Recordings › There is NO evil eye in Islam (Detailed Overview) | Mufti Abu Layth · 15 Nov 2020 › Segment 6 of 9
Confirmation bias: reading the evil eye into the Quran
hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith tafseer exegesis tafasir tafaseer commentary hanafite hanafiyyah hanafi school muftis kufr kafir kaafir kufar kaafirun disbelief atharis atharism athariyyah 'ayn al-ayn nazar koran quraan al-quran ayah aya ayat ayaat aayah aayat salafis salafism wahhabi wahabi wahhabism
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This segment41:06 to 44:28 · 3 min 22 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenMufti Abu Layth says that people came to Islam already believing the evil eye was science and, through confirmation bias, found it in verses that do not mention it, such as the verse about eyes almost making the Prophet slip, even though many exegetes did not read it that way. He recommends the Urdu tafsir of Abdul Karim Athari, whom he describes as coming from a small, unusually reason-based circle within the Ahl-e-Hadith of India, and says Athari also reads the verse as the disbelievers staring as though to trip the Prophet, before calling him insane.
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says people approached the Quran with a confirmation bias, already believing in the evil eye, and so found it in verses that do not mention it.
“there is not one verse in the quran that mentions the evil eye but they approach this trying to find it”
Category: teaching
Kind: general teachingTranscript
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scientist who who kind of first posits this and then later research clearly can demonstrates that the eyes do not emit anything there are no rays or arrows or things that the eyes fire it doesn't work that way the eyes you know they are passive they take in the photons that reach the eyes and the light that reaches us so once you understand this you understand that people are coming from this backdrop they are then imposing what they're doing is finding this with a confirmation bias in psychology a confirmation bias is
when you already have a belief and you are now approaching something with that preconceived judgment and you're gonna find that thing in what you're looking for so they now approach islam now the quran never there is not one verse in the quran that mentions the evil eye but they approach this trying to find it because they believe oh this dir this is science this is the world everybody knows the evil eye exists so they end up finding certain stories
and they assume that's talking like they see this verse when you're catholic you know that they usually you know um that these people this police they almost try to slip you up with the ah that must be talk oh with the evil eye even though many mufasareen did not say that and i i showed you go with that but still they will you know oh yeah yeah that makes sense now you know this is the what the verse is talking about then you've got you see if we go to
i'm not sure oh this is the same one [Music] this is those of you that read urdu i would definitely recommend history um you see his tafsir in urdu is is so ahead of its time abdul karim abdul karim who was actually quite uh he was from a salafi background but incredibly enlightened i've never you know seldom there were a small group a bubble within the salafi circles the al-hadid circles of india a bubble within them that were
incredibly reason-based and i think the only reason they were salafi was because everybody the only alternative was to be hanafi and hanafi's obviously were not the voice of reason unfortunately in india right so he also takes that approach as well and i'm just trying to think yeah so he translates it as well that look um that he says is that these people the kuffar is
it's as though they want to trip you over the way they're looking at you they're staring at you and when they can't do that then they say because obviously it's too novel that he is insane you know in the whole image that the quran uh mentioned so i thought i'll just show that and the reason i'm showing that is for i don't know why why do i have this one here let me just see must be a reason all right now this is something else um let me people the other verse that
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Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2020-11-15-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/mnpgdvjs2nk/s/6/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2020, November 15). Confirmation bias: reading the evil eye into the Quran [Video, segment 2020-11-15-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/mnpgdvjs2nk/s/6/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2020. "Confirmation bias: reading the evil eye into the Quran." Video, segment 2020-11-15-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded November 15, 2020. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/mnpgdvjs2nk/s/6/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2020-11-15-S06, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Confirmation bias: reading the evil eye into the Quran}}, year = {2020}, month = {11}, date = {2020-11-15}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/mnpgdvjs2nk/s/6/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/mnpgdvjs2nk/s/6/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2020-11-15-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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