Jinn
What are jinn?
The jinn
mentioned in the Holy Quran are certainly not the genii of fairy tales or what
people usually imagine them to be. This word indicates "something hidden from
view", and is used in the Quran with several different meanings referring to
people or beings who are remote and not seen.
It is applied to leaders,
as contrasted with the ordinary public, and to people of foreign lands. For
instance, the Quran says:
"O assembly of jinn and men, did there not come
to you messengers from among you. . ." (6:131).
As messengers from God
only came to human beings, the jinn here are also humans, and the address "jinn
and men" is to the leaders and the ordinary people. Similarly, the Quran twice
mentions some jinn as accepting its teachings (46:29; 72:1). In the first case,
a tribe of Jews is meant, and in the second some Christians are meant, being
called jinn because of their remoteness.
The word jinn is also used for a
type of invisible, non-physical creation who stir up the lower desires in a
person's mind. This is in contrast to the angels who draw a person's mind to the
doing of good.
So the jinn (of the second kind) and
the angels pull a person's mind in opposite directions?
Yes, if
you are talking about jinn in the second sense mentioned above. The Holy Prophet
has said that each human being has a jinn and an angel associated with him (or
her). He was asked whether it was the same with him as well. The Holy Prophet
replied: "It is the same with me, but Allah has helped me against my jinn, so
that he has submitted to God, and does not tell me to do anything but good." So
the angels and the jinn represent the opposite forces pulling a man to good and
bad, respectively. If you overcome the urge to do wrong, then it changes into an
urge to do good.
And just like angels, these jinn are not
physical beings, and therefore cannot be seen or heard with the physical senses
of man.
It is said that the
devil was an angel who disobeyed God by refusing to submit to Adam. Is this
true?
Angels have no will of their own, so the question of an
angel disobeying God does not arise. The devil is described in one place in the
Quran clearly as "one of the jinn" (18:50), so he could not be one of the
angels.
Briefly, what the Quran tells us is that God gave knowledge of
all things to Adam, and then all the angels submitted to Adam, but the devil
refused to do so and misled Adam and his wife. The meaning is that man, because
of the knowledge that he possesses, can bring nature under his control, but he
cannot control himself from wrong-doing. Therefore God sends revelation to
enable man to resist the promptings of the devil.
What does the Quran
mean when it says that God created jinn from fire?
This refers to
those human beings who rebel against God and goodness, following the prompting
of the jinn. Due to their rebellious and arrogant nature, and due to the fact
that their hearts burn with the fire of evil desires, greed and envy, they are
described as having been created from fire. Similarly, man is described as
having been created from "dust" because true human nature is humble and
submissive to God.
So the jinn
mentioned in the Quran are quite different from how they are generally imagined
to be?
That is right. The Holy Quran and the Hadith do not support
the popular picture of jinn as creatures who perform super-human feats, who can
appear in human form and interfere in people's affairs, or who can "possess"
human beings and affect them with diseases. None of these ideas is accepted by
Islamic teachings.
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