Dr. Warren Larson delivered a lecture on case studies of demonization in Folk Islam during a CIU course. Here, Larson presents multiple case studies on demonization in Islamic contexts.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Warren Larson Lecture: Dr. Warren Larson Lecture: Case Studies of Demonization.
Well, we’ve been talking, a lot in the past about, specific kinds of demons, We’ve named them, some of them, as many as we could, and so now, today, we’re gonna it makes sense in this lecture 22 that we move on to demonization and we’re going to be looking at some, cases, in other words, where, actually people have been demonized or or oppressed, and we could look at a lot more. Some of these are from overseas, but even here in the West, some that I’ve seen here, not many, granted, but here at the university where there’s some oppression and also some of my students writing about it from Europe. But we’ll look at some specific cases today in this demonization and these are mostly case studies we’ll be looking at. So here we go. And and also thinking of, the exorcism.
You know, I think you, as well as I am are aware of the our own culture and and the, and the themes in the, some of the youth culture of demonization and young girls who have this superhuman strength, it’s really a popular subject, isn’t it? For instance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and stuff like that, which I think is is something new in our culture. And there are websites, too available on types of jinn, getting back to Muslim context and how to exercise them or how to do, spiritual warfare, but here are some of the websites we’re talking about. What are the, you know, what are we supposed to think of the phenomena? In other words, what are the sources of of of phenomena?
Is this stuff spurious? In other words, it’s just just nonsense? Is it psycho pathological? Is it satanic? And I think I think the more I think about it that it probably can be all 3.
So we don’t wanna, sort of rule out anything, but we have to be discerning, and I think that’s really the the topic, to keep in mind, discerning and, and also biblical so that we don’t jump to conclusions, but we have good sense in our, in our diagnosis of demonization. I don’t wanna give the impression that this is this is a major gonna be a major part of your ministry, certainly hasn’t been of mine. But I think we should be aware of it, so that’s why we’re talking about it. Now here’s a case study. Just be prepared now because we’re gonna gonna ask you what what you think about this.
What’s going on? And this is actually something that happened. A girl, this is a Muslim girl, is, writhing on the floor, dripping saliva. Her limbs are flailing wildly, and demonization, Muslim exorcist is called in. He does some things as they usually do.
He comes, he draws a circle on the floor, presumably with a chalk or something like that. He chants the Quran, and this is also a very common thing for them to do, he lights incense sticks and then he blows smoke in her ears and breathes into her face. The writhing ceases. She falls down in an exhausted heap, and she’s now normal. Well, what would you think?
In other words, what is your diagnosis? The diagnosis of this case given by Phil Parshall in the book, page 110, is that this is, an epileptic fit. When I gave this story this summer in class, asked the students what they thought of it immediately, a medical person held up her hand and said this is epilepsy. So, this is a good a good sign that, that, medical help is often needed. I also wanted to just, refer to, I guess, a story that comes out of the New York Times about Gambia and, their attempt to root out witches.
This is, May 20th o o nine, but we don’t have the story in front of us. Just to be aware of the of the fact that, it is in our media and we can read about these things, and I’m sure that you have been. Another another case is rather disturbing, one that a friend of mine told me about, when I was teaching a class some years ago in Toronto. And this, he told about himself and he said that we were young missionaries, a family working in Mombasa, Kenya, and he said we became friends with a family, a Muslim family. In the family, the father was Arab and the mother was Somali, and she had 4 daughters before this marriage, and then she and this new husband, Arab, they have, they have, well, I’m sorry.
That that he he when he he marries her, he takes care of the the 4 daughters as if as if they were his own. And then this couple has 2 or 3 sons, 2 daughters and 3 sons of their own. Sorry that I’m, not reading this quickly. 1 Sunday, the missionaries visit and the parents are on Hajj. They’re they’ve gone on the pilgrimage.
But the 3rd daughter, presumably from the first marriage, Aisha seems to be demonization. She’s acting pretty strange. So these young missionaries, happen to be Canadians, they went to the church. There was a little church there. They shared concern with the older missionary family, but they received no help.
I suppose the older missionary family, didn’t wanna get involved. I don’t know. It’s possible. We shouldn’t judge, missionaries by this story, but this is what happened in this case. So the young missionary couple went back to the house.
A man who had been left in charge welcomed them, and they see that this daughter, this girl, Aisha, is being held down by 6 men and seems to have superhuman strength. So the young missionary tried to pray, but there was no effect. And finally, Aisha is taken by car to the hospital, and next day the parents who have been on the Hajj, on the pilgrimage, they come back. But the father doesn’t take this seriously. He, he makes light of what the missionary shared, and he says it well, she’s just sick.
Later, this young missionary couple went to visit Ayesha in the hospital And while there, one man was present, but the stepfather angrily chased him off. And when he asked Aisha what she’d seen, she said, I saw them coming to choke me. So, what would you have done? Now this missionary, even though now he’s older, he’s still sort of, confused about what was really going on, but he has some ideas and in the class we discussed this, quite a bit. Some of the things we discussed was, possibly incest as that is more common than you think, particularly given the context.
Another thing is that there could have been, which is probably more likely, is, immorality and that’s why the young man was chased off by the father, stepfather, but you can’t talk about it. You can never talk about those kind of things. So I think the consensus that we came to in the in the class this past summer was this was probably not a case of demonization, but a case of where, you know, if there’s immorality or something like that or incest, you don’t talk about it. But, the young girl was either pretending that she was possessed because that’s really probably the only, you know, honorable thing that she can do. Certainly can’t talk about any type of immorality because it would disgrace the family, it would ruin her chances of ever getting married, and it would be a total disaster.
So I think that would be, probably the thing that you should look at first of all. The young missionary was, I think, not prepared for the situation. Now here’s another case study and these are actual case studies. There has been a Russian girl of 18, she’s 18 years old, coming to church for the past year. She works at the police office.
She speaks Russian, but she’s good enough in Uzbek to join in the worship and she has been and has been growing. So this story comes out of Central Asia. Now that she’s a believer, she dresses more modestly and she has joy in her face more. She’s learning the guitar. Recently, she said that while sleeping, an evil spirit comes, shakes her iron bed that is really heavy, takes 2 men, it’s not hard to lift that bed, and this is her story.
So what’s going on here? In other words, the strange thing about it is that she says, and and apparently this is this is what happened, is that ever since she put her faith in Jesus, this is really, what it’s it’s really what’s happened. What would you do in this case? And I think, one thing that I would do is that and you can think about your this yourself, but I think, that, having listened to this story, it is it is very possible that because of her faith, maybe even because of her past, Satan is making a strong bid for her. He’s pestering her more than he did before, and I would I would, think, seriously about doing an exorcism here, not necessarily of the girl herself but of the place where she’s staying and, with her present, singing hymns and praying in the room or the rooms and cleansing the place from all possible demonization, and then and then, praying steadily and regularly with her, you also would wanna know that she’s living a holy life, and she’s not dabbling in some of the things that she used to do because that would be one of the things to that would be very, very important to check on.
Well, here’s another one that’s, I think, interesting, and we we want to keep in mind here how we could set this up, in other words, how we can deal with these cases so that, the glory is always through Christ and it’s obvious, it’s clear that Christ is the one who’s done the delivery. Now here is another one. After Sunday church at Harvest Church, 5 of us went to pray for a Tajik man. Here we are in Central Asia again. Believe it or not, Central Asia is pretty, you know, this is common stuff in Central Asia.
He had believed a few months back. In other words, he made a profession of of trusting Christ, But he has been having trouble with demons, and he said several nights ago he was thrown around, punch, kicked mostly at night. We prayed for him several times, but they still torment him. One reason may be that he can’t seem to get seem to throw off some evil habits. What habits?
Drinking, very common in Central Asia, and he is into adultery as well. Last Tuesday, a TV, he was watching TV, a white light appeared according to him, floated around the TV, shot through his body, he threw up according to his account, his head swelled up, then he felt better. So what would you do? This is no laughing matter, but I think, you know, one of the things that you would have to deal with here are these habits. In other words, God is not going to listen to prayer, in his regard and if he is messing around and things like that.
So I think that the sin issue would have to be dealt with and make sure that he is telling the truth about what he’s doing. It might, you know, require some careful counseling with discretion. If there has been immorality, then that should be confessed, before some other man. I don’t think, it should be in mixed company, that’s the way to deal with these kind of things, particularly in Muslim culture. And so, those are some of the things that you might we we might suggest to so that it’s handled properly, biblically, and, with the intent that this man would grow in grace and holiness and that he would have the victory over these kind of of this kind of oppression.