A Revived Practice Under Modern Regulation

Hijama has undergone a marked revival over the past two decades, moving from a marginal folk practice in many Muslim-majority countries into a licensed and increasingly regulated therapeutic service, a shift driven partly by renewed interest in prophetic medicine and partly by broader global interest in traditional and complementary therapies.

Countries including the United Kingdom, Malaysia and several Gulf states have developed licensing frameworks specifically for cupping practitioners, requiring training in hygiene, sterile equipment and safe technique, a regulatory response to real documented risks: unregulated wet cupping using unsterilised blades or shared equipment has been linked to transmission of bloodborne infections, and health authorities in multiple countries have issued specific warnings about practitioners operating outside licensed or hygienic conditions. Reports attributing specific preferred days of the lunar month, the seventeenth, nineteenth and twenty-first are commonly cited, to the practice have generated their own internal debate among hadith scholars over the reliability and interpretation of the relevant narrations, with some scholars treating the timing as a recommended but non-binding preference and others questioning the strength of the specific reports involved. The revival has also drawn renewed scientific attention, with a growing number of clinical trials attempting to test cupping for pain conditions such as lower back pain, though systematic reviews of this research have generally found the existing trials too small or methodologically weak to establish clear therapeutic benefit, leaving the practice's traditional standing considerably stronger than its current clinical evidence base.