Jeddah: Afshan Aziz & Irfan Mohammed | Published — Sunday 13 April 2014

​Residents in the Kingdom are reporting a dramatic increase in the incidents of black magic, said to be practiced by mostly expats.
The phenomenon is rampant in the Western Province, which records higher numbers in comparison with the other parts in the Kingdom, according to officials. Makkah and Madinah have recorded the highest number of cases, sources have said.
More than 85 percent of witchcraft-related cases registered in Makkah’s courts involve expats, according to statistics issued by the Ministry of Justice.
The increase in the number of witchcraft-related cases has prompted authorities at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (known in Arabic as the “Haia“) to use social networking sites to spread awareness and close in on sorcerers. In fact, the Haia has an exclusive section on its web site that addresses cases related to witchcraft.
The commission also recently introduced training programs for field employees in Makkah on how to deal with sorcerers.
“We have implemented certain procedures and systems to deal with cases pertaining to sorcery across the Kingdom,” Ahmed Al-Janard, a spokesman at the commission, told Arab News.
“The Haia recently apprehended a resident in the Eastern Province who was involved in the promotion of witchcraft through his Twitter account,” he said. “He was caught selling a stone that he claimed has the power to eliminate evil, reduce envoy and foster feelings of love.”
A Jeddah court recently sentenced an Asian Qur’an teacher to a four-year prison term and a hundred lashes, in addition to deportation upon completing his sentence, for practicing witchcraft and contacting potential clients on their mobile phones.
Several uninhabited flats and buildings, meanwhile, are said to possessed by jinn, according to residents who claim to have personally witnessed the supernatural creatures.
“I have frequently witnessed jinn attacks,” said Issa, an imam who cures residents affected by the supernatural creatures. “People come to me saying they had seen a ghost or had experienced strange incidents.”
“The Qur’an states that jinn have the ability to scare people,” he said. “They are supernatural beings that reside in parallel to our world.”
“I had rented out a flat in this area even though the structure of the building was outdated because it was affordable,” said Syed Arif, an expat who recently moved onto the Arbaeen district in Jeddah.
“My younger son started to talk to what we thought was an imaginary friend,” he said. “He never wanted to leave the house and stayed in his room for hours. We used to hear him laughing and talking to himself all the time.”
“When the situation got worse, we consulted a sheikh, who told us our son plays with a jinn,” he said. “He had advised us to move houses if the situation continued.” Amena Ali, a Jeddah residents, told Arab News of her experience with the unseen.
“We use to live in the Bab Makkah area and my daughter once complained that she saw a shadow in the house,” said Amena. “We didn’t pay attention to her, thinking it was her imagination, until my husband encountered the same shadow.”
Ejaz Hamed, a resident in the Rehab district, said that the government has closed off a local building said to be inhabited by jinn, which has not been rented out in years.
Ahlam Hafez from Riyadh said she paid a sheikh more than SR10,000 to get rid of jinn in a neighboring flat.
“There are believers and non-believers among jinn,” said Mohammed Mukhtar, a sheikh. “Preachers who earn their living by exorcizing spirits should charge affordable fees.”

RIYADH: ARAB NEWS | Published — Monday 1 October 2012
​
Authorities are currently working out legislation to control “ruqyah” or religious healing, Al-Watan newspaper reported.
The government aims to prevent the misuse of religious healing by issuing licenses to practice it.
The newspaper said the law considers practice of ruqyah by expatriates as violating the terms of their work contracts, and those expats should be arrested and deported to their countries.
Sources said under the new law, licenses would be granted to people with a sound knowledge of Shariah. Accounts will be kept of income gained from practicing ruqyah.
Some of those who have made religious healing as a career have turned their houses into money-making factories, making more than SR 30,000 a month, the sources said.
They sell water and oil to the gullible, convincing them of their healing properties. The move came after reports appeared in the media of many incidents and mistakes made by ruqyah reciters as a result of the absence of a rule to control their activities.
“Some of those who practice ruqyah even commit sexual assaults on women, beat people, or convince patients they are possessed by jinns, said Othman Al-Othman, a consultant at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia).
He also said that numerous departments, including his, had conducted studies to apply the new project to control the ruqyah practice.
He said there is already a functioning committee that controls religious healing in the Kingdom by preventing people from violating Shariah.
“Haia has nothing to do with license issuance for ruqyah,” said Al-Othman, adding that the ease with which anyone can start practicing ruqyah had led to the current situation.

20 Apr 2016 / Press Association ​

A dentist who believed he was possessed by evil spirits stabbed a faith healer at a centre which claims to treat black magic.Ashfaq Choudhry, of Kensington Avenue, Watford, was arrested at the Tower of London after he stabbed Zakariyya Islam on September 14.
A witness reported hearing a disturbance at the Ruqya Therapy Centre, Whitechapel, which lasted around two or three minutes, before Mr Islam appeared and said: "Call the police, somebody stabbed me."
The 45-year-old, who was a member of East London Mosque, died around 30 minutes later.
Choudhry pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at the Old Bailey yesterday.
The Watford man confessed to officers and members of the public who restrained him after he tried to jump into the moat of The Tower of London.
The 43-year-old had knifed Mr Islam, a father-of-three, in the stomach and heart with a 25cm blade during the assault at the Ruqya Therapy Centre in east London.
Some of Mr Islam's relatives wiped away tears as a statement was read on behalf of the victim's wife Roma which told of the "unimaginable emptiness" she felt at his death.

Choudhry, a father-of-two, was suffering from a severe mental illness which affected his ability to form a rational judgement and to exercise self-control, prosecutor Timothy Cray told the court.
The defendant, who had told psychiatrists he felt "worthless", became disillusioned with the medication he was on and decided to explore alternative therapies, the court heard.
The Ruqya centre provides Islamic treatment for black magic, evil eye and Jinn (evil spirit) possession, according to its website.
​
Choudhry visited Mr Islam at the centre, which the court heard practices a form of spiritual therapy, three weeks before the killing, and said he was told he was possessed by spirits.
Linda Strudwick, mitigating, said: "He (Choudhry) genuinely believed what he had been told, that somebody had put evil spirits into him."
After his visit to the clinic Ms Strudwick said he told others: "Look at me, look at me, I'm a monster."
Sentencing Choudhry, the judge Richard Marks QC, the Common Serjeant of London, said Mr Islam, whom he described as an "outstanding individual", had been well-intentioned in his words and actions.

Addressing the defendant, he said: "There is no doubt that he was doing what he genuinely thought was best in order to alleviate your symptoms."
Choudhry was given a hospital order under the Mental Health Act, without a time limit.

 Hussein Kesvani
BuzzFeed News Reporter

In a quiet suburban house in north London, Abdul, a 43-year-old accountant, is lying on the beige carpet of his bedroom, writhing in pain. As he mumbles and occasionally screams, another man, who calls himself Abu Issa, sits cross-legged beside him, his hand gently touching Abdul’s temple.
Issa sports a thick, black mid-size beard and is draped in long robes. He is wearing an embroidered skullcap, and carries a tasbih, a small collection of string beads. As Abdul wriggles on the floor, Issa recites passages, known as surahs, from the Qur’an. Between surahs, he tells Abdul he must focus. “You must use all your energy to get rid of the spirits,” he says. “Pray to Allah [the almighty], and he will give you strength to do this.”
Abdul, a short, stocky man of Pakistani heritage, is one of many clients who come to Issa for “ruqyah”, an Islamic spiritual healing ritual that some Muslims believe can remedy both physical and mental illnesses.
Although ruqyah refers to specific prayers recited by Muslims who seek spiritual healing during prayer, it can also refer to physical rituals carried out on those who believe they have been “possessed” or taken over by invisible spirits, known in Arabic as “jinn”. Although many Muslims consider jinn to be evil for the most part, Islamic scholars have a complicated definition in which jinn are invisible entities of a separate world, and vary in how they interact with human beings. Where a jinn is considered to have taken over one’s mind or body, ruqyah is the procedure by which it is spiritually removed.
Ruqyah varies in how it is practised, ranging from simple prayers read out by an imam to grand physical rituals that sometimes involve the use of blessed water, ashes, and incense. Because the practice of ruqyah is unregulated in the UK, some in professional medical fields and the wider Muslim community have expressed concern that some Muslims are turning to ruqyah as a way to treat severe mental illnesses.
Moreover, some practitioners – known as “raaqis” – have told BuzzFeed News that an increasing number of people with poor or no training in ruqyah risk putting patients with mental health issues in danger, either by making their conditions worse or by preventing them from seeking professional help early on.
Prominent figures, including Nazir Afzal, the former chief crown prosecutor for the North West of England, have also warned about the “problem” of “self-proclaimed faith healers”, especially in situations that could lead to severe violence. Afzal referred to the 2012 murder of Naila Mumtaz, in which four men, including Mumtaz’s husband and brother in law, who were convicted of her killing cited their belief that she was possessed by an evil jinn.
Speaking after his ruqyah session, Abdul told BuzzFeed News he was diagnosed with depression three years ago and prescribed strong antidepressant medication by his local doctor. “The depression crept on me very suddenly,” he said. “I remember just one day feeling like this giant weight had been placed on my back… It just wouldn’t go away. There would be days when I’d spend most of it crying for no reason. And at night, I’d experience these nightmares that would always feature demons.”
When BuzzFeed News asked whether this improved when he took his medication, Abdul said no, it had made his mental state worse. “The medicine just messed around with my head,” he said. “It started making me see things that weren’t there, it would make me hear voices in my head … I realised the medicine wasn’t working, and that the problem was actually something else.”
Abdul said that after consulting his imam at the local mosque and speaking to members of his family, he was convinced the problem was supernatural. “When you have voices in your head telling you to stop praying or to do anything that disobeys Allah, you know the problem is more than just psychological,” he said, adding: “Since I’ve been seeing the raaqi, I’ve felt much better and happier.”
Because of the lack of information on how many people visit faith healers in the UK, BuzzFeed News was unable to determine how widespread raaqis are across the country or how many people opt to visit them rather than mainstream mental health practitioners. Some raaqis, who did not want to be named, told BuzzFeed News they estimate there could be up to 10,000 in Britain.
Though most raaqis in the UK practise individually, usually meeting clients in mosques or at their homes, there are some who run specialist centres. One of the UK’s largest is the Abu Ruqya centre in east London, which claims to have treated hundreds of people who have been “possessed by jinn” and other forms of black magic.
Although the centre’s owner, who goes by the Islamic name Abu Ruqya, declined to be photographed or formally interviewed by BuzzFeed News, he claimed to be one of the country’s most respected raaqis, and said he had helped cure people who “had illnesses…mental and physical health issues that doctors were unable to fix”. Though Ruqya did not cite his practice as an alternative to professional medical care in regards to mental health, the centre’s website says it treats those who are “unaware they have a spiritual affliction”.
According to Professor Swaran Singh, head of mental health and wellbeing at Warwick Medical School, a majority of people in some religious communities in the UK seek help from faith healers.
Singh told BuzzFeed News the type of faith healing varied between communities, but in some instances it was being chosen over mainstream mental health care.
“It’s not a small minority of Muslims that seek faith healing,” he said, “and according to our research conducted last year, not all of them experienced bad things as a result. It’s worth noting that this type of treatment varies a lot between people who administer it. Sometimes you’ll have imams who recite Qur’anic passages to soothe people. On the other hand, you’ll have people who are unqualified, performing dangerous rituals on people with significant problems.

“[Ruqyah] and other faith healing should not be considered as a treatment. We found that although it was providing comfort, in some cases it was getting in the way of seeking actual medical treatment … and in the long term, that could be very dangerous.”
But another issue some have raised with ruqyah is the lack of regulation – something that practitioners of other religious therapy rituals highlighted earlier this year. As a result, some have warned that vulnerable people are susceptible to being exploited, or worse, not treating severe medical conditions until it is too late.
Yusuf Ali, a well-known raaqi in Luton, Bedfordshire, who claims to have studied ruqyah for nearly a decade, told BuzzFeed News that the lack of regulation over who can practise ruqyah is a growing problem affecting Muslim communities.
“Some of these Muslim communities lack knowledge about mental health,” he said. “It’s a fairly new topic for most people, but you still have some families worried that if their daughter has a mental health issue that needs medication, it might end her marriage prospects, or affect the family’s reputation in their communities. So sometimes you’ll see families with children who have major depression or severe schizophrenia, and they’ll put it down to a curse or an evil jinn. In those cases I’d say that they would need to go see a specialist.”

Ali added: “I know of other people who claim to be raaqis, who won’t say anything because they just want to make some money.” He believes that a better method of vetting raaqis is required, and that it would also need to involve being more open to talking about mental health. “Things are getting better across the UK, alhamdulillah, but we still don’t talk a lot about mental health in the context of Islam. We talk a lot about spiritual health, so that might lead people to view a mental health problem as a spiritual health problem.”
Like many raaqis in the UK, Issa carries out ruqyah part-time (his day job is as an IT consultant). He told BuzzFeed News that he had learnt how to carry out the rituals while living in the Middle East, learning from scholars in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. Though he primarily works in the UK, he does not have to answer to any professional body.
He’s aware that some might consider his practice to be dangerous. “The issue in the UK is that we have a secular medical system, which doesn’t account for the spirituality of the individual,” he said in a telephone interview. “I’m not against professional medical treatment ­­– there are many Muslim doctors who work in the field of mental health who will tell you that you can marry spiritual and physical wellbeing, and that ruqyah, which is something that is intrinsic to the belief of many people, can complement traditional medical treatment.” He insisted that he’s successfully treated individuals diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and even suicidal ideations.
But Issa admitted that there is a grey area between medical and nonmedical treatment, which, particularly in the case of mental health, can put some patients at risk.
He cited several cases where raaqis have allegedly extorted money from patients, including one family whose daughter was discovered to be self-harming, and another instance where a man with schizophrenia spent two years seeing a spiritual healer in the belief he was possessed by evil spirits, before eventually seeking professional medical help.
“Raaqis don’t have to answer to any official body,” he said, “which means they hold the responsibility to judge whether they should treat patients. … As a rule, I will not treat people who evidently have severe mental illnesses, the ones who need medicinal treatment.”

By Catrin Nye BBC Asian Network and BBC Newsnight

​UK health and social workers and those in the criminal justice system are increasingly having to understand belief in spiritual possession among ethnic minorities, with new research highlighting a particular issue with some sections of the British Asian community blaming mental health problems on the supernatural.
The exorcist Abou Mohammed sits cross-legged on the floor of a back-room in his home in Ilford, East London. He is surrounded by copies of the Koran, containers of olive oil and a spray-bottle of water which he uses on the Jinn, the supernatural spirits, that he says possess many of his clients.

Image caption Mudasar Khan says that exorcism has helped him where medication failed Mr Mohammed, who goes by the title of Raqi, has a waiting list several months long and charges £60 for a one-hour session.
One of his clients is Mudasar Khan, 41, who says he has been possessed by a Jinn for years. He describes it as something that surrounds his body, buzzing, making him unwell and even stopping him sleeping.
Mr Khan has been on anti-depressants in the past and suffered panic attacks, but he says the Jinn prevented medication from working and that it is only coming to Abou Mohammed that has provided some relief.
"I had to go to the doctors and the hospitals too, to prove it to my family, because if I didn't do that side of it as well they'd think it was in my head," he says.
For five years Mr Khan has been treated by Mr Mohammed, who he says summons up the Jinn inside of him and speaks to it directly, easing its effect.
'Power to cure'Mr Mohammed knows what he does is controversial - while we are filming his work he also films us, concerned that we will distort what he does - and he says that there are many charlatans in his field.
The exorcist believes some illnesses are unnecessarily dealt with by doctors when they are actually spiritual problems. He even says some people have operations they do not need because the Jinn has tricked doctors.

Image caption Abou Mohamed believes that Jinn can trick doctors into carrying out unnecessary procedures "I cure them by this book [the Koran]. You have to have a faith in it and it will work. So yes, anxiety, depression, heart problems, many, believe me, many problems get cured by this healing."
Despite this, Mr Mohammed admits he does have some clients come to him who are seriously ill and need medical attention, particularly those who are mentally unwell.
When 20-year-old Nadeem (whose name we have changed) became ill he and his family thought he had a spiritual problem, that he was also possessed by a Jinn:
"I was at home and I was with my family and their faces looked different to me, my senses changed as well," he recalls. "I tried to lie down to sleep, but too many things were going through my mind and I felt my head is getting narrowed getting tight. My thinking is big; I'm thinking a lot of things."
He says that in the night he went down stairs and told his father how he was feeling:
"My parents got worried, they said don't worry we'll call a certain guy and he'll sort it out... so they called a person who's got the power to control these things and take them out."
'Writhing on the floor'Nadeem's parents took him to an exorcist for treatment:
What are Jinn?

• In Arabic mythology supernatural spirits below the level of angels and devils
• They possess the bodily needs of human beings, but they are free from all physical restraints
• Jinn delight in punishing humans for any harm done to them, intentionally or unintentionally
• They are said to be responsible for many diseases and all kinds of accidents
• Their existence is further acknowledged in official Islam, which indicated that they, like human beings, would have to face eventual salvation or damnation
• In Islam Jinn can be seen as good or bad

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Academic edition
"I was physically fidgeting and flinching all over the place. I was on the floor in my house and I was screaming and the Jinn was trying to come out of my mouth," he says.
Nadeem says he felt better for his treatment, but that he did not recover and was eventually taken to hospital. He is now diagnosed with schizophrenia and takes daily medication.
Cases like Nadeem's, in which his illness was instantly attributed to possession, are not entirely uncommon and are a cause for concern among mental health professionals.
Professor Swaran Singh, head of the Mental Health and Wellbeing division at Warwick Medical School, has just completed a five year study, funded by the Department of Health, into why patients from ethnic minority backgrounds were often reaching mental health services in a more severely ill state than the rest of the population.
"We found that in the very early stages when people have depression or anxiety, they seek help through their GP because it looks like a psychological problem. When they become seriously unwell, like when they develop delusions or start hearing voices, then the groups diverge.
"The Asian groups, particularly the British Pakistanis, then attribute their problem to a religious cause, for instance, possession by a Jinn. So they seek help through the Imams, through the mosque," he says.
Among British Asians the belief in evil spirits is not uncommon. It can be concepts like black magic or the evil eye, it can also be that the body can be possessed causing physical harm.
British Muslims in particular are brought up learning of the existence of Jinn in the Koran, though what the Jinn actually are is not universally agreed upon.
Source of blameProf Singh says that religious care can bring a great deal of comfort to patients, but it can create serious problems if it is the only help sought:
"An extreme example I can think of was this Sikh gentleman who became ill when he was 18, but the family sought help within the community faith group, and he didn't come for psychiatric attention for 13 years. By that time a lot of damage has been done from the untreated illness."
An extreme example I can think of was this Sikh gentleman who became ill when he was 18, but the family sought help within the community faith group, and he didn't come for psychiatric attention for 13 years. By that time a lot of damage has been done from the untreated illness
Professor Swaran Singh, Head of Mental Health and Wellbeing division at Warwick Medical SchoolAs well as the misdiagnosis of mental health problems there have been other extreme consequences to the attribution of possession. In September this year four members of the same family were found guilty of the murder of 21-year-old Naila Mumtaz in Birmingham.
Birmingham Crown Court was told that Mrs Mumtaz's in-laws, Zia Ul-Haq and Salma Aslam, who along with her husband Mohammed Mumtaz and brother-in-law Hammad Hassan were convicted of her killing, thought she was possessed by evil spirits.
The trial heard evidence that she was killed as family members attempted to drive out a harmful Jinn spirit.
Naila's brother Nasir Mehmood believes Jinn was used as a way of "explaining away" the death:
"The thinking behind her in-laws was that they would have the body released, take it back home to Pakistan, and say Jinn did it. Jinn killed her. There's no reason to explain anything further than that. People are very susceptible to believe that sort of stuff," he says.
Tony Medhi, a family friend who helped Mr Mehmood through the case, says he is very used to seeing spiritual possession used as a "catch all" for any problems in the British Pakistani community he grew up in:
"The Jinn concept is used to keep society in its place. If somebody isn't behaving correctly, maybe somebody's behaviour is very extreme, it could be due to some mental illness, or physical disability or something like that, people will turn around and say 'it's Jinn. Jinn has done this to her or him'."
'Operating in the shadows'This has also been the experience of Yasmin Ishaq, a teacher from Rotherham who said she became a healer herself because she saw peoples' beliefs being exploited:
"If somebody was saying I was being abused, or I'm living in horrific conditions, they would automatically silence them by saying 'she's possessed'. I'm talking from personal experiences - family members, neighbours, community members - where women were beaten on the premise that they were possessed when really it was just violence against women."
"Here today, in 2012, we have men claiming in national newspapers that they can fix all your problems, that they can basically sort out every kind of problem for a price."
Nazir Afzal, the Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North-West of England, says that "problem" healers are something the police are getting intelligence on.

Image caption Naila Mumtaz was murdered by four members of her family "We're becoming more aware of it. I'm actually very pleased we've been talking to lots of community groups who want to tackle this themselves," he says.
However, there is still a long way to go. In the Naila Mumtaz case it is thought that the "healer" was in the room when she died. That person, as has happened in other cases, has never been traced.
"They do operate in the shadows. They are protected by others within their communities, or within their faiths, or within their places of worship. They may leave the country. So it can be very difficult to track down the healers," Mr Afzal says.
"That said, the police are getting a lot more intelligence from within the community in the hope that we can identify these people before serious harm occurs."
This is an issue that is not going away. The spiritual care department at East London's Mental Health Trust, which covers what is now one of the most ethnically diverse parts of the UK, says that their services were established to serve a community where religion was dying out, but that now most of their patients value the spiritual as much as they do science.
Prof Singh argues that education is vital among communities so that these healers do not get in the way of medical care:
"For panic attacks and depression, the current treatment now is not medication, it's talking therapies, and in some cultures this means talking to a healer, so it may work."
"It becomes problematic when it becomes an alternative to medical care - so when instead of taking medication, they rely exclusively on religious ceremony or religious procedure. That's not going to treat the condition, so faith may offer comfort but it doesn't offer a cure for illness."

By Al Arabiya
​
The government of Saudi Arabia is now pushing for a law against the misuse of the ‘ruqyah’ (religious healing) by various practitioners, the Saudi al-Watan newspaper reported on Monday.

The government is planning on issuing licenses to eligible practitioners.

People with good knowledge of Shariah (Islamic law) will be granted license to perform the ‘ruqyah’, al-Watan said citing its sources.

A newspaper reported that under the new law, the practice of ‘ruqyah’ by expatriates will be regarded as a violation to the terms of their work contracts. Arrest and deportation will await violators.

“Some of those who practice ‘ruqyah’ even commit sexual assaults on women, beat people, or convince patients they are possessed by jinns,” Othman al-Othman, a consultant at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia), was quoted by the saudi daily as saying.

Many have made a living out of this practice, making healing their career.

Some healers earn as much as SR30,000 ($8,000) a month by just offering and selling water and oil to trusting Muslims, convincing them of their healing capacities and turning their houses into money-making factories, as described by the report.

Profits gained from the practice will be taken into account.

Al-Othman said that there is already an existing committee that looks in the religious healing activities in the Kingdom aiming to prevent people from violating Shariah.

​RIYADH: Faith healing, or “ruqyah”, is being increasingly used by some ill-intentioned so-called healers in the Kingdom as a way to exploit others, make money and become famous.
Fiqh researcher Saad Al-Sabr said some faith healers seek to exploit women and take their money. He made his remarks during a special Al-Arabiya program about ruqyah this week, which talked about what has been said about it by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his companions, and its increasing use by some faith healers for exploitation.
Once associated with healing and spirituality, it is now becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between healers who abide by legitimate principles and those who wish to take advantage of others, the program pointed out.
In Islam, ruqyah and faith healing are considered legitimate, but these days more people are using it as a trade to steal people’s money or achieve other immoral purposes.
There are two types of ruqyah, one that follows the Qur'an and the Sunnah, called shariah (or legitimate) ruqyah, and one that brings in elements of sorcery and mysticism, and uses incense, water and some herbs.
The danger also lies in the fact that this attracts sick people who put their fate in the hands of such faith healers based on recommendations from family and friends, even if these healers are not medically qualified to provide the needed treatment.

By WONBO WOO
LAUREN EFFRON
July 15, 2011

Diane Koehler, who has waged a lifelong battle with depression, believes she has seen and personally fought with the devil himself.

"Satan actually came to me and told me if I didn't take my life he would take my son's," she said. "He showed me a gun. He wanted me to take it. I knew if I took the gun that I would be gone."

She resisted that entreaty, but after her son Timothy committed suicide, her depression deepened.

"At that point, I did see a psychiatrist for medication," Koehler says. "I couldn't tell him anything going on because I knew he wouldn't understand it. It's something I couldn't talk to anybody about, but the medication didn't work."

Koehler says she decided to kill herself -- she even set a date. And she would have gone through with it had she not heard Pastor John Goguen speaking about the devil on a local Christian radio station. She then began attending his church.

"The devil doesn't like anybody," Goguen says. "In fact, he hates everybody. But his arms are too short to box with God, so he boxes with us, as humans. He knows we are precious to God and to his son, the lord Jesus Christ."

Pastor Goguen is a conservative evangelical ordained in the Southern Baptist Church. After graduating from the prestigious Dallas Theological Seminary, he went on to open his own church, the Agape Bible Fellowship, in East Aurora, N.Y. It's a deliverance church, where they say they expel demons through prayer.

The deliverance begins quietly with Pastor Goguen commanding his flock to get rid of their demons -- demons that he says enter the body through our breath. The first sign of deliverance is when people begin to yawn incessantly or burp. As the service continues, many start to gag and cough.

"Some of this is painful," Goguen said. "It's just that demon having to leave under the authority and the power of the lord Jesus Christ."

Before long, the room becomes filled with people screaming, moaning and grunting. Some are writhing on the floor with others holding them down, telling the demons to leave their bodies. This form of deliverance is far from the Catholic Church's secretive rite of exorcism.

"Jesus did [exorcisms] publically," Goguen said. "He didn't do it behind closed doors. It was right out in the open. He healed and delivered, delivered from demons, and he healed."

While it may seem off-putting to an outside observer, Goguen says people have to get over feeling foolish or feeling that his method is "weird."

"[When people are] willing to repent of sin in the area that the Holy Spirit is working with them on, we find that they get help," he said.

Pastor Goguen: "Most of Our Services Are Just Good, Normal Baptist Service"

Goguen's ministry claims to help everyone from drug addicts to adulterers, to those suffering from severe illness, asking them to surrender to the occult.

"Not every cancer is caused by a demon," Goguen said. "Not every sickness is caused by an evil spirit. I'm just amazed at how much is."

Diane Koehler says deliverance has changed her life. "It's a relief, you know, you're getting rid of these demons...it's just amazing what the Lord can do to get rid of these things in me. It's a relief."

The pastor explains that everyone carries demons inside them and told his congregation that demons can come through tattoos, martial arts, Ouija boards and divination, just to name a few portals.

"Most of our services are just good, normal Baptist service," Goguen said. "Until we get to the end when we tackle the believers."

When Goguen says "tackle" he means literally. In one instance, a large man named Kevin Soudmire began lashing out at the congregation, knocking over chairs and screaming, until several other men tackled him to the floor. Afterwards Soudmire, the man who was delivered, said he felt "lighter."

"It's been truly a blessing," he said. "Until you go through something like this, no one can truly get to understand...it's a battle. I believe it's a battle between the Lord and the devil."

By Nick Squires, Rome
4:04PM GMT 04 Jan 2014

Forty years after The Exorcist scared the wits out of cinema audiences around the world, the Roman Catholic Church is training up a new generation of priests to meet a growing demand for exorcisms

Dioceses across Italy, as well as in countries such as Spain, are increasing the number of priests schooled in administering the rite of exorcism, fabled to rid people of possession by the Devil.

The rise in demonic cases is a result of more people dabbling in practices such as black magic, paganism, Satanic rites and Ouija boards, often exploring the dark arts with the help of information readily found on the internet, the Church said.

The increase in the number of priests being trained to tackle the phenomenon is also an effort by the Church to sideline unauthorised, self-proclaimed exorcists, and its tacit recognition that belief in Satan, once regarded by Catholic progressives as an embarrassment, is still very much alive.

The trend comes four decades after the 1973 release of The Exorcist, the American horror film based on the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl and attempts to exorcise her by two priests.

The diocese of Milan recently nominated seven new exorcists, the bishop of Naples appointed three new ones a couple of years ago and the Catholic Church in Sardinia sent three priests for exorcism training in Rome, amid concern that the Mediterranean island, particularly its mountainous, tradition-bound interior, is a hotbed of occultism.

In Spain, Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, the archbishop of Madrid, chose eight priests to undergo special training in May to confront what he described as “an unprecedented rise” in cases of “demonic possession”. The Church in Spain was coming across many cases that “go beyond the competence of psychologists” and they were occurring with “a striking frequency”, the archbishop said.

“Diabolical possessions are on the increase as a result of people subscribing to occultism,” said Fr Francesco Bamonte, the president of the Italy-based International Association for Exorcists. “The few exorcists that we have in the dioceses are often not able to handle the enormous number of requests for help,” he told La Repubblica last month.

The association was founded in 1993 by Fr Gabriele Amorth, who served as the Vatican’s chief exorcist and claims to have conducted thousands of exorcisms.

He has written several books on the subject, including The Last Exorcist — My Fight Against Satan.

A controversial figure, he has claimed that yoga is “evil” because it leads to a worship of Hinduism and other Eastern religions.

During the papacy of Benedict XVI he said that the sex abuse scandals which engulfed the Church in the US, Ireland, Australia and other countries were proof that the Antichrist was waging a war against the Holy See.

The Church insists that the majority of people who claim to be possessed by the Devil are suffering from a variety of mental health issues, from paranoia to depression. Priests generally advise them to seek medical help.

But in a few cases, it is judged that the person really has been taken over by evil, and an exorcism is required.

The need for exorcisms is “rare, very rare”, said Fr Vincenzio Taraborelli, a priest in a church which lies just a few hundred yards from the Vatican. “In the cases where a mental illness is apparent, we try to send them to a doctor.”

Don Gianni Sini is a priest in Sardinia, an island with a reputation for spiritualism — its interior is dotted with mysterious stone-built structures called nuraghi, which predate Carthaginian and Roman occupation.

“People come to me thinking that with an exorcism they can resolve all the problems they have in their lives. A child is doing badly at school? With an exorcism we can make him study. They see exorcists as a last resort. Out of 100 people that I receive, there will be one who has need of me as an exorcist.”

“Demonic” possession manifests itself in people babbling in languages foreign to them, shaking uncontrollably and vomiting nails, pieces of metal and shards of glass, according to those who believe in the phenomenon.

They must undergo the official Catholic rite of exorcism, which involves a consecrated priest invoking the name of God, as well as various saints and the Archangel Michael, to cast out their demons. The growth in the number of priests being trained is “a response to public demand, but it’s also about quality control”, said John Allen, an expert on the Vatican from the National Catholic Reporter.

“There are all these guys, some of them priests, who have set themselves up as exorcists. A lot of it is fairly dodgy theologically — they are self-appointed exorcists running around purporting to be acting on behalf of the Church.

“Now there is an attempt to ensure that all this is done in accordance with the Church’s official teaching. The hierarchy don’t want it going on outside the official channels.” Monsignor Bruno Forte, a theologian and the archbishop of Chieti-Vasto, said the Church teaches that evil exists and that in extreme cases it can take possession of a person.

“God has the power to beat his adversary, but Satan never ceases to work. There are people who experiment with subjection to the Devil, even a state of diabolical possession, for which the help of an exorcist can be necessary,” he told La Repubblica.

“When Christians recite the Our Father prayer, they ask for delivery from evil. In every diocese the bishop chooses one or two priests to act as exorcists — they have to be well balanced and discreet.

“The great majority do not have need of an exorcism, but medical treatment. But with those who are possessed we begin a course of conversion, help them to return to prayer, to the sacraments, to enable them to throw off the possession.”

Belief in black magic and Satanism may have been spread by the internet, but there has been a streak of popular superstition in the Catholic Church for centuries. “I’m not sure it ever really went away,” said Mr Allen. “After the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, there was a great deal of embarrassment among 'enlightened’ Catholics about exorcisms and other aspects of the supernatural. It was seen as a medieval anachronism.

“But at the grassroots level there has always been a very strong streak of popular religion, a fascination with the occult and the powers of the Devil.

“We know that Pope Francis is a strong believer in popular religion such as Marian devotion, but that also includes belief in the Devil.”

In May it was claimed that Pope Francis had performed an exorcism during a Mass in St Peter’s Square.

Television images show him laying his hands on a wheelchair-bound man, who appears to go into convulsions with his mouth open before slumping down into his chair. The encounter was shown by TV2000, a channel owned by the Italian bishops’ conference, which quoted experts as saying that there was no doubt the Pope had performed an exorcism.

Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, later dismissed the claims, saying Pope Francis “did not intend” to perform an exorcism — an ambivalently-worded denial that left many convinced that he had indeed done so.

Pope Francis has not publicly commented on exorcisms, but many of his sermons and homilies feature references to the Devil.

During a Mass in November in the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican residence where he lives, he said that although “God created man to be incorruptible”, the Devil entered the world and there are those “who belong to him”.

At a Mass days before, he talked of the dangers of worldliness, warning that: “When we think of our enemies, we really think of the Devil first, because it’s the Devil that harms us. The Devil enjoys the atmosphere, the lifestyle of worldliness.”

The Straits Times

www.straitstimes.com

Published on May 25, 2015

By Selina Lum

 

SINGAPORE - A domestic maid who strangled her employer's 16-year-old daughter with the girl's own school pinafore while the teenager was asleep, was on Monday jailed for 12 years.

Indonesian Tuti Aeliyah, 30, pleaded guilty in the High Court to one charge of culpable homicide for killing Shameera Basha Noor Basha, a Secondary 4 student at Tanjong Katong Girls' School, on Nov 14, 2013.

Tuti was originally charged with murder, but the charge was reduced after she was diagnosed to be suffering from severe depression with psychotic symptoms at the time. Her mental condition was found to have significantly impaired her judgment.

The High Court heard on Monday that Tuti, who started working for the teen's family of four in April 2012, was not abused or ill-treated by her employers.

But several months before the killing, she started behaving strangely. She lost weight, did not want to call home and cried frequently. Two weeks before the incident, she told a neighbour's maid that she wanted to commit suicide.

She told a psychiatrist that the night before the killing, she tried to kill herself but failed.

The next morning, Shameera was still asleep and alone at home with the maid after her parents and brother left their Tampines flat. The maid claimed that while she was in the toilet, she saw a ghost which told her to kill the teenager.

At 8am, armed with a kitchen knife, she went into the teen's room and tried to smother her with a pillow. After Shameera woke up and struggled, the maid stabbed her in the abdomen and chest. The maid then looped Shameera's dark green pinafore around her neck a few times and pulled both ends until the teen stopped moving.

Tuti then drank half a capful of fabric softener, made superficial cuts on her wrist with a knife and tried to hang herself from from a toilet pipe but failed to kill herself.

Half an hour past noon, when the teen's mother returned home, the maid told her employer that she had killed Shameera. Shocked, the 47-year-old woman sought help from a neighbour, who called the police.

selinal@sph.com.sg