Recordings › Jinn Possessions: Myth and Reality in Islam by Sh. Akram Nadwi & Mufti Abu Layth · 20 Sep 2017 › Segment 19 of 25
If someone got better after ruqya or an exorcism, does that prove it worked?
muftis ruqyah ruqyaa fitnah fitna fitan strifeWhy exorcisms seem to work: placebo, nocebo and Ted Kaptchuk's sham acupuncture
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This segment1:31:20 to 1:35:16 · 3 min 56 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenNot necessarily: the placebo and nocebo effects produce real relief and real symptoms, as Kaptchuk's trial with cornstarch pills and retractable needles showed. Some patients would also have recovered anyway and are counted as cures.
In more detail
To the claim that people get better after ruqya, Mufti Abu Layth answers with the placebo effect and its opposite, the nocebo effect, which causes real harm from the belief that something harmful is happening, both tested in trials. He describes a study by Ted Kaptchuk, a medical professor at Harvard, on about two hundred and seventy people with wrist, elbow and shoulder pain: half received a pill, actually cornstarch, with a warning about side effects, and half received acupuncture; about a third of the pill group reported the warned side effects, some severely, from sluggishness to excruciating pain, nausea and dizziness, while many more of the acupuncture group reported great relief. Both were shams, since the needles were retractable and never entered the skin, yet the pain, insomnia and vomiting were real, which is psychosomatic illness and recovery. So when people go through exorcisms or ruqya and improve, it can work in this sense, or, as the guest said, they would have got better anyway; like a scam run on enough people, some will always recover and be counted as cures.
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says that apparent cures through ruqya or exorcism can be explained by the placebo and nocebo effects, which Ted Kaptchuk's sham acupuncture trial showed produce real symptoms and real relief, or by people who would have recovered anyway.
“it's called psychosomatic behavior when you actually can get ill it's called the nocebo effect and the placebo effect where you can actually get better”
Category: teaching
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine1:31:20 to 1:35:16 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
of the Charles bonnet syndrome and when they check that part of the brain where a normal person if you see teeth do you know if you see teeth there's a part of the brain that actually activates four teeth around there's a neuro within the fusiform gyrus the neural activity now that part is getting activated now they can suppress this with drugs you can give drugs and that will just suppress activity how would you explain this in the past if somebody came to you and said oh I see teeth and I see people I see buildings you would have no kind of
explanations and an hour and let alone we've seen we also heard some examples of where people sometimes do get better you know people say oh but so-and-so did this a rookie and they got better I want to highlight two people the placebo effect okay this - actually this it's actually interesting because there's a study I'll bring your attention to as well it's by Ted Kaptchuk who is an associate professor at Harvard University a medical professor I bring you want to bring your attention to some of his studies but before that I just want to highlight there's a placebo
effect where you think something is happening and it's actually happening it like it creates it and this the opposite called the nocebo effect which causes harm well you actually can cause harm and this actually happens and has been tested and trial I mean through trials it's not just something that people have made up but what was interesting about this study just to highlight the placebo effect is Ted Kaptchuk what he had done was with about 200 seventy subjects they wanted to test them who were suffering from certain pains to do with the wrists or they had like the carpal syndrome or the elbows
or shoulders were hurting he got half of them and he was administered them a pill which was actually just nothing it's just like just made out of cornstarch or whatever in just this useless pill but told them that okay this may have these kind of side-effects and this is what it was and the other half were administered acupuncture and they were told that why don't you take some acupuncture and stuff like these have you got stress you know it's hurting he rights hurting here and you know with the needles acupuncture you're all aware of it so what happened is to their amazement almost a third of the people started to
complain and some very severely of the side effects that they warned including you know from sluggish behavior to not being able to get out of bed to excruciating pain to being like all feeling dizzy I can't do the the exact symptoms which they warned off a third the the half that he had given acupuncture much more of them a great quantity of them actually said that they felt a lot better and they felt relief now so from this study you could say well that's brilliant acupuncture works better than medicine well actually it
doesn't because both were a sham not only were the pills he was giving fake but the needles that he was using were actually retractable and didn't even go in the skin they were actually just giving the illusion that they were using needles they weren't actually there were sham needles the interesting thing this showed was that people the pain that people were feeling insomnia Congo to sleep nausea throwing up was real it was actually happening this wasn't like oh they weren't throwing up the person was actually really throwing up they were really feeling pain it's called
psychosomatic behavior when you actually can get ill it's called the nocebo effect and the placebo effect where you can actually get better so when people are going through gin exorcisms or rupiah or things like this things can actually work it's not that they but they could work anyway it's like you heard chefs say that you know but some people would get better anyway it's not an it's a bit like that scam you know if I go through it with so many people by the end of it I'm gonna have a hard coke cult that definitely always get better like imagine you did that same experiment but with exorcism or with rupiah same thing
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Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2017-09-20-S19, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/7z8yu8kr83y/s/19/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2017, September 20). If someone got better after ruqya or an exorcism, does that prove it worked? [Video, segment 2017-09-20-S19, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/7z8yu8kr83y/s/19/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2017. "If someone got better after ruqya or an exorcism, does that prove it worked?" Video, segment 2017-09-20-S19, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded September 20, 2017. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/7z8yu8kr83y/s/19/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2017-09-20-S19, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{If someone got better after ruqya or an exorcism, does that prove it worked?}}, year = {2017}, month = {9}, date = {2017-09-20}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/7z8yu8kr83y/s/19/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/7z8yu8kr83y/s/19/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2017-09-20-S19, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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