Jinn

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Gather 'round the campfire for

 Folklore 

RW Folklore Template 2.png
My grandmum used to say....
Jinn, in their native costume.
The stereotypical Jinn lamp. Don't polish it too much, or you'll go blind.
The wrong kind of jinn, but it still can take you to faraway lands...

A jinn (same plural; alternative transliterations are djinn and genie) is a supernatural being in traditional Arab and/or Islamic folklore. Like many other fairies, they have been demonized by an Abrahamic religion, although this time it's Islam instead of Christianity. According to Islamic theology, jinn were created by Allah from "smokeless fire" and like humans posses free will - some jinn are good, others are evil. The ifrit are a type of jinn and a medieval Iranian slur for black Africans.

According to one tradition, Iblis (the Islamic version of Satan) was a jinn. (The other one is that he's a renegade angel.) Iblis and his crew are usually called shaytan, "devils", with the capital-S Shaytan reserved for Iblis himself, just like Satan is "the Devil" in Christianity.

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[edit] Demons

Belief in jinn still persists among some superstitious and/or fundamentalists Muslims in the same way belief in demons persists among some superstitious and/or fundamentalists Christians. Exorcisms are attempted on individuals displaying mental or physical illness to get rid of the jinn possessing them. As with the Christian version, this can lead to severe abuse against the people believed to be possessed. For example, in July 2010 emerged reports about a man in Saudi Arabia who had kept his "jinn-possessed" son in chains for six years.[1] In 2009, in Birmingham, a 21-year old Pakistani immigrant woman was smothered by her husband and some of his relatives in an attempt to drive out a jinn possessing her.[2]

[edit] The One Thousand and One Nights version

Jinn are known for shapeshifting into different animals and sizes, being invisible, and granting wishes, usually coming in sets of three. Makes you wonder why Allah didn't give humans any cool superpowers.

King Solomon was believed to capture jinn in bottles. He would throw them into the sea and people would release them and get three wishes. However, they would usually trick the jinn to go back into the bottle.

Genies are very popular and have been featured in several films, books, and television shows. They are usually sadistic or goofy (or both). According to Western narrative clichés, jinn spend their time locked in lamps or bottles and grant at most three wishes to the one that frees them (and sometimes behave like sadistic fans of LessWrong).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

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