The Judge and the Jinni
I’ve been around many places in this world, and I’ve been introduced to many folktales, legends and myths, none of course would hold up or would be considered evidence in a court of law… mostly anywhere in the world.
I have noticed that people who come from a certain socio-economic background believe in similarly different things. People in North America have the UFO sightings and bigfoot, people in South America see the Virgin Mary more than anywhere else and they also have the Chupacabra (similar creatures are known in Egypt as the Sir’awa and in Saudi as the Namnam)
However, nothing takes over my people as much as tales of the Jinn and what they can do.
As they are mentioned in the Quran as creatures created by God, but unlike Angels they have free will and can do good and bad things.
So the story goes that a judge in Saudi is being investigated for corruption, and instead of blaming his own greed he is blaming a Jinni, and that he was under a magic spell that made him pass documents that should not have been passed, and that Jinni has been “interrogated” according to Okaz newspaper, in the presence of members of Alhai’a Ghostbusters department “magic committee”.
I used to think that the two billion dollars allocated to overhaul the Saudi legal system was an overestimation, right now… I think it might take more than that.
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Oct 21, 2010 @ 14:38:11
In all seriousness, does a jinni need a guardian and ahwal madaniyyah to be convicted? What if it was a female jinniyyah? Would her jinni father need to represent her? And if convicted, what form of punishment would this jinni receive? Banishment inside a memory flash disk for all eternity, perhaps?
Thank you for you consideration,
Now please allow me to resume ROFLing.
Oct 21, 2010 @ 15:56:35
Good one about the flash disk
I assume it would be a lamp shaped flash disk right?
Oct 21, 2010 @ 15:29:39
looooool Applying your theory my dear Qusay on real life situations would mean the following:
If a student cheat and is corrupt we would need to reform the whole student buddy in Saudi and pay billions for it!
If a trader cheats, we would need to do with all traders and pay billions to train others!
If a citizen is corrupt. We have to get rid our population and somehow breed other kind of honest creatures to take their place!
He is a single man. It was an individual act. & no! It wouldn’t cost us much more to reform the system
Oct 21, 2010 @ 16:01:41
Come on, you know what I mean
blaming a Jinni? and then there is a committee to hear what the jinni has to say?
I hope and wish this turns out to be something out of the tabloids, I really do.
Oct 21, 2010 @ 23:41:26
Now you’ve got me humming the Ghostbusters tune all day! Most Jinn stories border on the ridiculous but this time I think they’ve outdone themselves! Perhaps Harry Potter’s Ministry of Magic needs to be called upon to advise….
Oct 25, 2010 @ 19:33:47
lol
good one DD
Oct 22, 2010 @ 03:50:43
Funny!
This seems to fall into the “devil-made-me-do-it” category. Can’t say that I’ve ever seen an American excused by a jury for that defense. Maybe he could use the Twinkie Defense. Still the guy was convicted of *something*!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense
BTW, is there any precedent for jinn causing people to do wrong? Like, did it stand up in court as a valid defense or did this guy just make it up so he wouldn’t be blamed? Maybe it’s like demon possession where the demon influences a person to rob a bank or rape or murder. Do you think this can happen or does it belong in the funny pages or tabloids?
The funniest part to me is that a committee investigated his claims!
Oct 25, 2010 @ 19:37:12
Thanks for the comment Susanne, not in all of Islam’s history have I heard of a the influence of jinn on a court of law (keep in mind I am not a scholar, but those stories would’ve surfaced by now)
At least in the case of twinkies (now I am craving twinkies and cupcakes, thanks) they have something they can hold and measure the effects of.
Oct 22, 2010 @ 17:37:30
Shar Albaleyati ma yudhek,
The sad thing is they (the judge and the committee) think people will believe it and back off asking for the Judge’s head,
Oct 25, 2010 @ 19:38:27
Thanks Duha, yes, I think, that they think, that the public will buy this “darwasha”, even if the public does, I hope the courts wont
Oct 23, 2010 @ 00:41:12
It seems like an insanity plea, folklore style. Many people in the world believe that mental illness, or bad behaviour, is caused by demon possession, and some can fake believing that.
One might wish to take him at his word, in which case he would be “disbarred”, exorcised, and his family would be responsible for his debts.
Exorcisms are available at Bouya Omar, in Morocco, a famous shrine, and place where family members are taken by their loved ones to have the demons starved, beaten, and otherwise bodily removed from them. Many, along with their “janoun” are there for years, chained, naked, dirty, malnourished, and regularly physically tormented, I mean, “saved”.
Tel Quel did a good article in French about it, liberally using the word “enfer” ie hell.
Bouya Omar. Reportage en enfer
Of course, the Vatican also does exorcisms, but they don’t advertise them much, and that might be too much interfaith intervention for the judge’s taste, not to mention that of his jinni,
So, indeed, exorcise this judge permanently, and keep up the much needed reforms.
Oct 25, 2010 @ 19:43:43
Thanks Chiara
The centers, or exorcism places are also there in Saudi… the funny thing is, the same so called “wahabbi” tradition eliminated those places so they cannot operate in the open, and some of those stories (i.e. witchcraft) practitioners are those who operate some of those places. So the same tradition that denies the claims, cannot use the same methods to get the testimony of the jinni… at least that is what I think…. but hey, if I was investigated for some 100 million corruption case… I am going to say I was doing it to help you get out of London
lol
Oct 27, 2010 @ 05:05:55
Chiara,
You said: “One might wish to take him at his word, in which case he would be “disbarred”, exorcised, and his family would be responsible for his debts.”
I wonder if taking him at his word would work in this case. In psychology they have EQ tests, in which ridiculous questions are asked, sometimes repeatedly in different formats, and one of them is “Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind” or “I think I’m insane” – and you’ve got to rate it on a scale of 5, 1 being absolutely true and 5 being completely false. I’m told by psychologists that if a person answers in the affirmative, it means they “know” they’re insane, which actually means they’re not insane….
Strange but true
Press freedom ranking, arms, doctors, genies, he’s back! « Saudi Jeans
Oct 24, 2010 @ 12:35:11
[...] back home is laughing about this. I don’t want to talk about [...]
Oct 25, 2010 @ 06:13:17
When I was at university many years ago, I did a course in law and we studied some South African criminal cases in which belief in demons known as the tokoloshe were used in the defence arguments. Some were held up in court. A few years ago, a film named A Reasonable Man, was made in which a lawyer takes on a case of a young herd boy from a rural area in South Africa, who is accused of killing a one-year baby, believing that he was killing a tokoloshe. The story looks at what determines “a reasonable man” in legal terms – in other words, would a reasonable man from the city have the same beliefs as a reasonable man in the rural area and therefore would it be considered “reasonable” for the herd boy, given his upbringing and belief system, to have honestly thought that he was killing a demon, instead of a child.
Oct 25, 2010 @ 19:45:36
Good argument Desert demons
I have to add that movie to my list now