Sorcery and Magic

Table of Contents

1. The Subject of This Book
2. Preface
3. Why This Book? The Gap in the Literature
4. Sihr, Magic, Sorcery, and Witchcraft
5. A Precise Definition of ‘The Unseen’
6. Did Sorcery Ever Exist, and Did It Stop?
7. Sihr Against Prophet Muhammad (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَسَلَّمَ)
8. Reading This Book with Care
9. What You Need Before Reading
10. Keeping Different Kinds of Knowledge Separate
11. How Beliefs Reinforce Themselves
12. Literacy, Education, Knowledge, and Conduct
13. The Tree of Transmission
14. The Language of Measure
15. The Beginning and the Limits of Physics
16. Surfaces, Boundaries, and Physical Analogies
17. Direction, Stability, and the Path Through Time
18. What We Can and Cannot Control
19. What Human Superiority Means
20. How Biology, Experience, and Choice Shape a Person
21. Sorcery Practices and Their Dangers
22. A Comparative Review of Sorcery Literature
23. Talismans, Protection, and Reliance upon Allah (اللَّهُ، سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى)
24. Physical Analogies and Sympathetic Magic
25. When Rejected Ideas Later Enter Science
26. Hadith, The Living Record of the Prophet’s (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَسَلَّمَ) Life
27. How Religious Priorities Can Shift
28. When Circumstances Affect a Ruling
29. Sectarian Difference Without Purity Scores
30. Practices That Look Similar but Are Not the Same
31. The Fundamental Sciences
32. Chaos, Nonlinear Systems, and Questions About Sorcery’s Reach
33. Diseases, Illnesses, and Competing Explanations
34. Life-Threatening and Infectious Diseases
35. Jinn Possession in Islamic Belief and Psychology
36. Reports of Possession Across Cultures and Clinical Practice
37. Iblis, Temptation, and Human Conflict
38. Waswas, Unwanted Thoughts, and Religious Anxiety
39. Protection Through the Quran and Prophetic Guidance
40. Choosing a Scholar, Preacher, Raqi, or Healer
41. Expanded Glossary of Key Terms
42. The Forgotten Foundation, Muslim Scientists and the Ethics of Credit
43. References