Why Forty Days

Forty is not a magical number. There is no hadith setting a forty-day quota for sihr treatment. The figure is a practical compromise: long enough that any pattern of relief or stasis becomes visible, short enough that a believer with a job and a family can actually carry it through. People who treat ruqyah as a one-evening exercise rarely see results. People who try to do six hours a day for a fortnight burn out and stop. Forty days at thirty to forty-five minutes a day, anchored in salah, is sustainable, and it gives Allah room to lift the affliction on a schedule that may not be yours.

The Prophet ﷺ was himself afflicted by sihr for a period before Allah revealed the Mu'awwidhatayn to lift it. Treatment in the Sunnah is patient. The plan below assumes that pattern.

The Daily Block — 30 to 45 Minutes

Every day for forty days, in one continuous sitting, you run this sequence. The Arabic comes through your tongue; the meaning travels through your heart.

Ta'awwudh + Bismillah. Renew intention: this recitation is for healing from Allah.
Surah Al-Fatihah — seven times.
Ayat al-Kursi (2:255) — three times.
The last two verses of Al-Baqarah (2:285–286) — once.
Surah Al-A'raf 7:117–122 (Musa and the magicians) — once.
Surah Yunus 10:81–82 ("Allah will void it") — once.
Surah Ta Ha 20:69 ("the magician never succeeds") — once.
Surah Al-Isra 17:82 ("a healing and a mercy") — once.
The three Mu'awwidhat (Al-Ikhlas, Al-Falaq, An-Nas) with the cupped-hands routine — three times each.
Jibril's du'a — "In the name of Allah I recite ruqyah over you, from every illness that troubles you, and from the evil of every soul or envious eye. May Allah cure you. In the name of Allah I recite ruqyah over you." (Sahih Muslim 2186), three times.
Closing praise — As-Saffat 37:180–182, then ṣalawāt on the Prophet ﷺ.

Then drink some water you have recited over, and pour the rest during ghusl. This is the structure transmitted from the Prophet's wider use of Quranic recitation with water — it is not a separate Sunnah, but a practical extension of one.

The on-page version of this script, with audio and translation, is at the full sihr reading script. Use that page during the session; come back here for the calendar.

Week One — Days 1 to 7: Setting the Floor

The first week is the hardest one. You will likely feel more, not less. Yawning during recitation, a tight chest, a sudden urge to stop and check your phone, even mild nausea — these are common, and almost none of them mean anything dramatic. They mean recitation is doing what recitation does: it pulls the inner attention out of its habitual drift and into the words of Allah, and the body registers the shift.

Goals for week one:

The five obligatory prayers are non-negotiable. If you have been missing any of them, restore them first. Ruqyah on top of missed prayer is upside-down priority.
Anchor the session right after Fajr or right after Maghrib. Pick one and keep it.
Begin the morning and evening adhkar from the morning adhkar page and the evening adhkar page. These are not optional; they are the daily shield the ruqyah sits on top of.
If at any point during the session you feel a strong reaction — heat, shaking, an urge to weep — keep reciting. Do not stop. Strong reactions are not the work being done; the recitation is the work being done.

Week Two — Days 8 to 14: The Plateau

By the second week most people enter a quiet phase. The dramatic feelings of week one taper off. Some interpret that as "nothing is happening" and quit. That interpretation is almost always wrong.

Sihr in the Sunnah is described less as a flaring fire and more as a knot. The Prophet ﷺ was struck through eleven knots tied into a comb buried in a well; each Mu'awwidhat verse released one knot (Sahih al-Bukhari 5763). The releasing was invisible from the outside. What you feel during week two is the work continuing, beneath the level of dramatic sensation.

Goals for week two:

Notice and record small wins. Sleep that came earlier. A morning that started lighter. An intrusive thought that arrived and passed without grabbing you. Write them down. You will need them in week three.
If the sirens of "this is not working" get louder, the right response is one more day, not one less. Quitting in week two is the single most common failure mode of this plan.
Add Surah Al-Baqarah's first ayahs (1–5) and the verses on the sahir's punishment (2:102) to your weekly reading even outside the daily block — open the Mushaf, read them with translation, sit with the meaning. This is dhikr that complements the focused session.

Week Three — Days 15 to 21: Where to Suspect Something Hidden

By the third week, two patterns emerge. The first is gradual lifting: symptoms recede, sleep deepens, prayer becomes possible again, the cloud thins. The second is the harder pattern — clear improvement in some areas, but a specific symptom that will not move. A persistent headache. An aversion that returns the moment you reach the same threshold. A particular room of the house that still feels wrong.

Classical scholars, especially Ibn al-Qayyim in Zad al-Ma'ad, describe two kinds of sihr by location: sihr ma'mul (worked into something external — a buried object, a written charm, a substance placed in food or drink) and sihr that operates without an external substrate. The first kind, in classical accounts, often does not fully lift while the external object remains undisturbed. The Prophet's own sihr was lifted only when the knotted comb in the well was retrieved.

What this means practically: in week three, if a specific symptom is refusing to move while everything else is improving, the right step is not to recite more aggressively. The right step is to recite over your home, room by room, with full surah Al-Baqarah if you can manage it (or the long protection verses sequence if you cannot). The Prophet ﷺ said:

"Do not turn your houses into graves. Indeed, shaytan flees from the house in which Surah Al-Baqarah is recited."
Sahih Muslim 780, narrated by Abu Hurayra (ra)

One full recitation of Al-Baqarah in the home every three days is a reasonable target during this week. Do it slowly, audibly, while the household is awake.

Week Four — Days 22 to 28: Consolidation

The fourth week is when the people who reach it stop feeling like patients and start feeling like people again. The session becomes less of an event and more of a routine. The verses begin to come from memory in the order you have used them. The body settles into the schedule.

Goals for week four:

Reduce the session length only if you have memorised the structure. The point is not speed; it is presence. Five focused minutes are worth more than thirty mechanical ones.
If you have not seen a doctor for the symptoms you originally attributed to sihr, see one now. Not because you doubt Allah's healing — but because the Sunnah is to use both means. If your headache lifts on ibuprofen, alhamdulillah; you have just removed one possible diagnosis from the list, and your ruqyah continues to do its work on what remains.
Begin to count your nights of Al-Ikhlas, Al-Falaq, An-Nas before sleep — three times each, with the cupped-hands routine of Bukhari 5017. This is the Prophet's lifelong shield and should outlast the plan.

Days 29 to 40: Tapering, Not Stopping

The last twelve days are the taper. You do not stop the session — you migrate it into a sustainable daily Sunnah that you can keep for the rest of your life. By day forty, the goal is that you have:

The morning and evening adhkar firmly anchored to wake-up and after Asr/Maghrib.
Al-Ikhlas, Al-Falaq, An-Nas with the hand routine in bed every night.
Ayat al-Kursi after every obligatory prayer (Sunan an-Nasa'i 9928, sahih).
A focused weekly ruqyah session — say Friday after Asr — where you run the full plan-style block as a maintenance habit.
A doctor's check-in scheduled or completed for any physical symptom that started this whole thing.

Reading the Signs Honestly at Day 40

At the end of forty days, sit down and answer four questions in writing:

What symptoms have lifted? Be specific. Sleep, mood, marital climate, ability to pray, intrusive thoughts, physical sensations.
What remains? Equally specific.
What changed for the better that you did not even include in your original list? This question is more important than people expect. Sihr or no sihr, forty days of daily Qur'an with a doctor's care will visibly change a believer.
What is the next step? If most symptoms are gone, you are in maintenance. If specific symptoms remain, you may need a careful medical workup, or a recitation of Al-Baqarah over the home, or both — and another forty days of the same plan, not a different plan.

If after two cycles of this plan (eighty days) and a full medical workup, a specific symptom still has not moved, that is the point at which a trustworthy raqi may be considered. Use the warnings on the fake-raqi page as the filter; never engage anyone who asks for personal items, claims a jinn-helper, writes anything in unknown script, or charges a tariff.

What This Plan Deliberately Does Not Include

Several things people expect to find in a "removal" plan are absent here because they have no basis in the Sunnah:

No instruction to "send the sihr back". The Prophet ﷺ did not do this; Ibn al-Qayyim warned against it; whoever offers it is using sihr to undo sihr.
No object — no taweez, no salt-circle, no candle, no buried thing — is part of the plan. Everything that protects you is on your tongue.
No fee. You do not pay to recite Qur'an over yourself.
No dramatic exorcism scene. If you are watching videos of jinn-screaming sessions and thinking that is what should happen to you, set them aside. They are theatre, and theatre is not Sunnah.

The Sunnah is austere on purpose. Allah's healing does not need props.

The 40-Day Sihr Removal Plan