The “patients” marched for more than a year in Thann, in Haut-Rhin. Young people, old people, children sometimes; suburbanites, from here or from Mulhouse, the adjoining town. Never women alone, receiving them without their husband or father would not be pious. On a plaque at the entrance to the office in the city center was written: “therapist”. Inside, everything is medical: gloves, medical waste bins, and no less than 700 scalpels. But also water from Zamzam, the sacred source of Islam, religious books, a Koran.
In these premises, in plain sight, “Mr. B.” practiced prophetic medicine, a parallel Islamic medicine drawn from a rigorous reading of the customs of the Prophet. In its multiple forms, the practice appeals to Muslims looking for treatments deemed more natural and which would better correspond to their idea of Islam. Like a doctor, Mr. B. examined the patients, then delivered his diagnosis based not on medical training, but on his religious readings. He even made a living from this activity, which he carried out from January 2021 to June 2022.
As a remedy, Mr. B. made “treatments” based on honey, nigella, siwak, Indian costus and truffle juice. Ingredients prized by the Muslim world and naturopaths, and which are mentioned in religious texts. He also recommended thyme steam baths for girls to cure “uterine problems.” All accompanied by prayers, according to a rite called “roqya”, intended to disenchant. The man was sentenced by the Mulhouse judicial court to one year in prison, suspended in March 2023, for illegally practicing medicine.
Faith, health, Islam and pseudoscience
A condemnation which serves as a warning for anyone who attempts to treat the sick on the basis of the Koran and hadiths, works which compile the adages attributed to the Prophet. If the number of practitioners or followers of prophetic medicine in France is not known, the “phenomenon is widespread in the territory”, indicate the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Radicalization and the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Abuses sectarians (Miviludes). It is even the subject of “particular vigilance, both for the fight against sectarian excesses and against separatism”.
As with other pseudosciences, prophetic medicine benefits from the rise of generalized distrust toward institutions and science. She also follows developments in the Muslim world: “These practices had almost disappeared in the 20th century. They were reactivated with the rise of political Islam and by the Salafo-Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia, which considers that it we must trust the way of life of the Prophet and the first generations, and take the writings literally,” specifies Dr. Moreno al-Ajamî, doctor and Islamologist.
Since the law against separatism, adopted in 2021 by Parliament, the prefectures and departmental units fighting Islamism and community withdrawal have tried to stem the appearance of these cabinets. These delicate cases where faith and health, Islam and pseudoscience combine, are only just beginning to come before the courts. The Mulhouse judicial court was among the first to rule on prophetic medicine. The first two decisions of its vice-president, Judge Tiffany Gamain, in the case of Mr. B. and another, judged in February, are referred to and circulated from magistrate to magistrate.
During searches, the national police sometimes ask doctors from regional health agencies (ARS) to be present. The goal: to identify traces of medical procedures performed outside the legal framework. On a mission for an ARS, Elise (who wished to remain anonymous) talks with preachers and patients caught in illegal practices. They are often unaware of the risks they are taking. She then reviews the results of the searches: “I was asked to identify tools of all kinds, from needles used to take blood sugar to suction cups washed in dishwashers or placed in boxes and still full of blood “, says this specialist.
Scalpels and suction cups seized during searches
These suction cups found in most offices are used to “hijama”, star treatment of prophetic medicine on social networks, popularized by footballers like the 2022 Ballon d’or, Karim Benzema, or more recently by the player of the French team Selma Bacha. All kinds of virtues are attributed to this traditional massage: from simple relaxation to the healing of conditions as varied as infertility or cysts, migraine or back problems. If the marks left by the suction cups are very red, some prophetic doctors cut them with a scalpel, to make them bleed and “release the evil spirits”.
Also cited in Islamic texts, the hijama is not, however, specific to Islam. Other religions, currents or pseudosciences use it under different names. So much so that physiotherapists have also started this practice. Their order ended up banning it in 2021, after a referral to Miviludes. “With each therapeutic deviation, it’s the same thing: a simple technique, described as ancestral, could cure everything. We come back to ancient beliefs, like, here, the medieval idea that the blood is disturbed by humors” , regrets Pascale Mathieu, president of the National Council of the order of masseurs-physiotherapists.
Faced with this legal takeover, to avoid being caught and reach a wider audience, certain “prophetic doctors” have decided to officiate on the Internet. Content mixing Islam and health has exploded since Covid-19. On the Telegram application discussion group called “Prophetic Medicine,” a devotee asks: “Salam alaykoum. Do you have any advice to give me? I have a herniated disc.” Like this Internet user, thousands of faithful connect every day to this public forum created in 2019 by a believer “specialized” in health issues, who calls himself Marwan Abou Abdillah.
Halal teledoctors
In front of his 12,000 subscribers, Marwan Abou Abdillah claims to be from the school of Mohammed Abdelhadi al-Djazaïri, an Algerian imam trained at the Islamic University of the second holiest city of Islam, Medina, in Saudi Arabia. The latter, accused of terrorism by Algiers, took refuge in France in the 1980s, before being expelled. Through contact with the imam and through religious reading, Marwan Abou Abdillah would have learned the behaviors to adopt to preserve health. Since then, he has sold training in prophetic medicine. On social networks, he points out the obvious: eat well, move, sleep. And recommends plants for everyday ailments.
Others are more radical. Akim Bouterra, 50,000 followers on Instagram, 63,000 on X (ex-Twitter), was also trained in the Saudi version of Islam. From Medina, he plays halal telemedicine, indicating in French which healthcare practice is compatible or not with religion, according to him. For example, we should avoid vaccines, “based on synthetic or harmful elements, which can disrupt health”. His religious knowledge would allow him to treat fibromyalgia, Crohn’s disease and even polyarthritis, chronic illnesses that no treatment cures. According to him, administering nigella seed intravenously would even help overcome AIDS.
Beyond distributing their bad advice, these profiles help to isolate “patients” and can generate control or sectarianism. “Like any unproven practice, prophetic medicine can be extremely effective in the process of mental manipulation. […] And it can also lead to a form of separatism”, details Miviludes. On the Internet, radicalized people use prophetic medicine to reinforce aversion against the West, and its medicine judged “haram”, impious. Going to see a psychiatrist would thus be unworthy of a Muslim, because going against Islamic knowledge, one can, for example, read on the site of a preacher who advocates jihad, still active on YouTube, where 35,000 people follow his videos.
At his trial, Abdelkader Merah, brother of the terrorist who carried out the attacks in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012, was questioned at length about his participation in hearing sessions. roqya. Justice wanted to know if the meetings around this treatment were conducive to radicalization. “Practitioners can claim to be rigorous or be radical, but this is not at all the majority of cases, because that is not the aim pursued,” adds a specialist in the prevention of terrorist acts, who assists the Mulhouse prosecutor. “On the other hand, the absence or cessation of psychiatric care that prophetic medicine can lead to is, for example, likely to generate violent decompensations,” specifies this source, who wished to remain anonymous.
In 2021, Miviludes carried out an awareness campaign among Muslim religious leaders, to inform them of the risk of loss of opportunities taken by believers who swear only by prophetic medicine. “At the Grand Mosque of Paris, after these discussions, we decided to produce a counter-discourse. We are, in a way, making fact-checking among our faithful”, specifies imam Khaled Larbi, who adds: “Many 2.0 doctors and 2.0 imams are looking for visibility, or income online. But no student of theology can claim that prophetic medicine can cure AIDS or cancer without lying, that’s for sure.”