Wednesday, October 11, 2006

some healers, like genie's, should never be let out


Years ago when I was a little girl my grandfather had a fascination with faith healers. Not that he was in need of a miracle cure but he got a kind of perverse pleasure out of watching them. It reminded him of the vaudeville days of his youth. I , on the other, grew to really loathe them for a variety of reasons, but mostly it was the one time all week when he monopolized the television set and couldn't be talked into watching anything else.

Mention Katherine Kuhlman and I am six years old again with a case of the creeps. I found this story at Ynet News and I really didn’t believe it was possibly for any faith healer to creep me out more than her but Sheikh Munir did it for me:
Sheikh Munir Arab is not like other humans, or at least so he boasts. Sheikh Arab, whose renown has spread across the Arab world, prides himself on his ability to use the Quran to cure ailments that modern medicine is at a loss to treat.

The sheikh, who even launched a website detailing his activities and resume, has a clinic in Saudi Arabia where for 20 years he has been treating the ill and infirm by reading them Quran passages and dispensing holy oil and water which have been sanctified with phrases from the Muslim holy book.
(…)
This time the sheikh glorifies in an unprecedented achievement – the removal of meters of black cloth knotted into ropes from the womb of a 14-year-old girl, who he says “was possessed by a genie.”

In a TV interview for the Lebanese LBC network, which was provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI ), the sheikh explains how a demon can occupy a human body and speak from within it in the voice of a man, a dog, or even a donkey. He displays for the audience exactly what he “exorcised” from the girl's body – as he dumps out a plastic bag full of black cloth ropes. “Today her mother called me and said the last rope had come out. I will never forget this case – it is a miracle!” he said
.
His explanation for the twisted pieces of cloth found in her vagina:
She was possessed by a genie that would sent little notes from within her with messages that she wouldn’t marry.”

Really, it is almost enough to make me despair entirely of the human race and take up atheism full-time.

4 comments:

Chris Taylor said...

Come on, people pay ludicrous sums to hear allegedly funny comedians do their stand-up routines.

A guy talking with the voice of a dog or a donkey has to be worth a buck or two. If he can do impressions as well, like say a man speaking with the voice of a dog impersonating George W. Bush, that would be worth even more.

K. Shoshana said...

True enough, but a guy who pull strings out of young girl's vagina and claims its a case of demonic genie possession - that's creepy.

Chris Taylor said...

What's amazing is that anybody buys it. Doesn't it seem just a wee bit, ah... off... to you?

I am kinda doubting he was there to actually see the tale unfold. Maybe he chatted with her mom on the phone, read a couple of suras, and then mom mailed him the goods. Or something.

Just too weird to contemplate as being even remotely close to reality.

Michael said...

Wow. What is that guy smoking, and where can I get some?

If this is indicative of the state of education in the Arab world, we have no worries on the long-term results of the current conflict with Arab/Islamic terrorists.