Powerful Duas for Protection from the Evil Eye
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The evil eye is affirmed in the sources, not dismissed. The Prophet said: the evil eye is real, and if anything were to overtake the divine decree it would be the evil eye. Recorded in Muslim.
What the sources also do is prescribe a narrow, specific response to it — and much of what is sold and practised around the evil eye today falls outside that response, some of it into what the same sources forbid.
What It Is
Al-'ayn is harm that reaches a person through another's look, whether from envy or from admiration without blessing. The second case matters and is often missed: the reports include harm caused by a person who loved what they saw and meant no ill.
The narration of Sahl ibn Hunayf makes this concrete. Sahl bathed, and Amir ibn Rabi'ah, seeing his skin, said he had never seen anything like it. Sahl collapsed. The Prophet said: why does one of you kill his brother? When one of you sees something in his brother that pleases him, let him pray for blessing for him. He then instructed Amir to wash, and had that water poured over Sahl, who got up well. In Malik's Muwatta and Ibn Majah.
Two instructions come out of that: say tabarakallah or barakallahu fih when something pleases you, and the remedy involves the person who looked.
The Prescribed Protection
The Prophet used to seek refuge for al-Hasan and al-Husayn with these words: I seek protection for you both in the perfect words of Allah from every devil and poisonous creature, and from every envious eye. He said Ibrahim used to seek refuge for Ismail and Ishaq with them. In al-Bukhari.
The morning and evening protection: in the name of Allah, with whose name nothing on earth or in heaven can cause harm, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing — three times.
And the last three surahs: al-Ikhlas, al-Falaq and an-Nas, recited three times morning and evening. Al-Falaq names the envier explicitly: and from the evil of an envier when he envies.
Ruqyah
Ruqyah is reciting Quran and the narrated supplications over an affected person. It is permitted and practised, and the Prophet both performed it and had it performed on him.
The scholars set three conditions for it, reported from al-Suyuti and others as the agreed frame: that it be with the words of Allah or His names, in a language whose meaning is understood, and with the belief that it is Allah who cures and not the recitation in itself.
Ruqyah performed on oneself, for free, from the Quran, is the ordinary form. Nothing in the sources requires a specialist.
What People Use
The blue eye bead, the hand of protection, a pin on a baby's clothing — these are the objects most associated with the evil eye across the Muslim world, and they are part of the tradition people actually live in.
Alongside them, and older, are the recitations: the last three surahs, Ayatul Kursi, and the supplication above. These are what the reports themselves prescribe, and they cost nothing and can be said anywhere.
What to Do About It Practically
Say tabarakallah when you admire something belonging to someone else, and teach children to. This is the part that is on you rather than on anyone else, and the Sahl narration puts the responsibility there first.
Keep the morning and evening remembrance. It is the standing protection, and it takes three minutes.
If you believe you have been affected, recite over yourself: al-Fatihah, Ayatul Kursi, the last three surahs, and the supplication above. Do it consistently rather than once.
And do not build a life around it. A person who reads every setback as an eye is living under a suspicion the sources never asked for — the same Prophet who affirmed the eye also forbade pessimistic omen-reading, and told his companions that what reaches you was never going to miss you.