I already know the hype that people make of this sort of stuff in Pakistani culture.
I almost never hear arabs obsessing about this kind of stuff, it’s like it’s not important to them or they ignore it entirely.
Are they as ishtikhara-oriented as what Pakistanis have become? Do they look to see if someone has done jadoo when things go bad, or they blow that stuff off?
Re: Black Eye/Evil Eye/Jinns/Jadoo in Arab culture
Ohhh..I had a question about the evil eye thing...can the evil eye have an effect on a person if someone looks at their photograph???
Re: Black Eye/Evil Eye/Jinns/Jadoo in Arab culture
I already know the hype that people make of this sort of stuff in Pakistani culture.
I almost never hear arabs obsessing about this kind of stuff, it's like it's not important to them or they ignore it entirely.
Are they as ishtikhara-oriented as what Pakistanis have become? Do they look to see if someone has done jadoo when things go bad, or they blow that stuff off?
It was always present in Arab culture from the time of Hazrat Yaqub (AS). In Surah e Yusuf, it is mentioned that he advised his sons not to enter from single gate of city owning to this evil eye concept.
The current situation would not be as awkward as in our part of the world.
Re: Black Eye/Evil Eye/Jinns/Jadoo in Arab culture
It is not an only muslim problem or only eastern problem, humanity as a whole is yet not that aware of things as it ought to be. It will take time before people become educated and then they become thinkers before they start questing things that make no sense. Today with the same country we have educated and uneducated side by side each with his own concept of life and its realities. Also knowledge is copyrighted as intellectual property so there are a lot of obstacles to overcome to help people become free of all nonsense.
It particularly sad to see people quoting their religious scriptures to get backing for their baseless claims. They do not realise that they cannot prove anything by mere assertions even if they attribute them to their scriptures rather they are in fact trying to disprove their own scriptures by doing that. Instead they ought show the evidence for it and explain the whole mechanism of proof to themselves and others. If people start questioning their make beliefs they will soon find they have been wrong all along in believing in all sorts of nonsense in the name of divinity.
1)aql and revelation are two different things.
2)aql is an activity of the brain ie a process for processing information or data and revelation is information or data needing processing.
3)Aql is needed for organising and making sense of data to understand it.
4)where does aql come from ie sense of making sense of things? Life experiences through trials and error.
5)The more experienced you are in making sense of things the better is your judgement about things. It is because then you know what information is available and what is not at any given point in time and how to get information and how to put it together and what it means after you have organised it in your head.
6)The quran is nothing more than information that needs to be understood by brain as explained for its purpose and used. So aql has to be there to make sense of the quran and use it accordingly.
7)Brain only works on basis of language that it uses for communication just like a computer.
8)The quran is mere a jumble of words and words have attached to them certain concepts and concepts unless put together for a purpose have no use. So to understand the quran one must get familiar with concepts of words used in the quran and then try and see how these concepts make better sense by combining them in various ways that bring out the context of the words in the verses and verses in the surahs and surahs in relation to each other etc etc.
9)Once the quran is reasonably understood then all other information in other islamic literature and from other people can taken on that basis as it makes better sense.
10)It is a very very hard work which most people are not bothered to undertake. What people do is they just have some basic make beliefs ideas and take them for granted and call it islam. There are not many people with in depth understanding of the divine revelation. This is why the world is in the state that it is. Where most people are trying to copyright knowledge as intellectual property and each person is trying to fool the next person, the learning process is a difficult one and that is why peace in world, progress and prosperity is very very slow process. Parties with vested interests are a big obstacle in the way of peace, progress and prosperity of humanity. However as we all can see we are making some progress but we could do much if obstacles were removed from the path of knowledge.
For more please see my other posts. Some may be found difficult to read because they are written in roman urdu.
Re: Black Eye/Evil Eye/Jinns/Jadoo in Arab culture
Pcg,
There's an institution in Saudi Arabia...specifically for combating jadu. Look at this video...it's fairly comprehensive and it'll put your assumption to rest.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Hh-jbbUL0
Re: Black Eye/Evil Eye/Jinns/Jadoo in Arab culture
6)The quran is nothing more than information that needs to be understood by brain as explained for its purpose and used.
Peace Mughal1
What does your brain make of the purpose of the letters Alif Laam Meem ... or Ya Seen ... And explain how you come by this ... Also you say that Al-Qur'an is "nothing more than ..." - talk about limiting the Holy Word ... Where in the Qur'an does is say this about itself?
Re: Black Eye/Evil Eye/Jinns/Jadoo in Arab culture
Peace PCG
I am not going to answer your question as others can show you plenty of material in the Arab world ... but inshaAllah I will try to comment on a possible misunderstanding. The fact of Jinn and Shaiateen is real. The Shaiateen are from Jinn and Mankind ... Some people indulge in magic ... Magic has many forms:
What is magic if it is not illusion and what is illusion if it is not deception ... The essence of magic is hence this ... to deceive ... In Surah Fatihah we seek the Straight Path and in turn we must be upright and straight people giving others true guidance so it is no wonder that those who give others the path of crookedness will be those who are evil. The crookedness in a path is the metaphor for a deception ... or a going-astray (which is a self-deception) ...
Modern forms of deception include propaganda. Music has the ability to bend and manipulate emotion and more recently since the past 80 or so years, movies are used to bend opinion. News is a systematic delivery of disinformation where the the truth goes against the ideas of the "Magicians" and it includes truth to muddy the waters and where it benefits the ideas of the "Magicians". Some more complexity is allowed to manifest such as conspiracies as long as they appear cult-like and get ridiculed by the "norm" ...
Some famous people are known to practice Kabbala - which is called "Jewish Myticism" to pacify the term ... Really this practice is considered heretical by the orthodox Jews and considered a type of black magic ... Reading up the Kabbala makes it appear as nothing more than mystical mumbo-jumbo ... but the hard repetitive work behind this practice does some interesting things to the mind and consciousness of people. (Again all of which is a distraction from that Straight Path).
Hypnotism - people engage in this all the time - we are quite prepared to believe this practice works and it does ... We can get people to do simple acts that they would normally not do or have inhibitions to overcome in order to do them ... the age old ideas of "golem" control and quite easily be seen through this misuse of the act of hypnotism - hypnotism works at the subconscious level - accessing that subconscious is one of the tools that is used by the deceiver.
Mere illusion can be enough to convince people sometimes ... but let's take this conversation up a level ...
Now we all make du'a don't we? Would Mughal1 comment on this ... how rational does it appear to have "du'a" to be an agent to positively help us and to contrast that perhaps "jealous "du'as" as agents to harm others ... To the skeptic the fabric of the du'a should be just as real or as unreal as the fabric of the jealousy that emanates from the jealous person ... So if they think that nothing like this exists then they should rethink their whole understanding of Islam - Consistency is King.
The Jinn exist ... some are good and many are bad ... The worst forms of magic include the above plus a contract made with an evil jinn - a shaitaan. Again at the onset it will appear to be ritualistic mumbo-jumbo ... but the question is - does it work? Rather the question should be if it didn't work then why are people wasting their time doing this stuff? And they are indulging in this stuff ... So if you have any doubts then realise two things ...
1) Doubt only the "power" in those things not their reality - For sure ALL Power belongs to Allah (SWT)
2) Read the scriptures and understand what it means to worship and do du'a - Is that any more or less rational than magic?
Re: Black Eye/Evil Eye/Jinns/Jadoo in Arab culture
Arabs also have jado and evil eye removers or jinn nikalnay waley....they have ppl who do ruqya for such things...I live in saudia so I know....
Re: Black Eye/Evil Eye/Jinns/Jadoo in Arab culture
Peace All,