The existence of jinns is taken for granted in many Qur’an passages, and for numerous Muslims that is enough to establish that they exist. In the Qur’an a group of jinns say upon hearing the Qur’an recited: “And among us are Muslims, and among us are the unjust” (72:14). It is no surprise, from the standpoint of the Qur’an, that the unjust ones would team up with the Jews, whom the Qur’an designates as “the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers” (5:82) to create what may be the most outlandish all-time example of Islamic antisemitism and conspiracy paranoia: “Iran Cleric: Jews Use Sorcery to Spy,” by Azadeh Moaveni, The Daily Beast, July 5, 2014 (thanks to Pedro):
Iran’s state broadcaster, known as Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, IRIB, has never been the country’s most dignified institution. But even by its own standards, the network plunged into a fresh abyss of superstition and fear-mongering with a recent broadcast in which Valiollah Naghipourfar, a cleric and professor at Tehran University, discusses the use of jinns, or genies, in public life.
“Can jinns be put to use in intelligence gathering?” the presenter asks ingenuously, as though dragons can also serve as defense ministers and we’ve all entered the realm of the Hobbit.
The cleric nods, as though speaking about a species of exotic elf: “The Jew is very practiced in sorcery. Indeed most sorcerers are Jews.”
The conversation moves on, and Naghipourfar discusses how the Zionists deploy jinns to undermine the Islamic Republic, and how the Jewish faith is especially adept at the black arts.
Jinns, of course, are supernatural creatures, nearly always demonic or evil, with origins in Islamic mythology; in Iranian culture, there is great strength attributed to their nefarious ways, and many believe that sorcerers or magicians employ jinns to do everything from tormenting a meddling mother-in-law to sabotaging a romantic rival.
That such base prejudice and folk anti-Semitism could be peddled on state television is especially painful given Iran’s long history of religious tolerance among sects. Jewish Iranians arguably have fared better in Iran, and felt themselves more Iranian, than the region’s Arab Jews, who have largely abandoned their home countries and emigrated to Israel or the West.
Mystical bigotry remains the enduring obsession of a small clique of religious extremists within the Islamic Republic’s establishment, who are deeply out of touch with the mores and attitudes of young Iranians, who are sure-footed and largely sophisticated when it comes to dealing with religious difference.
I realized this when I first moved to Tehran as an adult. I lived with my grandfather off of Villa Street, near the Behjat Abbad market, a neighborhood with a bustling Armenian Christian community. Many of the Muslim and Christian Iranians in our area had lived side by side each other for generations, and there was a tolerance for and co-existence with each other’s presence that struck me as incredible, given the chauvinism of the Islamic leadership we were all living under.
The neighborhood’s young people would flirt with each other at coffee shops and sandwich joints, often aware of each other’s religious background, but accustomed enough to being with one another, and enlightened enough, not to care at all.
“The Jew is very practiced in sorcery. Indeed most sorcerers are Jews.”
I’m not saying they would all grow up and marry one another across religious lines, but in the course of daily life, in homework circles, friendship groups, office party socializing, there was a relaxed progressiveness around the question of religious difference.
This seemed all the more meaningful to me because of the contrast with other cities where I had been spending time: Cairo, where my Christian landlady railed against the “Muslim butchers with their disgusting Eid Al-Adha, [when sheep are slaughtered] dripping blood everywhere,” and Beirut, where people so often asked your last name first—to figure out your religious background—before negotiating with you socially.
Tehran, and the young people in the neighborhood, seemed worlds away from such religious tensions. That they manage to retain, on the whole, this enlightened spirit, is testament to their own sophistication and independence of thought, given the sort of prejudiced drivel that a determined circle within the political elite seems determined to promote.
For this narrow band of orthodox Muslims, Jewish Iranians and Christian Iranians are as foreign as Martians, to be avoided and viewed with fear and mistrust, for who knows what polluted and nefarious things they get up to, despite belonging to an Abrahamic faith.
That notion that all Jews are sorcerers, or that most sorcerers are Jews, remains the fringe view of extremist clerics like Naghipourfar. Such paranoia and fear of the other, of course, is typical among the ultra-orthodox of any religion. But in Iran, such people operate in the highest echelons of the state and can peddle their prejudice on state television.
That they have failed to turn Iranian young people against one another on the basis of their religious background is something that matters deeply, and it is a sign of the ever-widening gulf between the modern young people who tune out such hateful messages and the clerical establishment, more ignored with each passing day.
That Naghipourfar is a professor at Tehran University makes one wonder, will he offer a course in ‘Jinns and the Art of Intelligence Gathering?’ Will University of Tehran political science students be obliged to game out strategies against a jinn? Maybe the cleric can rub his own magic lamp, and ask it to explain the concept known as brain drain.
jihad3tracker says
This post has me reaching for a DVD with classic Road Runner cartoons on it….
I’ll be back after watching a few.
John Duffin says
Oh religion! You just can’t make this stuff up. It would be absolutely hilarious if it wasn’t so detrimental to human existence. Is there any doubt we are one chromosome away from a chimpanzee?
mortimer says
It is common knowledge among Iranian university teachers that Jews are awarded most of the Nobel Prizes…for sorcery.
Buraq says
Tinkerbell, scourge of the Ayatollahs, bringer of famine and flood. Sandstorms done for a few extra Riyals!
Clowns!
Jaladhi says
Only goes to show how utterly stupid these Muslims are!!
BC says
As I keep saying it is not stupidity it is insanity. Islam is a’religion’ that makes its adherents insane. The mere fact that they are so delusional as to belive in demons is evedence that they are so backward that they still hold the beliefs of primitive peoples , that civilised people a gave a up centuries ago. However people did believe in them then, but since the Enlightenment/ Renaissence we have steadily shed such fantasies. They do persist in the fascination that people have for books, games and movies like Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons etc.
pselliott says
You have almost hit the nail on the head. The answer to the problems of the Middle East: Why do the Muslims want all of the Jews and Christians dead? Foremost, it was Isaac…not Ishmael….As long as Jews and Christian exist, Islam is proved a false religion. As to ‘demons’, they do exist…remember the 1/3 of the angels that were thrown out of Heaven? Those are your demons. Well, not you exactly…..and I agree on your insanity comment…why else would large groups of people throw rocks at armed soldiers?!
David says
Wow, look at the taqiyya flying here, Muslim leaders in Australia playing the victim card for Muslims going overseas to wage jihad in the Middle East. Unbelievable!
http://www.smh.com.au/world/recruits-to-syria-and-iraq-not-driven-by-jihad-muslim-leader-says-20140705-zsutw.html
“It is the desire to help people, to rebuild communities and provide support to orphans, children and victims of the fighting in Syria and Iraq that is driving the recruitment of young men from Sydney, according to a senior member of the Muslim community.
Some nerve!
Also, Australian jihadists in the Middle East threaten our diggers.
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2397437/jihadist-threat-to-diggers/?cs=7
London Jinn says
‘dem jinns is a wascally lot. 🙂
London Jim says
‘Brain Drain’. Heck, my late uncle, David Watson (creationalist par èxample), wrote a book with that title years ago regarding the modern abandonment of simple faith.
Jim Watson says
That’s David C C Watson, ‘The Great Brain Drain’.
jihad3tracker says
For everyone too young to see “I Dream of Jeannie” when it was originally on TV, it starred the hottest ( !!! ) sitcom female ever — Barbara Eden.
And Larry Hagman certainly held up his own end as the cutest sitcom astronaut ever to splash down somewhere off the coast of “Arabia”.
jewdog says
The Mullahs better watch out. I’ve been sticking pins in my Mullah doll and cursing them, while I sip on my jinn fizz.
Oliver says
I thought jinn fizz was an alcoholic drink, but jinn was spelled gin.
Am or was I wrong?
ebonystone says
“That Naghipourfar is a professor at Tehran University makes one wonder, will he offer a course in ‘Jinns and the Art of Intelligence Gathering?’”
I expect that Berkeley or Harvard will soon hire him to teach courses in “Jinn Studies”. They would fit right in with the courses on “Black Studies” and “Gay Studies” and “Chicano Studies”.
head up a new department
shrugger says
AHH, I laughed through that entire thing. Well of course high technology would appear as sorcery to the inbred mind of a Mullah.
ooooh, shiny.
Jan Fourowls says
Re: “For this narrow band of orthodox Muslims, Jewish Iranians and Christian Iranians are as foreign as Martians, to be avoided and viewed with fear and mistrust, for who knows what polluted and nefarious things they get up to, despite belonging to an Abrahamic faith.”
Islam is not authentically an “Abrahamic faith” any more than is Zoroastrianism just because Muslims make that false claim to forward their desire to achieve interfaith “equivalency” in the US which, as part of taqiyyah, they would later (if successful) use as springboard for Islamic dominance, dhimmitude, and the rest of the horror show.
Unlike Jewish scripture (Torah) from the time of Abraham and Sarah forward, and the lineage for God’s covenant people they established by their marriage, the Quran is a late and fake “Abrahamic” comer to the scene. The Quran hatefully piggybacks upon the Bible as known in 6th and 7th century Mecca and as plagiarized in deceitful reversal by Muhammad as to Jews and Christians.
One of the most skillful PR coups of Muslims in the US and Europe by stealth jihad is to confuse, into a false sense of complacency, lukewarm Christians and secular Jews with the false claim of Islam being just another “Abrahamic” religion. That nasty bit of taqiyyah alone would show the Muslim reversal of where the demonic actually lies in the inter-religious jihad for genocide and/or enslavement Islam wages continually against Jews and Christians.
From really smart and well-educated (Christian) exegetes addressing postmodern Westerners on how the supernatural may actually exist in this world (surprise, the Bible might actually have something to say about it): http://books.google.com/books/about/God_at_War.html?id=Hj791_BeAF0C; http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-warfare-and-weakness-interlude.html; http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/03/walter-wink-and-greg-boyd-on-the-problem-of-evil/
duh_swami says
I know for a fact there’s two or three jinn living under the hood of my car. Every time I drive it, I can hear them squealing and banging around under there. I tried to buy a jinn wrench, but no auto parts store sells them..
gravenimage says
Iran: Muslim cleric and university professor says Jews use spirit beings to undermine the Islamic Republic
………………………………………
A poster here yesterday was rather nonplussed that the sanguinary “Caliph” Al-Bagdadi had a PhD—but the above shows the caliber of universities in Dar-al-Islam.
As for the Jews and the Jinns, reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s account of living in Saudi Arabia as a child, she found that “the Jews” were blamed *for almost everything*—including the pipes clogging, the car refusing to start, and, even more remarkably, whether the boss was short-tempered that day.
It was clear that Jews were not considered human beings at all, but rather mischievous spirits like Jinn.
Deeming Jews sorcerers who control Jinn is not much different.
More:
“Can jinns be put to use in intelligence gathering?”
………………………………………
Why not? Muslims have already accused Jews of using birds and squirrels to spy on Muslims. This shows further ignorance, as pious Muslims appear to believe that animals have that kind of agency. Of course, they offer as “proof” what usually turn out to be tracking tags from Israeli or European naturalists.
More:
The cleric nods, as though speaking about a species of exotic elf: “The Jew is very practiced in sorcery. Indeed most sorcerers are Jews.”
………………………………………
Of course! Except for those sorcerers who are maids or television personalities, that is—victims from both these groups, *especially* the former, have been accused of “sorcery” and sometimes sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia…
Pious Muslims are not just irrational and superstitious—they are irrational and superstitious in such *ugly ways*. No “Lucky Pennies” or propitious colors here—just paranoia and cruelty.
Jay Boo says
” Jews use spirit beings to undermine the Islamic Republic”
Satanic Verses
Isn’t that like when pretend prophet Muhammad claimed he was ‘tricked’ by the devil when he quoted jinn spirits as if they were the words of Allah?
Mirren10 says
Jinn are special.
Only mohammedans are afflicted by them. So that must mean only mohammedans are special.
Jinns of the world unite ! You have nothing to lose but your mohammedans ! 🙂
faboutlaws says
And all this time I thought Israeli Mossad’s intelligence gathering was done with squirrels, sharks and banded birds. The Jews are now going on the cheap with jinn?
Jay Boo says
Harry Potter meets Islam and Islam blinks.
Jay Boo says
Historical fantasy note:
The good jinn’s twin sister’s character of ” I Dream Of Jeannie ” was from Bagdad which I just learned last night as I was flicking through channels.
Imagine a subservient woman whose only desire in life is to please her master.
I wonder what religion they got that twisted fantasy from?
gravenimage says
Jay Boo wrote:
Imagine a subservient woman whose only desire in life is to please her master.
……………………………..
Yes…but. Jay Boo, the first thing Tony does after Jeannie effects his rescue (as an astronaut his ship was lost when returning to earth off the coast of Arabia) was *to free her*.
She had already fallen in love with him, and so follows him home.
Yes, she continues to call him “master”—but he is not, and Jeanie *certainly* has a will of her own. And while he is often annoyed with her antics, he comes to fall in love with her, as well. Near the end of the series they marry.
The series is extremely silly, but ultimately quite sweet—not Islamic at all except in the most superficial of trappings.
Jay Boo says
Thanks gravenimage
“The series is extremely silly, but ultimately quite sweet”
I have forgotten much of it over the years but what a contrast in those older shows were compared to some of the garbage peddled today on prime time TV. Despite some limitations they were much better overall.
Twilight zone, Andy Griffith, Spanky and our Gang are but ancient history.
Maury Povitch,Graphic Vengeance flicks, and sarcastic sitcoms that attempt at humor with tired worn-out sexual innuendo ‘jokes’ propped up with endless laugh tracks to remind us and train us of what we are supposed to find funny are in their place.
Angemon says
Jinns? What’s the matter, did they ran out of animals already?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgCR7YNyChc
Seriously though, this bozos make Borat look like a zionist…
Papa Giorgio says
They are called angels.
Oliver says
On a more serious note. The author states– when he first moved to Tehran—–
young(er) ( my guess–US equivalent -high school/college/grad school) –Christians, Muslims, Jews would gather —blah- blah-blah.
That I would think HAD TO BE IN THE SHAH’S TIME, not after Khomeini and his wackos took over. With the Morality Police ( possibly under a different name in Iran)- the thugs who rode on motorcycles checking how women were dressed, etc.
If so, it should be noted–Iran, from all I have read and seen, since Carter threw the Shah under the bus, has been anything but tolerant.