3 Islamic articles on: the evil eye

IslamQA: Why do people get jealous?

Why do people get jealous? Also, how can I protect myself from nazar (evil eye)?

Humans have a natural tendency to feel unhappy when they see someone who enjoys blessings much greater than they enjoy themselves. Some people are not pious enough to fight this tendency, so they feel a strong desire for the blessed person to lose the blessing and wish bad things to happen to them.

The evil eye is not mentioned in the Quran, so I do not consider it important enough to be worth worrying about. The best protection would be to read the Quran daily. Chapter 113 of the Quran contains a prayer against envious people, so you can try to memorize it and recite it when you feel any worry about envy and the evil eye:

Say, “I take refuge with the Lord of Daybreak.

From the evil of what He created.

And from the evil of the darkness as it gathers.

And from the evil of those who practice sorcery.

And from the evil of an envious when he envies.”

IslamQA: Protecting yourself from giving yourself the evil eye

How can you protect yourself from giving yourself nazar (evil eye)?

Since the evil eye is never mentioned in the Quran, I do not consider it important enough to worry about. As far as I know there are no authentic hadith narrations that deal with the possibility of giving oneself the evil eye, and I do not know if that is even possible because the evil eye is thought to be related to envy. Unless you envy yourself so much that you wish for your own blessings to be taken away, you probably shouldn’t worry about the giving yourself evil eye.

IslamQA: On the Evil Eye, Hadith Authenticity and Confirmation Bias

I’ve always read protection from evil eye, al fatiha and 4kuls over my daughter before she sleeps every night. But every time I post her picture on Instagram and it’s only in stories so it’s not up very long, she soon starts vomiting and more difficult than usual. I don’t understand tho, I’ve read protection over her every night and everyone uploads their children’s pictures and they’re perfectly fine. What am i doing wrong? She’s perfectly pleasant otherwise.

Further to my question about the evil eye, someone recommended to wear gold and diamonds as a cure as women are prone to being frail and weak. It sounded ridiculous to me. Is there any merit to that suggestion?

There are a number of authentic narrations that mention it, but since it is not mentioned in the Quran, I do not consider it important enough to be worth worrying about.

As for the issue of your daughter suffering those symptoms, I cannot say it is not the evil eye because, like I said, it is not proven to be false. But it could also be confirmation bias, which is a well-attested fact of human thinking. If you keep thinking about the evil eye when you upload pictures of your daughter, and if a quarter of the time something bad happens afterwards, you might blame it on the evil eye even though three quarters of the time nothing bad happens. When we are looking for supernatural causes for what happens around us, we tend to find all the evidence we want and ignore the evidence that goes against it.

If you were to keep a diary in which you make a note every time you upload a picture, writing whether something bad happened afterwards or not, you may find out that something bad only happens 10% of the time, nowhere sufficient to prove that it is caused by uploading pictures of your daughter.

There are superstitious people who think the color of their clothing affects what happens to them throughout the day, and just like people who keep track of the evil eye, they too find ample “evidence” that the color of what they wear is causing all kinds of things to happen to them. But if they too were to keep a diary, they will likely find out that what happens to them has no relationship with what they are wearing, it is something that they think is happening because of confirmation bias, because they are only giving weight to the evidence that confirms their beliefs and ignoring the evidence that goes against it.

I have not heard anything about it being recommended to wear gold and diamonds for frailness. It is probably just a folk belief.