The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda of Genies

by Rosemary Ellen Guiley; Philip J. Imbrogno

  However, the spirit was not done with the family. It turned full force on Betsy and tormented her over her engagement to a man, forcing her to break it off. Djinn who fall in love with humans are known to do the same. Betsy, however, married another man-but apparently someone the djinni/spirit didn't mind.

  "Kate" announced she would leave but would return in seven years. A cannonball-like object then rolled out of the chimney and burst into smoke, and the spirit vanished. Smoke and mist are associated with djinn, as they lack forms in their natural state.

  Since then, haunting phenomena have continued on the property, which is now privately owned and operated as a tourist attraction. The original Bell home no longer exists, but has been replaced with a replica. It is said to be haunted as well. The activity may spring from the land itself, which would be characteristic of a place frequented by djinn.

  Nearby is a small cave that extends about five hundred feet into a bluff over a river. The cave is renowned for unusual phenomena, including apparitions, photographic anomalies of misty shapes, glowing balls of light, whispering voices, and sounds of breathing. Caves, as we have seen, are a favorite home of the djinn. A disturbed Native American burial site lies above the entrance to the cave. The bones of the woman buried there were stolen, which has given rise to belief in a curse-bad luck will come to anyone who takes anything from the cave, even so much as a stone.

  Rosemary has visited the cave with Troy Taylor, founder of the American Ghost Society. Taylor has made numerous trips to the Bell Witch site and believes the cave to be a portal and the home of "an ancient, primeval spirit." It probably is, and it may belong to a djinn.

  In Closing

  The djinn are the "artful dodgers" of the paranormal, assuming different forms and slipping between dimensions at will. They have the ability to severely disrupt human life. In the following chapters, we compare djinn in more detail to other supernatural entities with whom we in the West are more familiar, and we examine ways to counter their effects.

  O FULLY UNDERSTAND THE CONNECTION between angels, demons, and djinn, we must delve into the Prophet Muhammad's revelation of the Qur'an. According to tradition, Muhammad received the Qur'an in a series of dreams and trancelike inspired states in which he was visited by the archangel Jibril. But was Muhammad actually visited by a djinni instead?

  Muhammad is considered to be the last receiver of all divine revelations before the end of the world. His name means "the Praised One" or "He Who is Glorified." In all, there are two hundred names for Muhammad, such as "Joy of Creation" and "Beloved of God." Mention of his name is customarily followed by one of several invocations, such as "God bless Him and give Him peace" or "May peace be upon Him."

  Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 CE; tradition holds that his lineage goes back to Ishmael and Abraham. Some accounts claim he was illiterate, but he had a successful business career and probably was at least semi-literate. In 590, he married a woman twice his age. After twenty years of marriage and a successful career as a merchant of skins and raisins, his spiritual life unfolded. He felt a call to withdraw from the world, and pray and meditate to reach enlightenment. At the root of his spiritual searching was his acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah, the immaculate conception of Mary and the virgin birth, in addition to his conviction that Judaism and Christianity had distorted God's revelations to Moses and Jesus, and that the pagan Arabs lived in ignorance of God's true will.

  Muhammad would often leave his wife and children in Mecca to make a four-hour journey to the Cave of Hira, located a short distance from the city on the top of a mountain. Hira is a small cave, about fourteen feet in length by six feet wide. There he would stay in complete isolation for several nights, deep in thought, prayer, and meditation.

  In the year 610, while in the cave one night during Ramadan,' Muhammad was visited by a "creature" who ordered him in an authoritative, almost threatening voice, "READ!"

  Muhammad replied to the creature, "I do not know how to read."

  The creature grabbed him with such a great force that he almost suffocated. It released him, and repeated the same command three times. On the third time, the creature gave him what later became the opening lines of sura 96:

  Tradition holds that after issuing its commands, the creature disappeared. Muhammad went to sleep and awakened in the morning to hear words that seemed to be written on his heart: "0 Muhammad, you are the Apostle of God and I am fibril."

  According to the Al-Sira Al-Nabawiyya, a biography of the Prophet by Ibn Kathir, written in the fourteenth century, Muhammad ran from the cave, all the way back to Mecca, trembling with fear. He ran into his house and found his wife and implored her, "Cover me, cover me." His wife asked him what was the matter. He told her of the creature he encountered in the cave and said he had to leave because he feared for his life. It is not clear at this point whether Muhammad thought the creature was a djinni or angel, but it was obvious he was very afraid of the creature that had accosted him.

  From historical accounts of djinn and demons, we know they often make people do things they don't want to by threatening them or using physical force. In Biblical accounts of angel encounters, people often feared the angels because they usually appeared when God was unhappy with a person; the angel was sent to chastise or punish. In the Arabic world, however, djinn would have been even more feared than a powerful angel.

  Muhammad was able to see the creature from any angle he looked, implying it was multidimensional in nature. However, there is no record of an exact description of the entity. Muhammad was skeptical of the creature's true identity. He saw it on several occasions after the first encounter, but no one else could see it. The creature followed him from the cave and often appeared in his home. Muhammad's wife, Khadija, wanted to discover the true identity of the creature and so told her husband to inform her when the entity was present. When the creature finally appeared, she asked Muhammad to sit on her left thigh and asked him, "Can you still see the creature?"

  He replied that he did.

  She then threw off her veil and asked Muhammad to sit on her right thigh. Khadija then asked him, "Can you still see the creature?"

  He replied, "No, it is gone."

  Khadija then told Muhammad, "Be firm, by the name of Allah, he is an angel and not a demon."

  Islamic scholars interpret the test above as meaning that an angel would not stay to look at the uncovered part of a female body, but a demon would. Also, the creature was visible only when he sat on her left thigh and not her right. The pre-Islamic people believed that the proper sequence of things was from right to left. If the creature was also visible on the right, this meant to them that it would have been moving from left to right and against the balanced movement of the universe and against the will of Allah. Only evil djinn can do this-angels can't. This test convinced Khadija that the creature was an angel, and not just any angel, but the Archangel Jibril. Muhammad still remained skeptical.

  Three years passed after the first revelation before Muhammad felt ready to call himself a prophet. He preached to his own clan, the Hashimites, that if they did not worship God instead of their idols, they would be punished. The followers of the new religion were called Muslims, which is derived from a term that means "they who surrender to God." His evangelizing was not without conflict and even holy war.

  Critics called Muhammad "djinn-possessed" and said he was not a true prophet because God hadn't sent down His angels to him. Later, Muhammad began publicly describing the creature as an angel, but doing so failed to quiet his opponents and critics, who accused him of retro-fitting an angel onto his revelations in order to be accepted as a prophet.' Regardless of exactly how it happened, the first night of Qur'an revelations is referred to as the "Night of Power." According to tradition, the Qur'an was revealed gradually over the rest of Muhammad's life, in nearly daily trance states and frequent dreams at night, with the final revelation coming just months before his death in 632. The transmitting entity is sometimes de
scribed as an angel, sometimes as a mysterious man. The holy book totals 6,666 verses and forms the doctrine of Islam. Muhammad himself never explicitly stated how he received all of it. Surah 17:106 states that it was sent from God gradually so that it could be recited to people at intervals.

  The "Night of Power" is part of Ramadan, held in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, a time of fasting, prayer, and pilgrimage. fibril and other angels descend on the faithful on this night, and will continue to do so until the end of all time:

  We have indeed revealed this (Message) in the Night of Power. And what will explain to you what the Night of Power is? The Night of Power is better than a thousands Months. Therein come down the angels and the Spirit (Ar-Rooh, or Jibril) by God's permission on every errand. Peace! This until the rise of morn!'

  Was the Creature an Angel or a Djinni?

  Muslim scholars today still debate whether or not Muhammad actually had a visitation by the angel Jibril; some feel it could have been a djinni. According to Zakara Botrous, a well-known expert on Islam and the Qur'an, the creature Muhammad saw in the cave lacked an angel's characteristics. The angels of the Islamic belief are pure and can do no wrong, and would never try to force someone to do something by strangling them. The entity that appeared to Muhammad greeted him with aggression and threats. We make no claims to know whether the prophet Muhammad encountered an angel or a djinni, but whatever attended him in the cave succeeded in its task, for Islam is the largest of the world's major religions today.

  In discussing the events surrounding the revelation, we also are not diminishing or questioning the truth of the word of God as revealed to Muhammad. In all great religions, divine word is channeled through prophets who transmit the word to the masses. The stories of how they received the word vary even within their own religions, and become embellished over time with legends that lack historical data. Details of events remain uncertain or obscure, but at the core is the word itself, to which the faithful anchor their spiritual lives.

  Contrasts and Similarities Among Angels, Djinn, and Demons

  The ancient world that birthed Judaism, Christianity, and Islam teemed with supernatural entities who had the power to intervene or interfere in humanity's affairs, and their characteristics overlap. Numerous similarities and ambiguities exist among angels, demons, and djinn that provide ample opportunities for djinn to masquerade as one or the other. In many ways, djinn resemble some of the descriptions of early angels, in that they are capable of being either kindly and helpful toward people, or coldly righteous and rigid. Djinn also embody the demonic traits of cruelty, deceit, destruction, and chaos.

  In the ancient world, angels were God's divine messengers and were morally righteous, but they were capable of destroying entire populations without mercy. Demons were lesser, interfering entities of good, bad, and neutral persuasions, but were usually responsible for anything bad that happened. Djinn were closer to demons in behavior, but with original ties to the angelic realm, as we saw in an earlier chapter. Djinn lore absorbed into the Western tradition tended toward demonic overtones.

  The distinctions between djinn and demons are often confusing: djinn can act like demons and have more associations with demons-but they also have similarities to angels. According to M. S. Al-Munajiid, a prominent Saudi sheikh, lecturer, and author, scholars are in disagreement over the difference between djinn and demons. Some of them say that the word djinn goes far to encompass the djinn as well as the demons because the word also includes believing and unbelieving djinn. Allah says, "And among us there are righteous folk and among us there are far from that. We are sects having different rules." (Al-Jinn: 11) "And there are among us some who have surrendered (to Allah) and there are among us some who are unjust. And whoso hath surrendered to Allah, such have taken the right path purposefully." (Al-Jinn: 14)

  However, the word shaitan is used to refer to the unbelieving djinn. Allah says, "... and the devil was ever an ingrate to his Lord." (Al-Isra, 27)

  The world of the jinn is an independent and separate world with its own distinct nature and features that are hidden from the world of humans. Djinn and humans have things in common, such as the ability to understand and choose between good and evil.'

  In the Western tradition, demons do not choose between good and evil: they are the embodiment of all that is evil, and are completely and totally dedicated to it.

  According to Islamic tradition, angels and djinn exist in the world beyond, sometimes referred to as the invisible world. Humans were formed from clay, djinn from smokeless fire, and angels from a type of spiritual light called poor. This light has structure, and so angels, like djinn and demons, can shapeshift into any form. While djinn follow their own whims and desires, angels take on other forms only when God has directed them to do so.

  Parts of the invisible world can be perceived on the human level by babies, animals, saints (including religious authorities) and the simple-minded. Djinn see more of the invisible world than we can, but angels see even more. Evil djinn serve the forces of darkness and destruction, and seek to turn people away from God, dooming them to hell.

  As in the Judeo-Christian world, angels in Islam are viewed as positive, protective forces. They are God's messengers and taskmasters, obeying His will. Our modern perception of the shiny, comforting angel of the West evolved over time, however. In early Hebrew lore, some angels didn't look kindly upon humans. In fact, some were downright hostile and didn't want to share Paradise with them, considering it their own privileged territory. When asked by God to bow before his creation, some refused. They were not cast out of heaven as fallen ones, but were incinerated into oblivion. God destroyed these refusing angels until He found those who agreed to honor Adam. Nonetheless, there remained unfriendly angels who attempted to bar access by humans to the various levels of heaven. The mystical merkabah tradition features prayers and secret words that can circumvent such angels.

  As mentioned earlier, early Judeo-Christian angels were the "muscle" for enforcing God's rules. When displeased with people, God sent angels to beat, punish, chastise, and even kill them. In the story of the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, God sent angels to level these cities off the face of the earth. In modern times, westerners have a more idealistic and sanitized view of angels, considering them to be pure spiritual allies in the struggle against evil.

  In Islamic tradition, angels are always obedient to God; there are no defiant or fallen angels. When God ordered angels to kneel before Adam, all complied. The role of defiance fell to the djinn.

  The defiant djinn and the Western fallen angels have points in common besides their defiance and expulsion from God's presence. The fallen angels followed Lucifer, who committed the sin of pride, and fell from heaven to the underworld. From there, they have reign over mankind to tempt, possess, and cause every illness and misfortune among us.6 Though they are completely evil in magical lore, they can be forced to aid and educate people, a risky undertaking.

  The djinn who refused to kneel to Adam followed Iblis, who by some descriptions was a once-great angel, but now equal to Satan. The evil djinn live in another dimension but also operate on earth, trying to deceive and lead people astray, causing possession and misfortune.

  Another kind of wayward Western angel has similarities to the evil djinn: the Watchers. A brief reference to them is made in Genesis 6:1-4, and more information about them is given in the book of Enoch. Called "the Sons of God," they were angels set in heaven to watch over humanity. They coveted women and decided on their own to come down and cohabit with them. In exchange for sexual favors, they taught people the "forbidden arts" of science, metallurgy, chemistry, and divination, among others. Their hybrid offspring, the Nephilim, were cannibalistic monsters, abominations that so offended God that he brought on the Flood to cleanse the earth and begin anew with Noah and his sons.

  Evil djinn are credited with teaching humans the forbidden arts, too. Djinn-human offspring are not quite as fantastic as cannibal
istic monsters, but they are considered abominations, and such unions are forbidden. In both Western and Eastern traditions, angels act as a mouthpiece for God, who does not speak directly to people, with the exception of certain prophets. Angels speak from behind veils or in revelations, dreams, and visionary experiences.

  Guardian Angels and the Qur'an

  In both Christian and Muslim traditions, people are born with guardian angels that provide protection, guidance, and companionship. The Christian guardian angel evolved from helping and protecting beings such as the fravashi of Zoroastrianism (pre-existent souls with human-angel characteristics who reside in homes and communities); the karabu of the Assyrians (half-human, half-animal winged guardians of temples and buildings); the daimones of the Greeks (personal attendant spirits); and the genii of the Romans (guardians of places). The Bible does not refer specifically to guardian angels, but Psalm 91:11-13 does indicate that God provides angels to watch over people:

  He will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

  In Islam, there are two recording angels who sit on either shoulder, recording all the thoughts and deeds of a person through life:

  Behold two (guardian angels) appointed to learn (his doings) learn (and note them) one sitting on the right and one on the left. Not a word does he utter but there is a sentinel by him ready (to note it). Al-Qaf, 50.17-18.

  The record is presented after death in preparation for judgment Day. In another tradition, two angels appear after death to ask a soul questions about its most recent life, and for the purpose of presenting a life record of good and bad thoughts and deeds. If they give the soul their book to hold in the right hand, it means that soul will go to heaven. If they present it to the left hand, the soul will go to hell.