Koranic Healing in Yemen

The following are excerpts from an Al-Jazeera TV report about Yemenite clinics for Koranic healing

Reporter: Clinics for Koranic healing have become widespread in recent years. Although some religious and popular circles do not consider it witchcraft, the fact that healers do not limit themselves to the Koran, but use witchcraft, talismans, astrology, and claim to have special powers, has led many people to call it witchcraft.

'Aref Al-Shammari, Koranic healer: They are sorcerers. That is what they really are. Most of their psychological healing is wrong. They give people drugs and chemicals as sedatives. They do not cure the disease but only sedate it. The disease is frozen for a short while and then it starts up again.

Reporter:These are verses from the holy Koran and the rasping sounds of a child who was supposedly possessed by a jinn. This dialogue, between the healer and the supposed jinn, leads to a release of the child's body and soul from the evil spirits, accompanied by convulsions. This is what usually happens in the Koranic healing clinics.

Child: My head… When I went to sleep, I was having dreams…

Interviewer: And now?

Child: Now there is nothing.

Interviewer: Do you feel well?

Child: Yes.

Reporter:Witchcraft, sorcery, and astrology will continue to serve as a refuge for thousands of Yemenites who don't believe in modern medicine or who cannot find in it a solution to their mental or physical illnesses, or even to their social problems. They spend a lot of money searching for an illusion, but many of them pay the price with their lives or with what remains of their physical and mental health.