Why jinn possess

A certain emphasis will be put on commentators who tend to abstain from metaphorical interpretation and who cultivate a more literalistic or Salafi understanding of the Quran and Sunna.

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Authors Authors and affiliations Mudhi al-Shimmari. Chapter First Online: 14 March This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. Acknowledgments I would like to thank everyone who commented on this text negatively or positively. Wiesbaden: Steiner. He even says some people have operations they do not need because the Jinn has tricked doctors.

You have to have a faith in it and it will work. So yes, anxiety, depression, heart problems, many, believe me, many problems get cured by this healing.

Despite this, Mr Mohammed admits he does have some clients come to him who are seriously ill and need medical attention, particularly those who are mentally unwell. When year-old Nadeem whose name we have changed became ill he and his family thought he had a spiritual problem, that he was also possessed by a Jinn:. My thinking is big; I'm thinking a lot of things. He says that in the night he went down stairs and told his father how he was feeling:.

Nadeem's parents took him to an exorcist for treatment:. I was on the floor in my house and I was screaming and the Jinn was trying to come out of my mouth," he says. Nadeem says he felt better for his treatment, but that he did not recover and was eventually taken to hospital. He is now diagnosed with schizophrenia and takes daily medication. Cases like Nadeem's, in which his illness was instantly attributed to possession, are not entirely uncommon and are a cause for concern among mental health professionals.

Professor Swaran Singh, head of the Mental Health and Wellbeing division at Warwick Medical School, has just completed a five year study, funded by the Department of Health, into why patients from ethnic minority backgrounds were often reaching mental health services in a more severely ill state than the rest of the population. When they become seriously unwell, like when they develop delusions or start hearing voices, then the groups diverge.

So they seek help through the Imams, through the mosque," he says. Among British Asians the belief in evil spirits is not uncommon. It can be concepts like black magic or the evil eye, it can also be that the body can be possessed causing physical harm. British Muslims in particular are brought up learning of the existence of Jinn in the Koran, though what the Jinn actually are is not universally agreed upon.

Prof Singh says that religious care can bring a great deal of comfort to patients, but it can create serious problems if it is the only help sought:. By that time a lot of damage has been done from the untreated illness. As well as the misdiagnosis of mental health problems there have been other extreme consequences to the attribution of possession.

In September this year four members of the same family were found guilty of the murder of year-old Naila Mumtaz in Birmingham. Birmingham Crown Court was told that Mrs Mumtaz's in-laws, Zia Ul-Haq and Salma Aslam, who along with her husband Mohammed Mumtaz and brother-in-law Hammad Hassan were convicted of her killing, thought she was possessed by evil spirits.

The trial heard evidence that she was killed as family members attempted to drive out a harmful Jinn spirit. Naila's brother Nasir Mehmood believes Jinn was used as a way of "explaining away" the death:.

Jinn killed her. There's no reason to explain anything further than that. People are very susceptible to believe that sort of stuff," he says. Tony Medhi, a family friend who helped Mr Mehmood through the case, says he is very used to seeing spiritual possession used as a "catch all" for any problems in the British Pakistani community he grew up in:. If somebody isn't behaving correctly, maybe somebody's behaviour is very extreme, it could be due to some mental illness, or physical disability or something like that, people will turn around and say 'it's Jinn.