THE JINN, DEMONS AND STATUES

Do the spirit of jinn exist in some statues? In certain religion and faiths, statues of deities are worshiped. Some of them, they claim, have supernatural powers. Could it be the jinn within the statue? Are they really worshipping the jinn? Robert Lebling in his 2013 Facebook posting mentioned this as a serious possibility. He writes, “Some Christian thinkers rightly believed that the idols were inanimate, the general opinion prevalent at the time – as we have seen from the incident at Gaza – was that they were inhabited by maleficent demons. This belief, as interpreted by strict churchmen, dictated immediate action: the statues had to be destroyed. But many statues survived even so, and the demons within them underwent, as it were, a graduate change of personality. From being actively maleficent, they became vaguely sinister; the best thing to do was to leave them alone. Some statues became talismans and fulfilled a useful role by averting various calamities and minor nuisances: palladia fall within this category. Others came to be considered as the magical doubles of prominent men or even of entire nations. In short, as the original significance of the statues was forgotten, a new “folkloristic” significance arose in the popular imagination. “The demons, of course, did not immediately surrender their powers, as a couple of examples will show. On the very day when the Emperor Maurice was assassinated in Constantinople (in 602), a calligrapher in Alexandria, returning home late at night after a party, chanced to pass in front of the temple of Tyche. To his amazement, the statues that were erected there slid down from their pedestals and, addressing him in a loud voice, described the emperor’s downfall. This intelligence was conveyed to the prefect of Egypt, who enjoined secrecy on the calligrapher. Sure enough, nine days later messengers arrived in Alexandria bringing the tragic news. As every Byzantine knew, demons had the faculty of swift locomotion and were thus able to apprehend events that took place at a great distance. This faculty they often passed off as foreknowledge, a gift they did not possess”. It is therefore very likely that the jinn live in our midst within statues and idols, or even portraits of humans. Is that the reason that Muslims discourage the display of portraits and images of humans within homes and buildings?

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