Summer Harvest

Since Gordon Creighton’s been mentioned in a few places lately, and since I was reminded of ths subject by the latest post on Cabinet of Wonders, I thought I’d dust off this old post on the similarities between the Islamic Jinn legend and UFO encounters.

I’m still firmly convinced, as Jeff Wells, that the UFO phenomenon is divorced from our normal perception of space and time. See also this great post on The Heavy Stuff, which asks where all the “space” goes in experiences dealing with missing time.

(Strap in, this gets weird!)

It strikes me that in our investigations into UFO entities and what we call “Ultraterrestrials,” we would be doing ourselves a great disservice to neglect the long tradition in Muslim cultures that address these very critters. Thankfully, a few renegade UFO nuts have done just that. The late Gordon Creighton, in his rather seminal (if somewhat culturally prejudiced) essay entitled “A Brief account of the true nature of the “UFO entities,” lists the following characteristics which can be found attributed to Jinn in Muslim literature:

1. In the normal state they are not visible to ordinary human sight.
2. They are, however, capable of materializing and appearing in the physical world. And they can alternately make themselves visible or invisible at will.
3. They can change shape, and appear in any sort of guise, large or small. (See for example, Ahmad Jamaludin”s excellent report, A WAVE OF SMALL HUMANOIDS IN MALAYSIA IN 1970, in FSR Vol. 28, No. 5). Ahmad Jamaludin is a Muslim, and he knows, of course, what it is that we are talking about.
4. They are able also to appear in the guise of ANIMALS. (Yetis? Pumas? Loch Ness Monsters? )
5. They are inveterate liars and deceivers, and delight in bamboozling and misleading mankind with all manner of nonsense. (See the average Spiritualist SEANCE for examples of their activities, and also the usual “communications” from UFO entities in close-encounter cases. )
6. They are addicted to the abduction or kidnapping of humans. . . .
7. They delight in tempting humans into sexual intercourse and liaisons with them, and Arabic literature abounds with accounts of this kind of contact by mankind with both the “goodies” and the “baddies” among the JINNS.
8. THE JINNS are wont to snatch up humans and teleport or transport them, setting them down again — if indeed they ever do set them down again — miles away from where they were picked up, and all this is the “twinkling of an eye”. . . .
9. The Arabian tradition asserts that, throughout all known history, there have been a few particular human beings who, through some strange favour, have “been in league with the JINNS” or “had a compact with the JINNS” — to such a degree that the JINNS have endowed them with what we regard as “preternatural powers” — ie. , PSYCHIC POWERS.

If these characteristics don’t remind you of anything, you haven’t been paying attention.

The difference between the Muslim approach to Jinn and the Western cultural approach to Ultraterrestrials seems to be one of great degree. According to most sources, Islam… well, I’ll let Gordon Creighton summarize it again (the caps are his):

IN OFFICIAL ISLAM - AND THIS CANNOT BE OVER-EMPHASIZED - THE EXISTENCE OF THE JINNS HAS ALWAYS BEEN COMPLETELY ACCEPTED, EVEN LEGALLY, AND EVEN TO THIS DAY, IN ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE. THE FULL CONSEQUENCES IMPLIED BY THEIR EXISTENCE WERE WORKED OUT LONG AGO. THEIR LEGAL STATUS, IN ALL RESPECTS, WAS DISCUSSED AND FIXED, AND THE POSSIBLE RELATIONS BETWEEN THEM AND MANKIND — ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO QUESTIONS OF MARRIAGE AND PROPERTY! — WERE SERIOUSLY EXAMINED BY JURISTS, AS THE GREATEST AND MOST AUTHORITATIVE WESTERN SOURCE, THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF ISLAM, CONFIRMS.

Jinn are said to have been produced by Allah from smokeless fire, just as man was produced from clay. According to tradition, they reside in a world parallel to ours, superimposed over the dimension in which we live. Like humans, they can be Muslim or non-Muslim, though tradition maintains that Jinn like to mess with us… it’s said that though we can’t see them, they can see us. Interestingly, Jinn are also associated with shooting stars. It’s said that the Jinn like to try to eavesdrop on Heaven, and that Allah and his servants fire shooting stars at them to keep them from so doing.

According to Islam, it’s possible to defeat the Jinn using “strength and faith.” The following tale from the literature includes a telling description of a typical Jinn, and an effective response:

Strength of faith and religion in general will also prevent the jinn from harming a person, so much so that if they were to fight, the one who has faith would win. ‘Abd-Allaah ibn Mas’ood (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: “A man from among the Companions of Muhammad met a man from among the jinn. They wrestled, and the human knocked down the jinn. The human said to him, ‘You look small and skinny to me, and your forearms look like the front paws of a dog. Do all the jinn look like this, or only you?’ He said, ‘No, by Allaah, among them I am strong, but let us wrestle again, and if you defeat me I will teach you something that will do you good.’ The human said, ‘Fine.’ He said, ‘Recite, ‘Allaah! None has the right to be worshipped but He, the Ever-living, the One Who sustains and protects all that exists…’ [Aayat al-Kursi – al-Baqarah 2:255 – interpretation of the meaning]. The human said, ‘Fine.’ He said, ‘You will never recite this in your house but the Shaytaan will come out of it like a donkey breaking wind, and he will never come back in until the next morning.’”

Small and skinny, paw-like forearms… this description could have been taken right out of the Humanoid Sightings Database.

Note also that according to every source I could find, the best way to protect one’s self from Jinn is to face them with perfect courage. This conflicts only slightly with the Muslim admonition that prayer and faith should be used to combat the Jinn. I maintain that it’s less the prayer and more the ability to face down something this weird without fear that does the trick. Of course, UFO literature records many accounts of prayer effectively disspelling encounters with these creatures, but contains just as many accounts (such as the infamous Da Silva account) of religious prayers and paraphenelia having absolutely no effect whatsoever. It seems to me that the key to repulsing these entities isn’t within the particular prayer or ritual used to disspell them, but in the attitude of the individual in question!

It’s clear to me that these Ultraterrestrials we’re dealing with are similar enough to Jinn (or vice-versa) that we can understand one in terms of the other. We’ve discussed the possibility that these Ultraterrestrials somehow “feed” off of false human passions, or rather act as conduits for the Gnostic Archons to do so. We’ve also discussed (as has Jeff Wells, in the above-linked post) how we can think of these entities in terms of the Black and White Lodge entities from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series, who feed on “garmonbozia” unless faced with perfect courage. According to Muslim tradition, Jinn aren”t just UFO entities, they”re everything from ghosts to nature spirits to milk-drinking statues, etc. Any “paranormal” phenomenon that seems to exhibit some form of concious behaviour can be attributed to the machinations of the Jinn.

Lynch also discusses these creatures in terms of the “Doppelganger,” or double, and here’s where things get ever odder. In an earlier post, we referenced the Qarin or Qarina, the Jinn double supposedly assigned to each human being. We also looked at the legend that Saddam Hussein, notorious for hiring “body doubles,” had attempted to contact the Jinn. The idea also relates to the Gnostic concept of the Divine Twin, in which one communes with one”s divine twin spirit in order to either achieve enlightenment or gain worldly powers. It was said that the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) himself had to convert his own Qarin to Islam.

There’s also the following, from our previous post:

It’s been a pretty common knowledge in various Abrahamic cultures that King Solomon could control spirits and jinn; most legends claim that Solomon used the help of spirits to build the great Temple of Jerusalem. This legend automatically brings one to Freemasonry, where the “masons” in question were individuals involved in the construction of the Temple under the leadership of Hiram Abiff. Since Solomon built the temple using the assistance of the jinn, under the command of Hiram Abiff, one might wonder where the Masons were. Is it not possible that the Masons involved in the construction of the Temple *ARE* the jinn?

If all of these connections haven”t yet given you the willies, get ready for some freakiness.

Pakistani Sheik Mubarek Gilani, who claims to be descended directly from the Prophet (pbuh), leads a militant Islamic organization called Jamaat al-Fuqra, an organization which began in Pakistan but now has thousands of adherents here in the United States, most of whom are African American, as detailed in this rather sensationalist article in the National Review (there are unsubstantiated rumours floating around that DC Sniper John Muhammed was involved with al-Fuqra). Many members of the American branch of al-Fuqra (The Muslims of America) are ex-members of the Nation of Islam, who, as Tim points out, have some interesting thoughts of their own on UFOs.

Sheik Gilani, however, is famous among the pundit set for an entirely different reason. Infamous shoe-bomber Richard Reid had travelled to Pakistan, ostensibly to visit Gilani. No record of such a visit exists (not that we’d know), but apparently, according to all sources, tracing Reid”s past led Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl to Gilani, who remarkably granted the reporter an interview.

The interview never happened. On his way to visit the Sheik, Pearl was kidnapped and eventually beheaded by perpetrators who are still at loose.

In a follow-up to the Pearl story, CBS’s Dan Rather interviewed Sheik Gilani, who denied any involvement in terrorist activities, including Pearl”s murder. Instead, he claimed to have an entirely different philosophical focus, one for which he claims the world should be thanking him profusely”

Gilani says that he is used to being a suspect whenever there is a terrorist act against the U.S. He wanted to talk about what he sees as the most serious threat to the world, why bad things happen in America, including acts of terrorism. These bad things, he says, are caused by invisible forces.

“There are beings who are not visible to you,” he says. “But they inhabit this earth. And they are damaging, causing psychotic diseases, fits, epilepsies. And controlling the agents, controlling the human beings.”

Gilani says he can control those evil forces. He says that he is not a threat to the U.S., but could be its salvation.

To understand why, he points to an American television show “The X-Files.” He says the mind control and evil influence that aliens wield over human beings in the program is much like the power of the invisible forces he believes in.

“What is an X-file? Most of things - could have happened or will happen,” Gilani said. “Human beings can be made to do things against their will. They can be made to commit crimes. They can made to go and kill people. You know? And all your missiles, all your rockets, space ships go up. And electronics, they can be damaged, influenced, and misdirected through the agencies of gin [sic] beings.”

Muslims all over the world also believe in these invisible evil forces that are described in the Koran. The sheik feels that these forces are a much bigger threat to the U.S. than terrorism. He says the United States should thank him for passing on his message about the invisible world instead of accusing him of terrorism.

And, perhaps they have. He’s on record profusely admiring the religious freedom enjoyed by Muslims in the United States. And, as a matter of fact, his name and organization were removed from United States terrorism reports in the year 2000.

We certainly don’t have enough information to make the leap from speculation to conclusion, but our spidey senses surely must tingle when faced with these tales of Jinn and terror. All of these items… the Ultraterrestrials, paranormal activity, the Gnostic Archons, Saddam Hussein, Sheik Gilani, doppelgangers, Daniel Pearl, the Nation of Islam, al-Fuqra, the Freemasons, John Muhammed, and more… seem to be connected by certain themes, but who’s to say?

Does Gilani actually have some kind of contact with, and control over the Jinn, who are also equal to the Ultraterrestrials from UFO lore? Are there deeper layers to the “War on Terror” that elite “magickians” on both sides of the evil coin can”t reveal? These connections may mean nothing whatsoever… they may have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. However, to return to the mythology of Twin Peaks, we should always heed the words of Special Agent Dale Cooper, when he reminds us that, “Gentlemen, when two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention.”