Blaming it on witchcraft
A sister tweeted earlier today that a “religious lady” had told a relative of hers that her apparent difficulty in finding a spouse might be due to “nazar” or the “evil eye”. I tweeted back that the sister should either tell the lady to mind her own business, and failing that, ignore her, and not everything was the work of jinns, the evil eye, witchcraft or whatever. Another sister responded that she often avoided mosques because of negative comments from other women about her not being married. (More: [Sumera @ Rumoured](http://rumoured.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/mental-health-jinn-possession-amongst-muslims/).)
For anyone who thinks the fear of witchcraft is just some old superstition and that nobody believes in it anymore, I recommend watching the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, Return to Africa’s Witch Children, which was on last night; it is a follow-up to one that was broadcast last November (admittedly, this might not be an option if you’re outside the UK, but this person is in London). People in many parts of Africa, including southern Nigeria which was the focus of this programme, believe very strongly in witchcraft, to the extent that if anything untoward happens, they will not blame it on bad luck or their own incompetence, but on a witch, and often that so-called witch will be a child. The upshot is that children get driven out of their homes and villages, neglected and even murdered. Religious leaders promote this nonsense, particularly local Pentecostal Christians but probably also some Muslims. (While reading a Nigerian news magazine a few years ago, I came across adverts for the most ridiculous of supernatural services, including a woman with a Muslim name who called herself “the woman who sees tomorrow”.)
Muslims in some places have the same obsession. Abdullah Hakim Quick, in a speech on Uthman Dan Fodio, the scholar and warrior of west Africa, said that some Muslims have a very strong belief in the jinn, to the extent that they will blame any downturn or personal problem on them. One man came to him suspecting that he was possessed, when Quick could see that he was just stressed from working two jobs; another believed that someone had gone to some guy in Pakistan and put a jinn in his shop, when in reality, it was simply just after Christmas when trade is normally down as people have spent all their money.
The results of false accusations of witchcraft can be as devastating as when they are about adultery: people’s reputations are ruined, livelihoods collapse, and lives are lost. There might be a perfectly good reason why a woman, or a man for that matter, might be unmarried in their mid-20s, among them that they’re busy studying and are in no hurry. Why don’t people focus on these things rather than assume that anything more untoward is involved?
