While reading the articles about jinn, I started to think about
the origins of jinn. The idea of jinn comes from the pre-Islamic
world were these spirits were used to guide the communities
everyday life. As I was reading the articles I notice that the
belief in jinn could either explain things that are known or
have a specific function in the community. To further explain
this idea one may look at the interactions between jinn and
humans. In one way the jinn serve to explain the unexplained. In
the El-Shamy reading he states, “until relatively recently,
certain physical disorders were believed to be caused by jinn.”
When something occurs that cannot be explained, in this case
diseases, jinn are blamed. This reminded me how the ancient
Romans and many other ancient societies explained the unknown
through the belief that individual Gods controlled these unknown
occurrences. For example the ancient Romans viewed lightening as
the sign of Jupiter, since they could not explain the why
lighten occurred they explain