I would like to share with the readers some foolishness I went through a few years ago, which, nonetheless, enabled me to gain better insight into some of the ways our fellow creatures – the jinn – operate. The experience needs to be narrated to a wider audience because, I believe, by sharing it with others, a number of important conclusions could be drawn that might help many people in appreciating how satans from amongst the jinn operate. It is important to know more about them because we humans are often caused to be led astray by this other existence (jinn), which along with their counterparts among men who are engaged in the struggle to promote evil, have been described by the Qur’an as devils¹. 
    It was a few years ago when I was informed by one of my students that he was in contact with a jinn. He asked me if there was anything wrong in contacting a jinn for reasons which were not un-Islamic. My immediate response was that there wasn’t anything objectionable, since the Qur’an tells us that, like in the case of humans, there were both good and evil individuals amongst the jinn as well.² The next time I met my student, I was offered the possibility of getting in touch with a pious jinn myself. I was reluctant to begin with, but on second thought, I got convinced by the argument that if the jinn, as reported, was a pious one, then getting in touch with him would probably be no different from the possibility of making another good friend. I must admit that the suggestion of getting in touch with a Jinn excited me, and, perhaps, the excitement influenced my decision. 
    And thus I started contacting the jinn, who, I was informed, was named Usman. I was asked to recite a few verses of the Qur’an, whenever I needed to get in touch with him, and then ask Usman Sahib to appear, and he would appear before my son, who was fourteen years old then. My son would have his eyes shut and would tell us that he could see a bearded, old man who was responding to all the questions that were put across to him. Thus, I didn’t used to listen to the jinn directly. My son was the medium. My son wouldn’t need to mention my questions to Usman Sahib, who would just know himself what was being mentioned. Of course, my son would mention to us what Usman Sahib was saying, since we wouldn’t hear him directly. 
    One of the immediate things that Usman Sahib demanded from me was to place a praying mat on some corner of the house for him, so that he could pray to the Almighty whenever he felt like. This initial demand immediately earned him a lot of respect from me, and I felt reassured that I had not taken an incorrect decision. 
    During the initial stages of this contact, we used to call him many times each day and talk about all kinds of imaginable topics. The answers we would get would sometimes be vague, sometimes clear and understandable, and sometimes too far fetched to be acceptable. I asked him once, for instance, whether there were prophets amongst the jinn as well, to which he responded in the affirmative. I asked him if they too had already received their last prophet, as we humans had, he again responded in the positive, but clarified that their last prophet died only five hundred years ago. He also gave his opinion that even though the finality of prophethood was an established part of our (human) creed, we should not be too sensitive about it. He mentioned that the Ahmadis were also good people and that they too should be accepted as good religious souls. 
    We used to ask Usman Sahib to go to different places in Lahore, in Pakistan, and even abroad, and each time we so demanded from him, my son would tell us in no time that he was right there at the intended place. For instance, one of our relatives lived in Gujranwala, and we would ask Usman Sahib to take my son along there to find out what was happening, and my son, who otherwise knew the place well, would inform us that he had already reached the place in his vision. It was quite a mystery for me to imagine how a jinn could reach distant places in no time. But then I would convince myself by recalling the Qur’anic mention of the fact that jinn could travel far and wide without much difficulty.³
    It would be useful to narrate an experience of Usman Sahib to show that if I was convinced by the authenticity of the visions that my son was viewing, there was some reason for it. One day, my family and some other relatives got together in our place. We got in touch with Usman Sahib. On inquiring, he informed that he knew French. One of my visiting relatives, who knew French a bit, asked him a question in French. The reply mumbled by my son on behalf of Usman Sahib was ridiculed by the relative, because whatever was uttered was at least not French. Being hitherto impressed by Usman Sahib’s apparent piety, I was upset at my relative’s behavior. I asked Usman Sahib to mention the meanings of the statement that was communicated to him in French, and he gave the correct meanings. It was surprising for my relative as well, because it was well known that my son had no idea of French. In another incident in the same sitting, we asked Usman Sahib to call up the vision of somebody we all knew. That somebody was called up and my son could see him.⁴ We asked him what was the medical problem with the gentleman, and his answer was spot on. 
    It wouldn’t be out of place to mention another rather weird piece of information passed on to us by Usman Sahib. He informed us that my grandfather, about whom we as yet knew that he had died in a bomb blast in Singapore in the second world war, was, after all, not dead.  The fact that no body could actually confirm deaths of people who were targeted by a bomb in a building, led us to consider the possibility Usman Sahib had thrown across as at least probable. Usman Sahib also informed us that my grandfather was still living in the jungles of Kelantan, a northern state of Malaysia. As one might predict, we immediately demanded that my son be shown my grandfather. Thus my son had the vision of his great grand father. He informed us that he could see an old man with a white flowing beard, who, despite his age, was looking remarkably active. He was seen cutting wood in the forest and he seemed to be living alone in a nearby cottage. My son informed us that his great grand father was called Syed Sahib by the people of the nearby market, where he would go to sell his wood every week to make a living. In one of my son’s visits to this Kelantan’s jungle during the night, he saw Syed Sahib sitting close to a cabinet. On nudging closer to him, my son saw him looking with intense concentration at a group photograph of a family, which, apart from a husband and a wife, had five children, of which three were daughters and two were sons. That was exactly what the composition of my late father’s family was. Again, my son at that time had no idea about the details of my father’s family. Thus the mystery of Syed Sahib’s survival grew thicker.
    I still had a nagging feeling that all this Kelantan’s business and the information that was being thrown across at us was too far-fetched to be considered credible. But then there was enough proof to support the view that the possibility of it being possible     couldn’t be easily rejected.
    Then came, perhaps, the turning point of this, by now, intriguing experience. I had been wondering all throughout the period of my contact with Usman Sahib as to how could it be possible for a jinn to enable my son to have a live view of events that were happening elsewhere. I mean was it something similar to the live television transmissions that we are now so used to witnessing? I made a firm resolve to test this possibility empirically. Next evening, I asked Usman Sahib, through my son, to inform us what a certain gentleman, who was known to us, was doing at his home. My son didn’t know what was in my mind. Usman Sahib enabled my son to see the gentleman sitting in his bedroom and doing something that my son described to us. I had asked someone to talk to that gentleman on phone while my son was on his ‘trip’ to his home. It so happened that while I knew that the gentleman in question was talking to somebody on the phone, it somehow escaped the live ‘telecast’ which my son was given to witness through the courtesy of Usman Sahib. That inconsistency convinced me that there was something extremely sinister in this whole viewing business and that it was something very cleverly concocted by this jinn of ours, who, I by then got convinced, had cleverly named himself Usman. 
The student who had introduced me to this Jinn later confirmed to me that he too knew that these creatures had the ability to create images in the minds of humans which appear very close to reality. 
    If you kindly bear with me, I would want to narrate, very briefly, experiences of two other people, which are important for some of the conclusions that I would like to draw at the end of this article. 
    A gentleman who was pursuing a very successful career in Saudi Arabia, got entangled with a jinn because of his own fault, in that he invited him, and when the jinn responded, the troubles of his life started. He had to leave his job, and was in considerable mental anxiety and physical pain for quite sometime on account of what he was going through because of this invisible existence. 
    The gentleman met me on several occasions. The last time I saw him, he looked much relaxed and apparently ‘out of trouble’. On inquiring as to how he had a change in fortune, one of the important reasons he mentioned was that ever since he started visiting the shrines of some of the sufi saints, his troubles with jinn had subsided. He lamented the fact that many people didn’t believe in the power of those noble men, but he had himself experienced the effect of their influence on the over all scheme of things in our existence. To convince me, he narrated one of his experiences. He said that in one of his visits to the tomb of a saint, he was asked by a beggar to help him. He scolded the man away, and, as he claimed, he approached ‘Baba Sahib’, the dead saint, in his spiritual communication with him, and complained to him as to why he was being disturbed in his shrine by a beggar when he himself was out of job. However, later, he said, he felt a little embarrassed on not having helped the beggar, who, after all, had demanded a very small amount from him. Very soon, he confronted the same beggar again, and the narrator of this story immediately offered him money, which the beggar declined to accept, explaining that ‘Baba Sahib’ had already told him not to disturb him (the narrator) by begging money from him. This incident was one of the many experiences he had gone through in these visits to the tombs that convinced him of the super-natural powers of the dead sufi saints and in their strong influence in the running of the affairs of our world. 
    Another gentleman, who is nearing his retirement, narrated to me many of his experiences of his Pir Sahib, who is able to show all his disciples that the religious pledge (bay‘at) that he takes from them is in reality taken by Pir Abdul Qadir Jilani of Baghdad. He says confidently that it is not just his own experience but that of all other disciples of his Pir Sahib that after conducting the pledge, they are shown in their vision, with their eyes shut, that they are actually pledging at the hands of Piran-e-Pir (the Pir of the Pirs i.e. Pir Abdul Qadir Jilani). The disciples are then taken after this experience to Madinah pay homage to the tomb of the Prophet (sws). I had no problem in tracing the origins of these visions, given my own experiences of ‘Usman Sahib’. 
    I would like to conclude from the mention of these experiences the following points:
    1. The Satans from amongst the jinn very cleverly take humans into their confidence before enticing them to the wrong path. The Usman Sahib’s request to place a praying mat for him in my home was an example of this clever strategy.
    2. They are able to impress humans by disclosing to them information which is unlikely to be possessed by anyone who has not been allowed to share it. This ability of the jinn owes itself to the fact that they can read what is in the minds of humans who have contacted them. For instance, the fact that my grandfather was killed in a bomb blast was in my mind, wherefrom ‘Usman Sahib’ could have easily picked it. Similarly, ,the case of the information about the medical problem of the gentleman who was asked to appear.  Interestingly, although he could not answer the French question, ‘Usman Sahib’ could know its meanings, because the questioner’s mind was there for him to read from. Thus, many naïve humans are led astray by the fact that they experience that there are some apparently extraordinary people who are able to tell them about such details of their past which could not normally be known to anyone. This could only be possible if one were in direct contact with an ‘Usman Sahib’. Obviously, the jinn do not know everything about the unseen. Because of their mind-reading ability, their information about the past can be almost perfect, but since they do not have the same facility for the future, their predictions there are very likely to be much less accurate. Indeed, they do have their limitations. But they know more than us about certain aspects of this material life, as indeed we must know more than them about certain other aspects of it. However, their ‘advantage’ of invisibility gives them the edge, which helps them in their game of deception.  
    3. They pick our weaknesses to induce us into evil ways. Many a times I felt that ‘Usman Sahib’ was setting a trap for me to fall into by making dubious statements. For instance, he once declared that a certain place, owned by one of our relatives, was worthy of high reverence, because, long time ago, a prophet was born there. Obviously, it was a trap meant to entice the target to fall into it. If the response from our side would have been positive, he would have jumped at the opportunity to make a mountain out of this mole.
    4. The biggest assault Satan makes is on the belief in unity of God. That is what ‘Usman Sahib’ attempted in his ‘prophet’s birthplace trap’, but, thank God, failed.
    5. Satan has the ability to create images, which appear real, if one allows oneself to be deceived by the great deceiver. There is no reason to be impressed by the kind of remarkable stuff many people claim to have viewed in their visions.
    6. Satan doesn’t mention everything wrong. He mixes good with evil so that men get confused and thus the way is paved for evil to prevail.
    7. The Almighty has, generally speaking, kept us secured from the direct manipulation of the jinn, unless we foolishly allow them to interfere in our affairs. I committed that blunder and paid the penalty, and so did the gentleman from Saudi Arabia.
    8. As soon as one realizes that one is being influenced by Satan, one should immediately seek refuge in the Almighty, or else it is very likely that Satan will win over our confidence and would take us to the farthest corners of ignorance. 
    9. Most of the misplaced confidence of the people in their beliefs who are misguided from the straight path of Islam, as is mentioned in the Qur’an and Sunnah, are the ones who feel confident through their jinn-inspired experiences of a world that doesn’t exist but is made to appear as if it actually does. Most of the misguided religious people mention their confidence about their espoused religious beliefs on the basis of their visions, which are by and large inspired by Satan. I personally know Sufis, Ahmadis, Born-Again Christians, Mormons, who all have definite experiences to narrate to prove that their religious views are correct.⁵ I am sure that many misguided religious people from other groups also make similar claims.
    10. There is no certain religious source of knowledge under the sky except the book of Allah, the Qur’an, and the religious example of his prophet, the Sunnah. Everything else is subservient to these sources and should only be accepted if it doesn’t contradict the guidance contained in them. 
    May the Almighty secure us from the evil ways of Satan, the great deceiver.