Possession et ensorcellement comme « maladies chroniques »

Représentations et prises en charge chez les acteurs de la rouqya

Abstract

The ruqya, visible since the 1990s in Algeria and Egypt, is presented as an Islamic therapeutic practice. Its actors, the sick and their families, wonder about the illness and the misfortune that endure. Their therapeutic route is based on biomedicine and other unconventional treatments where the “natural” disease, is associated with the supernatural entities also held responsible for the suffering. The symptoms are interpreted, evaluated, supported in a process of seeking healing for months or even years. The ruqya inscribes suffering in the logic, of an external aggression by the jinns and the spellcasters. Although God is recognized as the supreme actor, the etiology of possession and witchcraft is privileged to explain a certain chronicity of the disease and the permanence or renewal of misfortune, hence the interest of therapeutic commitment in a model of exorcism like the ruqya.