Impracticality of Traditional Ruqyah R&D

The typical understanding of ruqyah in the early 21st Century makes it impossible for useful R&D to occur. This is because the typical ruqyah session consists of many Qur’anic verses read over a period of 1 or 2 hours. This long duration brings many problems for R&D.

  • Treatment of 2 hours per session is too labour intensive hence takes too long to complete trials i.e. only 4 sessions can conducted in 1 working day.
  • To conduct trials on 100 people (each with 10x 2-hour sessions) will take 2000 hours (250 working days) i.e. 1 year if reliant on 1 raqi. This costs £60,000 (1 working day = £240).
  • For 1000 people, this will take 20,000 hours (2,500 working days) i.e almost 10 years if reliant on 1 raqi. This costs £600,000.

From a business perspective, firstly, it is not feasible to pay a raqi this amount of money for trials (especially since it is a trial for 1 specific ailment only). Secondly, to assume a raqi can dedicate this much time is not realistic. Thirdly, there is a short supply of Raqis with sufficient experience to participate in this level of trials. Fourthly, there are other costs required e.g. administration, IT systems, rent etc.

To invest what could easily by £1 million and 10 years just to see if ruqyah can treat 1 ailment successfully, is a large spend in time and money. If the results are not deemed good enough, then it will have been a waste of time and money.

Even if the trials were to be successful, the costs of the treatment would be £60 per treatment (assuming £30 per hour – although in 10 years time, this would likely increase). This means to treat 1 million patients per year, it would cost £60 million just in ruqyah labour costs. Other costs will be required e.g. overheads, administration, electricity etc.

The cost of using ruqyah treatment compared to conventional medical treatment needs to be analysed to see if is worth replacing any conventional treatment with ruqyah treatment.

In summary, doing R&D for traditional ruqyah is a high-cost and high-time approach with a low likelihood of success.