able to read His Book is near the top of that list.
It is one of the things we encourage in the people under our care, and one of the things we help them work towards while they are being treated.
What self-ruqyah is genuinely for
Daily protection. Nothing less, and nothing more.
It is Sunnah. The Prophet ﷺ practised it and taught it, and every Muslim should have it in their day whether or not anything is wrong. It builds the firewall.
Alongside proper treatment it also has a place. People under our care are given a small amount to do themselves, because it supports the work. The bulk of the treatment is configured and carried by us. We prepare the plan and we deliver it. Their part is what holds the ground in between.
So learn it, keep it, and understand what you are keeping it for.
Before you begin
Purify your intention
Make the intention in your heart that you are seeking Allah's protection, by His permission alone.
Perform wudu
Being in a state of purity brings blessing and protection.
Choose a clean, quiet space
A quiet room, free of distraction.
The method, step by step
One honest note before the steps.
Each of these is established individually in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. The order below is how we teach it, not a sequence narrated as a single package. It matters that you know the difference, because taking a compiled routine and treating it as though it came whole from the Prophet ﷺ is exactly the habit that gets people into difficulty elsewhere.
Step 1: Begin with the name of Allah and seek refuge
Say Bismillah.
Then say A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajim, I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Shaytan.
Step 2: Recite Surah Al-Fatihah
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ الْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا الضَّالِّينَ
In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Very-Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of all the worlds. The All-Merciful, the Very-Merciful, the Master of the Day of Requital. You alone do we worship, and from You alone do we seek help. Take us on the straight path, the path of those on whom You have bestowed Your grace, not of those who have incurred Your wrath, nor of those who have gone astray.
Step 3: Recite Ayat al-Kursi
Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 255.
اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ لَا تَأْخُذُهُ سِنَةٌ وَلَا نَوْمٌ
Allah, there is no god but He, the Living, the All-Sustaining.
Step 4: Recite the last two verses of Surah Al-Baqarah
The Prophet ﷺ said that whoever recites the last two verses of Surah Al-Baqarah at night, they will suffice him. This is narrated by Abu Mas'ud al-Ansari in Sahih al-Bukhari.
Step 5: Recite Surah Al-Ikhlas, Surah Al-Falaq and Surah An-Nas
A'ishah, may Allah be pleased with her, narrated that when the Prophet ﷺ went to bed each night he would join his hands, blow into them, recite these three surahs, and wipe over whatever he could reach of his body, beginning with his head and face. This is recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari.
Blow into your hands after reciting and wipe over your body.
Step 6: Make du'a
اللَّهُمَّ رَبَّ النَّاسِ، أَذْهِبِ البَأْسَ، اشْفِ أَنْتَ الشَّافِي، لاَ شِفَاءَ إِلَّا شِفَاؤُكَ، شِفَاءً لاَ يُغَادِرُ سَقَمًا
O Allah, Lord of mankind, remove the harm and heal, for You are the Healer. There is no healing except Your healing, a healing which leaves no illness behind. This is recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.
Common mistakes
- Treating protection as though it were treatment. This is the one that costs people years.
- Relying on recitation without building faith and worship underneath it.
- Using rituals or charms that are not from the Qur'an and Sunnah.
- Reciting over other people with no grounding and no fundamentals.
- Performing it without regular Salah and remembrance.
- Judging whether it worked by whether you felt something.
When you need a Raqi
You do not need to reach a crisis before this is worth taking seriously, and you do not need to be certain what is affecting you. Working that out is not your job.
Signs can tell you something is wrong. They cannot tell you what it is, and they cannot tell you what to do about it. That is what an assessment is for, and it is the step most people skip.
If you have been reciting consistently and nothing has changed, that on its own is reason enough. It is not a sign that you did it badly. It is a sign that what you are dealing with needs something self-ruqyah was never built to do.
You can read more about how we work, or about what ruqyah in Islam is.
Why I can tell you this
I was afflicted with sihr.
I tried to treat myself. Not for a few weeks, for two to three years. I read as much Qur'an as I could. I took whatever I could find and applied it, and I was a qualified scholar at the time, so I brought that knowledge to it as well.
Nothing changed. The pain went on. I was back and forth to hospital, again and again, until I reached the point where I could not carry it any longer.
That is when I looked for help outside myself.
I would only see a Raqi who was a scholar of the deen. That mattered to me more than anything. He had to know the sciences of Qur'an and Hadith before I would give him access to me at all. By the mercy of Allah I found someone who did, and I was treated.
He told me I should learn this properly myself. At the time I had no interest in becoming a Raqi. I only wanted to be well.
My son was afflicted by jinn. He was nine years old.
So I learned. I qualified. And by the permission of Allah I treated my own son.
He is Shaykh Usamah. He is our Head Raqi and he leads the practice today. Everything in that sentence belongs to Allah alone.
I spent years doing exactly what you are doing. Not because I was careless, but because nobody told me the difference between protection and treatment.
Somebody should have.
How we can help
You do not need to be sure what is affecting you before you book. Most people who come to us are not sure, and working it out is what the assessment is for.
A one to one assessment is one hour, held online over Zoom, private and strictly one to one. We will ask what has been happening, what you have already tried, and what a doctor has looked at, and we will be honest with you about what we find and what we do not.
Wherever you are, the session comes to you. Everything is online, and we work across a wide span of hours, so most people find a time on the calendar that works for them.
Everyone who comes to us is then taken through the Ruqyah Wellness Plan. It is not an extra for difficult cases. It is the structured plan itself, and it is the reason the assessment is only the beginning.
I built it out of my own healing. Going through that journey taught me what was missing, and years of treating people since then taught me the rest. It is the closest thing to what I wish I had when I was ill.
It is a structured plan, built around your case rather than a general routine, because no two are the same. It comes with a weekly check-in and a recorded review, so nothing is left to guesswork and you are never on your own between sessions. In my practice, that structure and that closeness are what I have found makes the difference.
Shifa' is from Allah alone. Our part is to apply the Qur'an and the Sunnah with care and to tell you the truth about what you need.
Frequently asked questions
Can I perform ruqyah on someone else?
We generally discourage reciting over someone else unless you are comfortable doing so and understand the ethics and etiquette of ruqyah. When you perform ruqyah on someone else, whatever they are afflicted with, you are directing it towards yourself. Your own protection comes before theirs.
How often should I perform self-ruqyah?
As daily protection, keep it in your morning and evening routine. It is a habit rather than a course of treatment, so consistency matters more than intensity.
Can women perform ruqyah during menstruation?
Yes. They may recite adhkar and protective du'as, but not Qur'an as a form of tilawah.
Do I need to understand Arabic?
No. But understanding the meaning increases khushu' and benefit.
How do I know whether I need more than self-ruqyah?
If you have been reciting consistently over a long period and nothing has shifted, that is your answer. It is not a failure of effort. Signs alone cannot tell you what is affecting you, which is exactly what an assessment is for.
Related reading
This article discusses signs and symptoms. If you are experiencing physical or psychological symptoms that are affecting your daily life, please see a qualified doctor as well as seeking ruqyah.
