Israel’s recent success in eliminating Hamas and Hezbollah commanders has been attributed by influential Iranian theologian Mustafa Karami to nothing less than an army of jinn that Israel has enlisted to serve it. In the Middle East, it is still believed that jinn, who according to the Koran were created before Adam from a smokeless flame, can influence the fate of the world. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, for example, calls them the country’s main enemies, along with the United States and the coronavirus. And in Saudi Arabia, there is even a special anti-magic unit in the Ministry of Justice that has the authority to arrest and interrogate those suspected of witchcraft.
“Jinns can take on many different forms. Most often, they appear in the form of a large snake, a black cat, a black dog, or a sheep,” warns the book “Jinns and Human Diseases,” published in English in 2015 , which seriously describes ways to protect yourself from jinn and their tricks.
The book goes on to suggest how to identify a jinn, who is usually incorporeal and invisible, but can still take on human form. To do this, it is enough to look at the feet of the one whose human nature is in doubt. Jinn usually end in sheep, goat or donkey hooves.
The authors of the manual on counteracting malicious supernatural beings already say in the preface that only overly arrogant and unreasonable people do not believe in jinn. Or those who persist in their disbelief and refuse to recognize the truth of the words of the Koran, in which jinn are mentioned repeatedly.
Not all of them are evil and dangerous to people. Medieval Arab authors wrote that in ancient times, jinn even took human women as wives. According to one legend, the Kurds (for example, the famous commander Saladin belonged to this people) are the descendants of ancient creatures born from marriages between jinn and people.
The Koran says that the jinn, created before Adam from a smokeless flame, have free will and decide for themselves whether to be evil and dangerous creatures or to live peacefully, without interfering with other creations of the Almighty.
“Along with the faithful, among us there are sinners, dissolute people and unbelievers,” one of the verses of the Koran quotes the jinn.
Many Muslim theologians believe that Satan is also a jinn. But unlike the others and much more powerful than his brothers. After all, jinn are mostly mortal, they get sick, suffer and succumb to temptations, they need food and water, they are of different sexes and give birth to little jinn in marriage. Among them are Muslims, Christians and Jews. Moreover, it is the latter who, in the views of Muslims, have established close cooperation with people. First of all, with their fellow believers.
Jinn are of different sexes and give birth to little jinn in marriage
Muslim tradition credits King Solomon (the Prophet Suleiman in the Koran) with the ability to subjugate people, animals, and jinn. The jinn were his soldiers, servants, and builders. For a now forgotten reason, the builders were recruited from among the most rebellious and evil jinn, who were kept from open rebellion only by fear of the almost all-powerful prophet.
In his later years, Suleiman began building a shrine (Muslims believe it was the al-Aqsa Mosque) and was afraid that his restless workers would run away, abandoning the half-finished structure as soon as he died. So he resorted to a trick: he set up a throne opposite the construction site and sat on it, leaning on his staff. Sitting there, Suleiman died quietly, but the jinn did not notice this and, thinking that the prophet was watching their work, finished the construction.
In Jewish sources, the stories of Suleiman-Solomon do not contain a single mention of jinn. But this is probably because the word “jinn” itself comes from pre-Islamic Arabic folklore and was probably simply not familiar to the ancient Jews. But their mythology also included creatures very similar to the Arabic jinn.
In the mythology of the ancient Jews there were also creatures very similar to the Arab genies
The Babylonian Talmud and other sacred books describe creatures called shedim. They are mortal, of two sexes, and need food. They can travel great distances in the blink of an eye, can take on human form, and can cast a curse on anyone who offends them or disturbs their peace.
Like jinn, shedim usually live among ruins or in abandoned houses. Shedim and jinn even have similar origins. Shedim are gods of the peoples who surrounded the monotheistic Jews during the Babylonian captivity. The Jews did not deny their existence, but they did not believe in their divine nature and considered shedim demonic creatures. Jinn were probably also deities of ancient civilizations, the ruins of whose settlements with their frightening idols were occasionally stumbled upon by Arab traders and soldiers.
True, King Solomon lived long before the Babylonian captivity and knew nothing about the shedim. But the Talmud attributes to Solomon the possession of a magical instrument no less miraculous than the army of genie builders of his Koranic double Suleiman.
Jewish books report that the king was able to extract a secret from the leader of the demons, Asmodeus, which allowed him to build the main shrine of Judaism, the Jerusalem Temple. Asmodeus suggested where to find something called shamir . This is either secret knowledge, or a conquered powerful evil spirit, or even a terrible worm. The Talmud says that it was shamir that was used to cut the huge stones from which the Temple was built. That is, shamir performed the same role for Solomon as the genies did for Suleiman.
In general, if you collect all the stories from the Talmud and Kabbalah about supernatural beings who helped Jewish kings, judges, righteous men and rabbis, and add stories about the supernatural abilities of Kabbalists, then Hollywood superheroes will seem like a kindergarten group. Some rabbis even attribute to Kabbalists the very creation, despite the resistance of many countries, of the state of Israel and its survival in a hostile Arab environment.
It is not only their compatriots who believe in the power of Jewish sages. After the spread of Islam throughout the Middle East, Jews found themselves surrounded by much more numerous Muslims. Of course, under the influence of external circumstances, a significant number of Jews left the faith of their fathers, but nevertheless, Jewish communities survived. And many even flourished and had influence on Muslim rulers.
Popular rumor attributed the success of the Jews to their connections with dark forces. Arab sources have preserved rather terrifying stories about Jewish sorcerers who killed people with spells and then resurrected them. Or turned them into dogs and then returned them to human form. And all this in order to intimidate the rulers and force them to fulfill the wishes of the sorcerers.
And, of course, Jews were credited with having a special relationship with genies, whom, it was believed, an experienced sorcerer could subjugate to his will and make work for him.
Jews were credited with having a special relationship with jinn: supposedly an experienced sorcerer could make them work for him
Millions of Muslims around the world still believe in jinn . In rural southern Turkey, strangers are treated with caution and not allowed into their homes, not because they fear for the safety of their property, but because they believe that evil jinn take human form to drive mad the kind souls who offer them shelter (ironically, this superstition is most widespread among the local “descendants of the jinn” – the Kurds).
In the Arab villages around Ramallah, there is no doubt that headaches and stomach cramps in people are the work of jinn who amuse themselves by tormenting the peasants.
After sixty thousand Iraqi troops surrendered the city of Mosul to just one thousand ISIS fighters without a fight in the summer of 2014, rumors spread throughout the country that the jihadists had an army of jinn on their side. It wasn’t the soldiers and officers who lost their nerve, throwing down their weapons and fleeing Mosul in a hurry, but the jinn, using their charms to sow panic among them and make the military believe that there were dozens of times more enemies than there actually were.
After Mosul fell to ISIS, rumors spread across the country that the jihadists had an army of jinn on their side
At the same time, ISIS itself does not consider the jinn to be its friends. At one point, online media outlets affiliated with the group even warned ISIS fighters that the jinn could spy on them while remaining undetected due to their ability to be invisible. In addition, at least one ISIS supporter is known to have tried to blame the jinn.
Caught by British intelligence just a few days before his planned trip to ISIS-controlled Syria, the resident of Luton, England, explained that he was being tormented by jinn and believed that he could only get rid of them by taking the path of jihad.
After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Americans portrayed themselves as exorcists, driving evil jinn out of Afghan caves. Millions of leaflets were dropped from US Air Force planes over the country’s cities and villages , depicting the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in Afghanistan, as a dangerous, bloodthirsty jinn. The Americans knew that most Afghans believed in and feared jinn, so they used the image of these creatures, trying to convince the country’s residents that they had come to fight evil.
In Pakistan, which is a neighbor of Afghanistan, jinn, if we are to believe some local politicians, generally determine the strategy of the authorities. Thus, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan and current prisoner Imran Khan was accused of using these creatures to retain power. Khan’s intra-party rivals claimed that his wife knew how to control two predatory jinn, who, in exchange for meat, spied on her husband’s political opponents and reported on their every move. This became known due to the leak of recordings of a telephone conversation between functionaries close to Khan, but dissatisfied with his ever-growing influence. One of them told the other stories about jinn, which is why he was expelled from the party.
One of Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientists and an open supporter of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, seriously believes that the most effective way to overcome the energy crisis will be to enslave the jinn, who are known to be made of fire and therefore constantly emit thermal energy.
One of Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientists believes energy crisis can be overcome by enslaving djinns
Alaa Hassanein, a former member of parliament and close associate of former President Hosni Mubarak, known as the “member of the genies and goblins,” is currently serving a ten-year sentence in an Egyptian prison. He began his public career as a participant in a TV show dedicated to the supernatural, and claimed that he could control genies.
He was so convincing that he not only got ordinary voters to vote for him, but also made it so that Mubarak, after his overthrow and arrest, chose Hassanein as his lawyer. However, neither the lawyer nor the public career of the MP of the “genies and goblins” went well after the revolution. In 2022, the former TV magician and politician went to jail on charges of stealing and selling abroad numerous ancient Egyptian artifacts.
Moreover, it was not the genies who helped him in his criminal activities, but rather ordinary people, citizens of Saudi Arabia, where, by the way, since the end of the 2000s a special unit has been operating within the structure of the local Ministry of Justice to combat magic. It ensures that books about Harry Potter do not enter the country, has the authority to arrest and interrogate suspects of witchcraft, and regulates the activities of exorcists engaged in the expulsion of genies.
Saudi Arabia has a special Justice Ministry unit to combat magic
The most jinn-possessed country right now is definitely Iran. According to local authorities, almost nothing in this world happens without the participation of jinn, including those working for the Jews.
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fell out of favor with the country’s top leadership, the Council of Theological Experts, and was eventually removed from office after respected religious figures claimed that he had sorcerers in his entourage who summoned jinn.
About a decade later, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei gave a fiery speech listing his country’s main enemies, including the United States, the coronavirus, and an army of jinn.
Ayatollah Khamenei named the US, coronavirus and the army of genies as Iran’s main enemies
According to the Ayatollah, the jinn are helping Iran’s enemies prepare a war against the Islamic Republic. Khamenei did not say who these enemies are. But there was no need. Iranian media regularly report that jinn and other supernatural beings are working for Israel. As evidence of this, they cite medieval tales about Jewish sorcerers who easily kill and resurrect people with the help of otherworldly forces.
Therefore, the words of one of the leading Iranian theologians, Mustafa Karami, who stated that “jinn and other evil creatures helped the Jews” to reach the top of Hezbollah and destroy it, have been a familiar Middle Eastern mainstream for a couple of thousand years now.