Magic and Witchcraft in Islam (Sihr): The Limits of Power
There is one verse in the Qur'an that says more about magic than any other, and its single most important phrase is 'except by God's permission.' That clause is the whole of Islam's teaching on sihr in miniature: magic may be real and forbidden, yet it is ultimately powerless without the leave of God — so the believer's shield is trust, not counter-magic. This is the theology, history, and symbolism, never a manual.
Reviewed & updated June 25, 2026 by the DreamTabeer Editorial Team
Quick answer
Yes — Islam affirms that sihr is real, while forbidding it in the strongest terms. The Qur'an speaks of magic that can 'cause separation between a man and his wife' (al-Baqarah 2:102) and of Pharaoh's magicians who 'bewitched the eyes of the people' (al-A'raf 7). But the same verse adds the decisive qualifier: sorcerers 'could not harm anyone thereby except by the permission of God.' So sihr is treated as genuine yet ultimately powerless without God's leave. The hadith even records that the Prophet himself was affected by magic worked with a knotted cord — proof, the tradition holds, that the danger is real, met not with counter-magic but with refuge in God.
The one phrase that changes everything
The central text on sihr is verse 102 of Surah al-Baqarah, and it repays slow reading because it is doing several difficult things at once. It clears the prophet-king Solomon of the magic that later legend pinned on him — 'Solomon did not disbelieve, but the devils disbelieved.' It tells of two angels at Babylon, Harut and Marut, who would teach what they knew only after a warning, declaring 'we are only a trial (fitna), so do not disbelieve.' And it says that people learned from them how to cause separation between a husband and wife — 'but they could not harm anyone thereby except by the permission of God.'
That final clause, illa bi-idhni-llah, is the theological hinge of the entire subject in Islam. It concedes that sihr is real and that it is gravely forbidden, and in the same breath it strips it of ultimate power: nothing happens, not even a sorcerer's harm, outside the will of God. The consequence for the believer is precise and calming. If no magic can touch you except by God's leave, then the answer to the fear of magic is never to seek a stronger spell — it is to turn to the One in whose permission all power resides. Hold that, because everything else on this page flows from it.
Moses and the magicians: when the snakes were swallowed
The Qur'an's most dramatic treatment of magic is the contest between Moses and the sorcerers of Pharaoh, told across Surah al-A'raf, Surah Ta-Ha, and Surah ash-Shu'ara. Pharaoh gathers his most skilled magicians, and they cast down their staffs and ropes, which — in the Qur'an's careful wording — 'were made to appear to him, through their magic, as though they were moving,' bewitching the eyes of the watching crowd. Then Moses casts his staff, and it swallows the illusion whole.
The detail that matters is what the magicians do next. They, of all people, recognize instantly that what Moses has shown is not a finer illusion but a true sign from God, of a different order entirely from their own craft — and they fall down in prostration, declaring belief in 'the Lord of Moses and Aaron,' even as Pharaoh rages and threatens to crucify them for it. The scene encodes the Qur'an's whole distinction: sihr deceives the senses, it 'bewitches the eyes,' but it does not create reality, and the people best placed to tell the difference are the magicians themselves. Their conversion is the verse's verdict on their art.
Sihr among the gravest sins
Islam's condemnation of practising magic is unambiguous. A well-known hadith in the collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim lists the 'seven destructive sins' that ruin a person, and sihr stands second on the list, immediately after shirk, the association of partners with God. To engage in sorcery is placed in the company of murder and the devouring of an orphan's wealth — not a misdemeanour but a catastrophe for the soul.
The jurists drew an important line through the category. Classical scholars such as al-Qurtubi, in his great commentary on the Qur'an, distinguished sihr that operates through seeking the help of devils and jinn — which entangles the practitioner in disbelief, because it trades in devotion owed only to God — from mere trickery and sleight of hand, sha'wadha, which is deception but not idolatry. Writers like Ibn Taymiyya pressed the point that the worst sihr is spiritually corrosive precisely because it requires the sorcerer to debase himself before powers other than God. The sin, in the end, is not only the harm done to a victim; it is the betrayal of tawhid, the oneness of God, at the heart of the act.
The Prophet and the knotted cord
One of the most striking episodes in the hadith literature concerns the Prophet Muhammad himself. The collection of al-Bukhari, in its Book of Medicine, records that he was affected by sihr worked by a man named Labid ibn al-A'sam, who is said to have tied knots in a cord with strands of the Prophet's hair and hidden it in a well, so that the Prophet would feel he had done things he had not. He was then shown the cause, the cord was retrieved, and the two short protective suras of the Qur'an — al-Falaq and an-Nas, together called the Mu'awwidhatayn, 'the two of seeking refuge' — were recited; the tradition holds that as each verse was read, a knot of the cord came loose.
Two lessons sit inside this account, and they reinforce the verse we began with. First, it affirms that sihr is genuinely real — real enough to touch even the Messenger, so no believer should imagine themselves above the reality of envy and harm. Second, and decisively, the response is recitation and refuge in God, never a counter-spell. It is no accident that the cure is the very suras that name the danger: al-Falaq seeks refuge 'from the evil of the blowers on knots' — a direct Qur'anic reference to exactly this kind of knot-magic — and 'from the evil of an envier when he envies.' The remedy for magic, in the founding example of the faith, is more Qur'an, not more magic.
The lawful cure and the forbidden one
From this flows one of the most practically important distinctions in the subject, the line between the permitted and the forbidden cure. The lawful recourse is ruqya shar'iyya — healing through the recitation of the Qur'an and authentic supplications, seeking refuge and cure from God. The Prophet permitted ruqya explicitly, the tradition records, 'as long as it does not involve shirk.' It is, in essence, prayer applied to affliction.
The forbidden recourse is to fight magic with magic — to visit a sorcerer or fortune-teller to undo a spell, the practice called nushra. Asked about it, the Prophet is reported to have said it is 'from the work of Shaytan.' This is the consistent thread: a Muslim troubled by sihr is directed upward, to God, and never sideways, to another practitioner of the forbidden art. Even the wearing of amulets is contested ground — many scholars condemn the tamimah outright as a compromise of pure reliance on God — precisely because the entire instinct of the tradition is to refuse the logic of counter-magic. The fear that drives people to a sorcerer's door is exactly the fear the faith asks them to surrender.
Sihr, the evil eye, and folklore
Close to sihr in everyday Muslim belief sits al-'ayn, the evil eye — the harm carried by an envious glance, which a sound hadith affirms is 'real.' The Qur'an's own remedy, again, is refuge and gratitude: al-Falaq ends by seeking protection from the envier, and the recommended human response to admiration is to bless rather than covet, to say masha'Allah. The deeper exploration of that belief belongs to our companion piece on the evil eye across cultures, but it shares this page's logic exactly — envy can wound, and the shield is God, not a charm.
Around all of this grew a thick popular culture that orthodox teaching has always eyed warily. Sihr is woven through folklore with the jinn, whose own story we tell separately; the sorcerer is a stock villain of the 'Thousand and One Nights,' from the Maghrebi magician who covets Aladdin's lamp onward; and across the Muslim world the amulet-seller and the folk-practitioner, the 'amil, do steady business undoing curses and casting protections. It is worth being honest that popular practice and scholarly Islam diverge here: what the village seeks from a charm-seller, the tradition's teachers consistently redirect toward prayer, recitation, and reliance on God.
Sihr in dreams
Islam's cautious dream science gives sorcery a clear symbolic place. The tradition sorts dreams into the true vision (ru'ya), honoured as a portion of prophecy; the dream that is merely the self; and the bad dream (hulm) attributed to Shaytan to grieve the sleeper. The classical interpretive method associated with Ibn Sirin's 'Ta'bir al-Ru'ya' tends to read magic in a dream by its direction: to see oneself practising sihr often signals a temptation toward deception or unlawful shortcuts, the reaching for forbidden means; to dream of being bewitched or cursed often points to a concealed enemy or the pressure of an envy one senses but cannot name.
Read this way, a dream of sihr is rarely about literal spells and almost always about the moral weather of a waking life — the shortcut you are tempted to take, the hostility you feel circling, the trust you are struggling to keep. And the tradition's counsel for the frightening version is the same calming instruction it gives for every night-fear: seek refuge in God, do not dwell on it, do not let it rule you. The question the dream leaves is the one the opening verse already asked — when you feared the magic, did you reach for a stronger charm, or did you remember in whose permission all power rests?
How to read it
If magic appears in your own dreaming and you want to read it through this tradition, begin with the theme the Qur'an makes central: where you place your trust. Were you the one working sihr — deceiving, manipulating, taking the forbidden shortcut? Then the dream may be staging a real temptation toward unlawful means, and the question is what you are tempted to seize rather than to seek honestly and entrust to God. Were you the one bewitched, cursed, or fascinated? Then ask whether there is a genuine envy or hostility you have registered in waking life — and then notice your impulse, because that impulse is the whole test.
For the tradition's sharpest question is not about the magic at all; it is about your reflex when you fear it. Sihr cannot harm anyone except by God's permission. So when the dream frightened you, where did your mind run for safety — toward some stronger countermeasure of your own, or toward the One in whose hand the permission lies? In Islam, that reflex is the entire difference between fear and faith.
A careful note
Everything above is presented as Islamic teaching, history, and folklore — never as instruction. Nothing on this page is, or could be, a method to perform sihr, to harm, bind, or curse anyone, or to summon any power; no formula, ingredient, or rite is described. That boundary is emphatically Islam's own: the tradition ranks the practice of sorcery among the gravest of sins and forbids even fighting magic with magic, directing the believer instead to lawful prayer and refuge in God alone.
We write this with respect for the faith and its overwhelmingly large community of believers, for whom this is a matter not of entertainment but of serious religion. A spell in a dream is best read as a symbol of temptation, envy, and trust, not as a real power to fear or to seek. If such dreams are frequent and distressing, the tradition's own counsel — turn to God, do not dwell, do not go to the sorcerer's door — pairs naturally with ordinary good sense: rest, the support of trusted people, and, where distress runs deep, the help of a professional.
Frequently asked questions
Does Islam believe magic (sihr) is real?
Yes — Islam affirms that sihr is real, while forbidding it in the strongest terms. The Qur'an speaks of magic that can 'cause separation between a man and his wife' (al-Baqarah 2:102) and of Pharaoh's magicians who 'bewitched the eyes of the people' (al-A'raf 7). But the same verse adds the decisive qualifier: sorcerers 'could not harm anyone thereby except by the permission of God.' So sihr is treated as genuine yet ultimately powerless without God's leave. The hadith even records that the Prophet himself was affected by magic worked with a knotted cord — proof, the tradition holds, that the danger is real, met not with counter-magic but with refuge in God.
What does the Qur'an say about Harut and Marut?
In Surah al-Baqarah (2:102), Harut and Marut are two angels at Babylon associated with the teaching of magic. The verse stresses that they taught no one without first warning, 'we are only a trial (fitna), so do not disbelieve' — framing the knowledge as a test rather than a gift. It also clears Solomon of the sorcery later legend attributed to him ('Solomon did not disbelieve'), and concludes that what people learned could harm no one 'except by the permission of God.' The passage is the Qur'an's central statement on magic: it is real, it is forbidden, it is a trial, and it has no power independent of God's will.
How serious a sin is practising magic in Islam?
Among the gravest. A hadith in al-Bukhari and Muslim lists the 'seven destructive sins,' and sihr stands second, immediately after shirk (associating partners with God) and alongside murder. Classical jurists such as al-Qurtubi distinguished sihr that works by seeking the help of devils and jinn — which entangles the practitioner in disbelief, since it offers devotion owed only to God — from mere sleight of hand (sha'wadha), which is deception but not idolatry. The deepest objection, pressed by scholars like Ibn Taymiyya, is that real sorcery requires debasing oneself before powers other than God, betraying tawhid, the oneness of God, at the very heart of the act.
How does Islam say a person should respond to sihr or the evil eye?
By turning to God, never by counter-magic. The lawful recourse is ruqya shar'iyya — healing through reciting the Qur'an and authentic supplications, which the Prophet permitted 'as long as it does not involve shirk.' The forbidden recourse is to undo magic with magic by visiting a sorcerer (the practice called nushra), which the Prophet called 'from the work of Shaytan.' The model is the Prophet's own cure: the two protective suras, al-Falaq and an-Nas, recited for refuge. For the evil eye (al-'ayn), affirmed as real in hadith, the counsel is likewise to seek refuge and to bless rather than envy — saying masha'Allah — rather than to reach for any charm.
What does it mean to dream about magic or being bewitched in Islam?
Islamic dream tradition distinguishes the true vision (ru'ya), the dream that is merely the self, and the bad dream (hulm) attributed to Shaytan. The classical method associated with Ibn Sirin's 'Ta'bir al-Ru'ya' reads magic by its direction: to see yourself practising sihr often signals a temptation toward deception or unlawful shortcuts, while to dream of being bewitched or cursed often points to a concealed enemy or a sensed envy. In practice such dreams usually concern the moral weather of waking life rather than literal spells. The tradition's counsel for the frightening kind is to under-react — seek refuge in God, do not dwell, and do not go looking for a sorcerer's cure.
Go deeper
Explore the esoteric across every tradition
Unlock the full occult & mythology library, curated to your own culture and heritage.