Legends of the Fire Spirits by Robert Lebling

Author:Robert Lebling [Lebling, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857730633
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

The use of special or magic kohl to see what the jinn see is a motif in various Asian cultural beliefs, including those in India. In the epic Urdu stories of Amir Hamza, which we shall examine later, the special substance is called the ‘kohl of Solomon’.29 Hanauer refers to North African magicians because their prowess was legendary throughout the Arab and Muslim countries. From time immemorial, these Muslim sorcerers (Arab and Berber alike) were known to travel throughout these lands, offering their services in exorcisms and other jinn-related therapies.

Fast-forward to the twenty-first century ... .

The quaint charm of Rev. Hanauer’s portrayal of jinn in Palestine gives way today to a much edgier, more dangerous phenomenon. As we know, jinn seem to enjoy causing trouble for humans. They have surfaced with a vengeance in the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as Palestinian Muslims report cases of possession by Jewish jinn. The reports are rich with political symbolism, but there is a social component as well.

Robert Robins and Jerrold Post have taken a rather unsympathetic look at the phenomenon in their book Political Paranoia, the Psychopolitics of Hatred (1997) and blame it on ‘entrepreneurial spiritualists’ who have profited from ‘the Middle Eastern readiness to succumb to conspiracy thinking’.30

Since the Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israeli occupation erupted in the occupied territories in 1987, contending with jinn has become a growing business in Gaza. Sheikh Abu Khaled, an exorcist, said that the number of possessed Muslims had more than tripled: ‘I suspect that Jewish magicians send Jinns to us here in Gaza. In fact most of my patients are possessed with Jewish Jinns.’ According to Robins and Post, both Jewish and Christian Jinns are reported to be black in colour, but the Jewish ones are distinguished by the horns growing from their heads.

A more in-depth look at the phenomenon of jinn possession among the Palestinians was conducted by Celia E. Rothenberg, an anthropologist who conducted 14 months (1995–1996) of fieldwork in the West Bank village of Artas.31 Rothenberg explored how the experiences of some women and men with jinn embody the multiple dimensions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The human body, in relationship with or possessed by a jinn, thus becomes a site for the enactment of this conflict in surprising and revealing ways.

In one case, a young Palestinian woman from Artas, identified as Zahia, experienced episodes of possession by a Jewish jinn after she moved to Jordan to marry her cousin. During periods of the possession, the Jewish jinn spoke Hebrew through her mouth and attempted to use her body to strangle her infant son. Back home in the West Bank, the male members of her family worked together with Jewish men building Jewish settlements. Given the nature of village social life as Zahia had experienced it, the young woman’s story appears, in Rothenberg’s view, to be a commentary on how Jews and her own male family members may seem to collude in shaping and constraining her life. According to Rothenberg, given that Zahia was

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.