This behaviour is like a person who claims he is a physician...

He said: ‘Your ill omen is with Allah. Nay! You are a people who are being tried’.” The Arabic word /tatayyur/ is derived from /tayr/ which means ‘a bird’. Some of Arabs used to leave a bird at the time when they wanted to travel. If it went to the right direction they would start their traveling, and if it flew to the left (they augured ill and) they would suspend their traveling. ^6 In Islam auguring ill has been considered disbelief.

To augur ill leads to leaving the main reasons and going toward superstitions. There are many occurrences in the Qur’an which indicate that the Divine prophets had been augured ill. The people of Pharaoh thought that their afflictions had come because of Moses (as).

The Qur’an says: “…and if any evil afflicted them, they took it bad omens due to Moses…” [^7] Jesus (as) was told: “…For us, we augur an evil omen from you…” [^8] In the above mentioned verse, the disbelievers told Saleh: “…‘Ill omen do we augur from you and those with you’…” However, this arrogant nation, instead of listening to the sympathetic advice of their great prophet and applying it, they opposed him with some vain words and baseless conclusions, among them is their following statement: “They said: ‘Ill omen do we augur from you and those with you’…” It seems that there was drought, and deficiency of crop and foodstuff for the people of Moses in that year.

They said that all those afflictions and difficulties were because of unpleasant advent of Moses and his followers who brought them and their society misery and omen. By resorting to the weapon of ill omen, which is often the weapon of arrogant and superstitious persons, they wanted to overcome the strong logic of Moses (as). But in answer to them, he said that their evil fortune was with Allah, and it was their own deeds that resulted such miseries and afflictions, as punishments.

In fact, this was a great Divine trial for them. The verse continues saying: “…He said: ‘Your ill omen is with Allah. Nay!