Dear Editor,
After creating fear and panic in schools in Dakar and at Thiès, the jinniya called Maimouna made a theatrical appearance at Kaolack in Senegal last week. Maimouna is invisible in her natural condition to men in their natural condition. A genie. But she has ways to make her presence felt.
Eight young school girls were touched and fell writhing to the ground unconscious, in lightning series. The hand or presence was unseen. The panic shattering but understandable. Maimouna’s victims fell into a sort of trance. The drama begins. The teachers and parents at the school where it happened were shocked and frightened. The bewildered headmaster had no explanation beyond a muttered reference to the “surnaturel.” The doctors who hurriedly examined the victims found nothing wrong. Medical science could not pronounce as to cause or long-term effect. The girls just caught the spirit and then caught themselves afterwards. It makes headlines. Everyone talks about it. Finally the imams and other believers organised a session of Quranic readings.
I read this on the Senegalese news site ‘Seneweb’ and was reminded of what is happening at Santa Rosa currently. And what was happening at Kimbia at a certain period during the National Service days there. The victims seem always to be young and female. The symptoms identical.
The Senegalese have given the jinniya, an invisible being, a name ‘Maimouna’ and a sexual identity. But no motive for the disturbances being caused has been adduced, and the only pattern that is apparent is the choice of victim. The jinniya evidently has some resentment or fear or dislike of young girls, and its supposed identity suggests all kinds of reasons. But “she” may be more than one. Legion, or male. Until an exorcist gets the creature to talk and to tell the truth it will be difficult know.
Then last week in the Trinidad Express there was another story about spirit possession of a schoolgirl. The jinn, cornered, confesses, and asks to be relieved of the thankless task of occupying the girl’s body. A work he says was both boring and unpleasant. But he claimed to have been obliged to it. By an act of sorcery.
Across the Atlantic from Senegal and the Caribbean sea from Trinidad, people in Guyana are complaining about the same thing. An arid philosophical “materialism” that some associate with modernity and science, but which in fact is as old as humanity, will insist against all evidence that we are witnessing perhaps a “mass hysteria” communicated by still to be scientifically determined means, since the victims are often apart and unaware of what is happening to their schoolmates. In the absence of “rational” explanation a sort of sub-scientific speculation will occur. It will seek to expel from the field of analysis all evidence of the supernatural. It will conceal its own ignorance under a cloak of scientism. But it is a scientism unconscious of its own limitations in this field. And therefore incomplete, often conceited, and therefore always unreliable.
Many years ago I was sitting at the Queenstown Masjid when a blind man, led by another, was walked into the compound. The Maji was asked for. He welcomes the visitors and retires with them into a part of the Madrasa. A little while later we watch as he sees them off. He looks sort of shocked. We insist, out of curiosity, on learning what it was about. He gives us only a few details. Hesitatingly. Apparently the blind man was an evangelical pastor who had returned from the USA, got a house in town and started making arrangements to spread the gospel. Trouble began when, entering his house one evening, he gets a terrible cuff to the face from an invisible fist. So the haunting begins. Noise, violence, eye-pass… He tries everything. The jinn is unfazed. The house will not be “cleansed.”
Finally due to the blows he begins to lose his sight. He becomes desperate. Nothing works against the unseen visitors(s). Finally someone asks him to come to the masjid. Omar Saied will remember this occurrence.
We are occupied by our human condition. The stress of the economic and political realities. The violence and crime. We are unaware of the conditions that may cause stress in the population of the jinn and the abnormal and sometimes criminal behaviour some among them will display. The fact is that the wicked among them and the devils must be repulsed.
The Quran teaches us to pray “I seek refuge in the Lord of men, the Sovereign of men the God of men.… From the evil of that which was created…” The surah ends “from jinn and from men.”
For Muslims, as for many religious groups, the existence of jinn is a certainty that manifestly repeats itself every day somewhere in the world. The relief comes in seeking protection of the Lord of men and the sovereign of all creation. The people of Santa Rosa are disturbed by the violation of their children. They should seek appropriate help.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
