In some places jinn are so feared that merely calling them by their name risks retribution, so euphemisms are used instead. Some jinn live in remote, wild places, and are said to lure children and unwary travelers to their doom - a trait shared with fairies of the British Isles, the Hispanic ghost-witch La Llorona and others. Children are warned to obey their parents and not to stray from the beaten path. As with many magical creatures around the world, stories of jinn are often told in the form of a boogeyman story. Jinn are said to be repelled by salt and iron - a characteristic they share with vampires. Jinn are believed, like ghosts, to sometimes haunt buildings, homes and other locations, including sewers and drain pipes. Just as in Catholic exorcism rituals where Bible passages are read to the possessed person to drive the spirit from the human body, Islamic rituals often involve having sections of the Quran recited to the afflicted person to rid him or her of jinn. Like spirits and demons, jinn are said to be able to possess humans (with similar symptoms, including seizures, violence and speaking unknown tongues) and can be exorcised from the human body through rituals. Just as Christian theologians have long debated the nature of angels, Muslim theologians have long debated the nature of jinn: whether they have physical bodies, where they live, how they interact with us and so on. Many Muslims believe in the literal existence of jinn, just as many Christians believe in the literal existence of angels. Jinn share many traits with angels, fairies, ghosts and other supernatural creatures. One man, Abbas Ghaffari, was reportedly accused of summoning a genie who caused a heart attack in one of Ghaffari's rivals. In 2011, nearly two dozen associates of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were accused of summoning jinn to attack political enemies. ![]() Nearly 200 of their classmates refused to attend the school for two days while medical authorities searched for an explanation.īelief in the fire spirits is also common among elected officials in the Middle East. ![]() In May 2015, nine elementary and middle school students at a girls' school in southern Madinah, Saudi Arabia, claimed that jinns had made them feel unwell, causing episodes of fainting and spasms. Though doctors attributed that incident to mass hysteria (a mild and harmless form of social contagion and psychological suggestion), many believed that jinn haunted the school and were to blame for the attack. For example, in 2000, teachers at an all-girls school in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah began having mysterious fits and seizures. Jinn are sometimes blamed for unexplained minor health scares, accidents and misfortune. In contrast to Western versions of jinn, in the Arab world they are not known for their "Aladdin"-like wish-granting - though they can be commanded to perform tasks by wizards, for example, or someone who wears the magical Ring of Solomon. They can change their shapes, can fly through the air, and even can render themselves invisible." (Lebling is also the creator of a Facebook page titled The Jinn Group, where members share jinn stories and lore.) They often appear humanoid or even human but possess amazing powers we lack. In " Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar (opens in new tab)" (Counterpoint Books, 2011), researcher Robert Lebling noted that "Jinn are taken seriously and regarded as real, tangible beings by a large segment of the world's population. Gaiman's magical, shape-shifting jinn is fictional, but belief in genies is widespread. (Salim had recognized the jinn from a story told to him by his grandmother). The image that most Americans probably have of genies comes from the 1960s sitcom "I Dream of Jeannie" or the animated big blue Robin Williams-voiced wiseacre in Disney's "Aladdin." More recently, in the television adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel "American Gods," audiences have come to know a cab-driving jinn who switches identities with an Omani salesman named Salim.
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