In the last three chapters we worked from central, scripturally enjoined elements of Islam – revelation, worship, sacrifice – to diverse local interpretations and practices. This direction of analysis highlights the importance of referring to, and drawing from, a tradition, but it only includes those elements that are part of that common tradition. It leaves out local, culturally specific practices that some Muslims, but not others, might consider to be part of their Islam. This kind of omission is a weakness of classical approaches in religious studies, which only admitted to the canon of Islam that which could be seen as part of a single tradition.

This methodological concern leads me here to take the opposite route, and start from ways in which some people seek to heal or otherwise change the world through spells and prayer, and only then ask whether in doing so they draw on Islamic frameworks. Some Muslims develop specific ways of healing (or for that matter harming) that involve appeals to Islamic spirits or to God. Sometimes outsiders (including other Muslims, critical of these practices) might refer to these appeals in terms like “sorcery,” “magic,” or bid`a (illegitimate innovation), or shirk (poly-theism). But for the practitioners, to heal in a religious fashion is to draw on God's benevolence. Even harming others might be understood as merely returning a malicious spirit to its original sender.