In the last reflection I shared the first part of my friend Hanan’s account of some of her spiritual encounters. I share this not to exalt the presence of darkness but rather to shed light on a worldview and help us become more aware of the spiritual battle in which we’re engaged. Hanan continued her story, telling me of another spiritual experience:
When I was young, I dreamed a lot about cats, and about big cockroaches that would jump up in my face, and spiders – once I saw a spider that was trying to get inside of me. Of course, I was scared because I was so young, and I would hear things like “there are jinn in the bathroom” – which is true, the bathroom is the place in the house where the jinn reside.
I asked my religion teacher once about why I was dreaming all these things. She told me maybe I was possessed by a jinn. I wondered: why me? Then I heard that sometimes a jinn is attracted to you (as a girl). Or maybe there’s something good in you that you’re going to do in the future so the jinn tries to ruin it. They don’t want us to do the right thing, so they possess us.
As I got older, it got weirder and weirder. It went on for years, seeing the same dreams. One day, my family went to a sheikh. My sister was 31 at the time and had gotten extremely depressed. We knew we needed to go to the sheikh to have him recite the Qur’an over her. We went to a sheikh who we knew had a reputation for being able to heal through reciting.
Before he started, he made her faint so that she wouldn’t feel what’s happening. Then he started reading specific verses so that the jinn would come out of her – it had to come out through her toes (if it came out from any other place, it might cause a problem for her). As he started reciting (she was unconscious), we could see her legs trembling, trembling all the way down until it came out of her feet.
I didn’t realize that I was trembling as I watched. The sheikh looked at me and asked why I was trembling, and I didn’t know why, I hadn’t even noticed it. She woke up and they asked her what she saw. I don’t remember what she said, but they told her that someone had cast a spell on her.
Then it was my turn. He made me faint, so of course, I don’t know what happened, but I woke up and my wrist was hurting like someone had twisted my arm hard. He asked me what I saw, and I told him I saw myself in a car with a small child who was crying. He told me that I had mes (touch of a jinn).
I think that God predestined for this to happen to me so that I would have more faith and read the Qur’an more. I still have the dreams, but I read/recite every day so that I don’t think of them as much. God wanted me to change for the better from this experience, and so that I become stronger in my faith.
When Hanan shared this experience with me, I didn’t know how to respond, except to ask questions and try to understand her experience. By the end of our time together, I could tell she was a bit shaken by having recalled these memories. “I’ve never told those stories to anyone,” she told me. “And I don’t think I will ever tell them again. It’s too scary.” I shared with her that as Christians, we believe that the One who lives in us is greater than any spirit in the world (1 John 4:4). I didn’t know what else to say in that moment. My language ability, my worldview, and even my spiritual understanding were all stretched hearing her account.
I went home from that meeting with a lot to think about. In her nightmare, the jinn told her that it would stay with her and not leave her. Is it still with her? The sheikh appeared to have taken care of the jinn in her sister through recitation. In another recording, she told me of how eye pain caused by someone’s envy of her was miraculously healed when she drank water over which the Qur’an had been read.
Scripture tells us that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14). I have no doubt that the enemy will use every manner possible to carry out his deception.
My conversations with Hanan are a reminder that we are not just dealing with human logic or mental understanding of the Gospel. We’re not just up against a culturally religious system that keeps people walking in line. Ephesians 6 tells us we are up against the devil’s schemes – spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm. We face the rulers and authorities and powers of this dark world.
God’s desire is to rescue Muslims from the dominion of darkness and bring them into the kingdom of His beloved Son (Col 1:13). He has sent us “to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). We do not shrink back from the spiritual battle – we enter with the authority of Jesus and the full armor of God.