As to the rest of things...

As to the rest of things, one should refrain from harboring such notions as to this particular work augured well for him whereas that particular assignment proved to be ill-starred to him, and therefore he flopped in it.

It is narrated by Abu Hurairah {May Allah have mercy on him} that the Prophet {Peace be upon Him} said: "There is no contagion (a disease transmitting from one person to another), no owl (believing in its so-called magical properties) and no Safar (a ghost allegedly inhabiting the belly of a person)." (Bukhari) A view which was rife among the Arabs regarding the people suffering from Ju'ul-Kalb (an ailment characterized by an insatiable hunger) was that his belly was inhabited by an evil spirit which in took all the food he devoured and therefore his hunger was never satiated.

This so-called evil spirit was known as Safar. The Prophet {Peace be upon Him} declared that there is no such thing as a ghost or an evil-spirit (i.e. inhabiting the belly of the sick person) and this was merely a superstition. Thus we understand that the ailments are not induced by the evil spirits. Some people believe that some of the diseases occur due to the influence of some evil spirits like Satila, Masani, Barahi3 etc. but this is untrue.

During the pre-Islamic period, people used to consider the 1 The Prophet {Peace be upon Him} on another occasion, elaborated on it this way: "An evil house is the one which has bad neighbors, an evil woman is the one who is short-tempered and ill-mannered, and a horse which is not worth keeping is the one who is unruly and skittish." 2 A house which is broad and wide at the front and small and constrained at the rear is called Sher Dahan (lion- mouthed).

The Indians considered this type of house to be evil and inauspicious. 3 Barahi is the name of a goddess of diseases among the Hindus, which is worshipped to repel diseases. month of Safar as an evil one and did not perform any activity during this month. This was wrong too.

Thus, it becomes known to us that considering the thirteen days of Safar as inauspicious and believing that the calamities befall the earth during this specific period and deeming a thing, date, day or an hour to be of an evil presentiment are all polytheistic concepts.