Fake healers continue to prey on gullible public

When Faisal Mustafa, a resident of the vibrant Rawalpindi, encountered problems in his marriage coupled with job loss and quarrels with family, a friend suggested that he should seek professional help from a faith healer.

With things not going his way, Mustafa had little to lose and accompanied his friend to a well-known faith healer in town.

Colloquially known as amil or amil baba, the healer told Mustafa that he was under the spell of black magic and had to take immediate action to sort his life out. “I spent Rs37,000 on the treatments the amil suggested and my problems only got worse,” an irate Mustafa told The Express Tribune.

Mustafa soon realised that the friend who had brought him to the amil was actually the healer’s devotee. “He lured others like me to the amil baba with false promises of fixing them up for good. Him and other devotees of the amil take a cut from the earnings for bringing patients,” he revealed.

Read: New twist in Peshawar faith healer’s bizarre story

However, Mustafa is not alone. There are many others like him in the twin cities who have been duped by faith healers and peers under the guise of treatment to fix life’s routine problems. Saleem Fatima, whose elder sister was having trouble in finding a life-partner, was taken aback when she saw a wall chalking claiming that an amil nearby could solve all marriage-related problems.

Fatima dragged her sister to amil Kode Shah and was told that an amulet, which cost Rs25,000, would help her sister in the search for a husband. “I paid the money and followed his instructions for a whole month but my sister is still single,” a frustrated Fatima said, “three months have passed now; the amil has stopped seeing us and refuses to return our money.”

The wall chalking that Fatima fell for, is a major advertising outlet for faith healers along with word-of-mouth advertising and fake testimonials. Some alims claim to have a cure for every chronic illness, life-threatening cancer, and more recently the coronavirus. When Samina Parveen’s already ailing mother contracted Covid-19, she was told that the only hope was an amil who had the cure for the super spreader. Parveen, who was aware of the bad reputation that comes with amils, decided to consult the healer anyway, just so she could save her mother.

“He told me that he would perform dum on the water and if my mother drank it every day in the evening, she would recover quickly,” she said. Parveen, who paid Rs1,000 for every visit, was left devastated when her mother passed shortly after the treatments began.

“I went to the amil to complain and he replied that God gives healing not me,” Parveen narrated whilst on the brink of tears. When inquired about the validity of such faith healers who protect themselves using the religion card, Allama Izhar Shah Bukhari, Khatib of the Jamia Masjid in Lal Kurti, who is also the head of Inter-Faith Harmony District Committee, said that not only were the alims defrauding people but were also un-Islamic.

“The use of amulets and other items as a means of treatment is strictly forbidden. These fake alims destroy people’s homes and rob them off their hard-earned money,” he said. District Khatib, Allama Iqbal Rizvi, concurring with Bukhari’s views, said that such healers are oppressors and mint money off people. “If the amil claims to cure any disease but he does not have an MBBS degree then he should be arrested and severely punished,” Rizvi said.

Rawalpindi Police Spokesperson Inspector Sajjad Hussain, when inquired about the threats alims pose, said that the police had zero tolerance for them. “We register cases against them and make sure their offices get shut down. However, faith healers are a mafia and everyone should campaign against them and be wary of going to them,” Hussain told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 17^th, 2022.