Basic Information
July 13, 2009: A lawsuit has been filed in Saudi Arabia that has a most unique defendant. The accused is a genie, or possibly several jinn. The Sheikh in charge of the Sharia court said he will investigate the plaintiff's claims. Djinni are mentioned in the Koran, and that holy work is the foundation of Islamic Law.
The genies stand accused of driving the plaintiffs out of their family home. The genies are alleged to have stolen cellphones, made threats in ominous voices, and eventually thrown rocks at the family to drive them away. The complaints allege this hostile behavior went on for two years before the family gave-in to protect their children. Complaints against the Jinn have been filed by the entire clan - not just one or two individuals.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- This sounds more like poltergeist behavior than like wish-granting fire-born genies. Perhaps ghosts and Jinn are more similar than presented by Hollywood?
- Despite the Quran's assertion that the Jinni are composed of smokeless fire, "jinn" (or variants thereof) can be more or less considered the Arabic equivalent of "spirit" … sometimes with a strong dose of "fairy" thrown in.
- Saudi Arabia still has Beheading as a form of criminal punishment. Perhaps that traumatic death results in a lot of ghost activity?
- (Perhaps) unfortunately, this sort of thing is not uncommon in the Arab world - although it rarely proceeds as far as legal action and is normally dealt with by Imams and other exorcists.
- The article implies there's a lot of witnesses, so demon hunters may consider this an important case. It's in an exotic location, where the local government has a reputation of being harsh and oppressive - See Wikipedia on the subject. There may be some difficulties in getting there and conducting an investigation. Sounds like the makings of a great adventure!
- The idea of a court prepared to entertain a lawsuit with a supernatural dimension seems laughable to "advanced" Westerners … but in a world with real supernatural menaces, Saudi Arabia might become as much of a hub for "litigation tourism" against the supernatural as London is for those with a libel case to press.
- Assuming the whole non-muslim = non-person aspect of Sharia law can be overcome that is.
- More generally - perhaps by moving the venue to a more pluralist society - hours of fun could be had playing the luckless court baliff or sergeant at arms who has to serve writs against incorporal spirits.
- Wicked cool character concept though…
- Maybe the whole thing is a hoax. There could be something hidden at the property, and a thief wanted to scare everyone off so they could dig it up. Perhaps a con man posing as an exorcist had been making money at the families expense. Only now, the Saudi government has been called in, and the stakes have raised. Things are bound to spiral out of control.
- Or maybe it started as a hoax, but attracted the attention of a real genie, or some other malevolent presence.
- …however things turn out "those meddling kids" are going to find their job a lot harder without their dog (and with only half of them allowed out to investigate mysteries in the first place). ;-)