How did Israel, a country of fewer than ten million people, prevail in the recent twelve-day war over the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has nine times more people and thirty times more land than Israel? A senior Iranian official, Abdollah Ganji, who formerly headed a daily newspaper, Jovan, that was a primary mouthpiece of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is convinced that it wasn’t simply a story of Israel’s having a superior strategy, better weaponry, and help from the U.S., with its bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ganji contends that the Israeli secret weapon had supernatural help, and not the good kind.
Iran International reported Friday on what Ganji called “a strange phenomenon.” Ganji claimed that “after the recent war, several pieces of paper were found on the streets of Tehran containing talismans with Jewish symbols." Uh-oh. And as if that weren’t enough, he added: "A few years ago, the Supreme Leader said that hostile countries and Western and Hebrew intelligence services use occult sciences and jinn beings for espionage."
Indeed he did. Back in March 2020, the Ayatollah Khamenei told his countrymen in a televised address that the Islamic Republic was facing “enemies from among both jinn and human beings.” This apparently inspired a good deal of ridicule, as Iran International notes that “the quote was later removed from some official transcripts.”
Another prominent Iranian ayatollah, Hojatoleslam Mehdi Karami, said in Oct. 2024: “Given the Zionists’ history of controlling jinn, many of their missions are carried out through them.”
Khamenei, Karami and Ganji are certainly not alone in believing that jinn exist, and that they can exert a malign influence over the affairs of human beings. Their existence is taken for granted in the Qur’an, which explains that jinn are spirit beings that Allah created from “smokeless fire” (55:15). They “seduced many among mankind” (6:128), and bedevil not only ordinary human beings, but even Allah’s prophets: “In this way we have appointed an adversary to every prophet, satans of mankind and jinn who inspire in one another plausible discourse through guile” (6:112).
The twentieth-century Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn al-Uthaymeen states a standard Muslim view when he asserts that while human beings cannot see jinn, “undoubtedly the jinn can have a harmful effect on humans, and they could even kill them. They may harm a person by throwing stones at him, or by trying to terrify him, and other things that are proven in the sunnah (prophetic teachings) or indicated by real events.” This kind of belief can lead one to think that any number of phenomena are really attacks from jinn.
Al-Uthaymeen also asserts: “There are numerous reports which indicate that a man may come to a deserted area, and a stone may be thrown at him, but he does not see anybody, or he may hear voices or a rustling sound like the rustling of trees, and other things that may make him feel distressed and scared. A jinn may also enter the body of a human, either because of love or with the intention of harming him, or for some other reason."
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Many Muslims worldwide assume all this to be true. In “The Caliph’s House,” the Afghan-English writer Tahir Shah’s delightful account of his adventures moving his family to Morocco and buying and refurbishing a home in Casablanca, Shah is repeatedly surprised and amused by the fact that the locals (including Westernized Moroccans whom he believes to be sophisticated) believe unquestioningly in the existence of jinn, the mischievous spirit beings who interfere in human affairs. They even readily ascribe their own actions to the influence of the jinn in their lives. And their invariable reply to Shah’s astonished questions about how they could possibly believe in such beings is “It’s in the Qur’an.” Well, that settles that.
On the other hand, a former Iranian government spokesman, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, took issue with Ganji’s assessment, saying it was just an excuse: “Talking about Jewish talismans and the role of jinn and fairies in Israel’s aggression against Iran is an attempt to downplay the role of infiltrators and to overlook the enemy’s tactics.” Yes. Absolutely. But it’s more face-saving to say that the Israelis used jinn to defeat the Iranians than to admit that the Islamic Republic was outsmarted at every turn. And so expect more talk of Israeli-controlled jinn from Tehran.
