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Please explain the Islamic perspective on feng shui, which concerns the arrangement of household furnishings and is sometimes considered alongside a building’s architecture. Its roots lie in China, and many people attribute the Chinese people’s economic success to it.
Feng shui is a Chinese approach to home design and arrangement that functions like an ancient, quasi-philosophical ritual. Aimed at creating harmony, it seeks to attract positive and negative energies and can resemble the use of talismans, sorcery, or even an advanced form of idolatry. Belief in luck and reliance on supernatural forces in this practice conflict with Islamic principles. China’s scientific progress has nothing to do with it.
Feng shui literally means “wind and water.” Put simply, it is described as a Chinese method of building and designing homes, as well as arranging household furnishings. Some also call it an ancient Chinese art and philosophy. Although it has changed over the course of history, it is now presented as an art of interior design—when in reality, that is not what it is.
Some describe feng shui as one of the five Chinese metaphysical arts and classify it as a science of intelligence and intuition.
This method resembles a religious practice in which its followers place their way of thinking and beliefs within a prescribed framework. Although it speaks of positive energy, it regards negative energy as just as necessary to creation as positive energy. In practice, it attracts both positive and negative energy.
The way a home is arranged, and the rules followed in this practice, function much like placing spells around the home. In effect, feng shui-style decorating is a kind of self-enchantment and self-sorcery.
Feng shui speaks of order, but the order it claims to establish is, in reality, the arrangement of space to invite supernatural forces. In most cases, this invitation allows negative forces to enter people’s homes and workplaces, and affect their bodies and souls.
Feng shui is like a metaphysical, quasi-philosophical system that prescribes ways to create harmony between people and their surroundings. Yet its prescriptions have no particular scientific or religious basis. Its followers outwardly present it as an art and a science in order to lend it legitimacy, striving to give it a distinctive character and carve out a place for it.
In some cases, this practice seeks to harness invisible and supernatural forces, often drawing jinn and devils into people’s bodies and souls and into their homes. To attract energy, wealth, health, happiness and love, extend one’s lifespan, and set energy in motion, practitioners perform actions that turn the home and workplace into non-divine temples. This makes the practice resemble a religious rite and worldview grounded in a non-divine philosophy.
This practice is a form of reliance on and trust in “yin and yang” and supernatural forces. It is also, in another respect, a kind of worship, devotion, reliance and supplication directed towards them. Practitioners also seek help from “wood, fire, earth, metal and water” to attain happiness, success, tranquillity and wealth. In reality, this amounts to a debased ideological stronghold.
At its most serious stage, this practice becomes a form of advanced idol worship.
Belief in luck, seeking it, and searching for it through this practice weaken people’s higher convictions.
‼ Chinese scientific progress has nothing to do with feng shui.
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