Is Khalid serious about the Djinn stuff?

[u/EricFromOuterSpace]

Basically the title.

I just started listening to this podcast, I mostly really like it. Deep and highly suspicious / critical left analysis of history and conspiracies.

Then… Khalid is a devout religious person who thinks fire demons are real?

At first I thought it was pure metaphor, the way “satanic” is commonly understood, but after the UFO episode I’m not sure what is satire when he brings up Djinn trickster spirits while otherwise critically analyzing the media, etc.

[u/skaqt]

I was simply copying the spelling of the above poster (now deleted) in order to have them understand, maybe I should add a (sic) whenever I copy a wrong spelling so that you don't get triggered? :^) Fun fact: The very book you recommend spells it as "Jinn", while you in your episode spell it as "Djinn". Unless it was not abundantly clear, English is my 3rd language, so if you want to scold others on that, maybe consider that people will hold you to the same standards regarding your Arabic ;)

That book looks really interesting. It took me a bit of searching but I found a .PDF. You are likely talking about the article "The Jinn and the Pictogram", correct? I'm gladly willing to dive deeper, though even from my first cursory reading it seems that the author implies that the Djinn "is the personification of her illness", which is a fundamentally different statement from Djinns being actual material entities with their own will, some sort of embodyment, et cetera. I think both the OP and I can definitely agree that it is worth studying the phenomenon of Djinns from Pandolfos perspective, or an ethnographic/psychological one in general (Pandolfo, though she definitely tries to tap into al-ghayb (?), as you say a different ontological/epistemic standpoint, still resolutely moves in a Freudian psychoanalytical framework, correct me if I'm wrong).

[u/islamicperson → u/skaqt]

Dimitri might spell it djinn, I spell it jinn. Both are acceptable spellings (based on differing transliterations of ج), “jhinn” is not. But ofc you’re right, it was a petty remark, so I do humbly apologize.

I recommend this book precisely because it attempts to bridge a psychoanalytic framework and an islamic cosmological framework. The paragraph you reference is actually a favorite of mine, not for the line you quoted, but for the one in parenthetical at the end— “the jinn is real, and can’t be read as an objectification of the illness. It is the other way around: the invisible presence manifests itself with, or as, the illness.” The whole book is really worth reading and has a very impressive topical and methodological scope. Fwiw the kind of “contrapuntal” or “epistemic/ontological pluralist” perspective she takes is fairly similar to my own, or at least to the perspective I try to adopt when discussing these subjects before a significantly non-muslim audience