When I was younger and before I discovered more about life and before I made up my mind about my own personal beliefs, I always found that a lot of popularly-believed “spiritual” notions in the Arab world were borderline absurd (adding the word “borderline” to be slightly politically correct).
As a child, I often come back from school after a class where Wahhabist teachers tried their best to scare the students into religious obedience with stories of Jinn and evil eyes. My parents would always counteract these scare tactics with logic, sometimes basing it on Qura’anic verses that are often interpreted in different ways by different people. “Don’t believe anything at school, most of these teachers have never read a book in their lives, it is all myth and stupidity. If you want to really learn about religion, you must go to the source. Read Ibin Katheer, read the Qura’an with an objective eye, study the history of our region, and make your own stances. God is just, and he will surely appreciate diligence and belief based on perception, rather than blind-following mixed with culture and taboo.”
Even here in Jordan, which in Saudi standards is rather progressive when it comes to religion, and where belief isn’t as mixed up with taboo and culture, I really can’t help but notice how severely the evil eye affects daily comings and goings. When a misfortune occurs, regardless of how it is a bad hair day or a car accident, people almost always attribute it to “hasad” (the evil eye in Arabic). I remember last year, when an idiot crashed my car in the middle of the night, a relative, claiming that it was the work of an evil eye, insisted on placing a little Quran in my glove compartment, so that it wards off any more ‘hasad’. Of course, the accident was just the result of a drunk kid who lost control of his car.
This attribution of anything and everything to matters beyond our ability drives me crazy. I think of it as something that people lay back on so as to counteract the hardships of reality. I mean, even if there is such a thing as the evil eye, people shouldn’t go attributing everything to it. Sometimes unfortunate events are a result of our own stupidity, and most of the time, they can be fixed with some brains.
Otherwise, here’s some background to the evil eye:
Origins of the Evil Eye:
“Wet and Dry: The Evil Eye”, an academic essay by Professor Alan Dundes, theorizes that the evil eye, which has a Middle-Eastern, Mediterranean, and Indo-European distribution pattern and was unknown in the Americas, Pacific Islands, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or Australia until the introduction of European culture, is based upon underlying beliefs about water equating to life and dryness equating to death. He describes that the true “evil” done by the evil eye is that it causes living beings to “dry up”, notably babies, milking animals, young fruit trees, and nursing mothers. In short, the envious eye “dries up liquids,” according to Professor Alan Dundes, a fact that he contends demonstrates its Middle Eastern desert origins.
The evil eye belief is geographically spread out in a radiating ring from ancient Sumer, where it apparently got its start. The belief extends eastward to India, westward to Spain and Portugal, northward to Scandinavia and Britain, and southward into North Africa. Although many people of European descent think it is universal, in fact China has no evil eye belief, nor does Korea, Burma, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Sumatra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Japan, Australia (aborigine), New Zealand (aborigine), North America (native), South America (native), or any of Africa south of the Sahara. It is generally referred to by scholars as a Semitic and Indo-European belief. [online source]
History of the Evil Eye:
Belief in the evil eye during antiquity is based on the evidence in ancient sources like Aristophanes, Athenaeus, Plutarch and Heliodorus. In the Greco-Roman period a scientific explanation of the evil eye was common. Plutarch explained this scientific explanation explaining that the eyes were the chief, if not sole, source of the deadly rays that were supposed to spring up like poisoned darts from the inner recesses of a person possessing the evil eye. From the protection of the Egyptian eye of Horus to the Masonic eye of providence staring blankly out off of the US dollar bill, eyes can represent power, knowledge, and in this case, grave danger. In Judaism, it is sometimes asserted that the one who looks upon another with envy is not always at fault, but that the envy may be perceived by God, who then may redress the balance between two people by bringing the higher one low.
A Muslim Blogger on the Evil Eye:
Since I am not religious, I will avoid talking about the Evil Eye in Islam. While researching, I did though come upon a post by a person who claims is religious. You can read all of it here. Some excerpts:
I’m sure every group within this country has its own vanishing variety of hocus pocus intended to ward off or rid oneself of the Eye. Some people hang a passage from the Quran from the review mirror of their car or around their neck as an engraved necklace. I’ve seen little blue eyes inlayed in jewelry. A sister residing in Canada wrote me of her native Tunisia and described the wide assortment of amulets, magicians, and soothsayers. There’s one problem with this…they’re ALL wrong. All though the Quran can ward off an Eye, it has to be in your heart, not around your neck.
Wearing of any kind of amulets or verse of the Quran is forbidden. The prophet said: “Whoever ties on an amulet has committed shirk”. Wearing amulets is shirk because one is placing their faith and trust in other then God to help them. Others will keep wolves hair because they think that Jinn are afraid of wolves. [ - ]Most had some misunderstanding about the Islamic cures and had been partaking in some form of shirk or non-Sunnah manner of treatment for the evil eye. Some even became angry when I told them some of the things were in fact considered bid’ah.
Anyway, I guess that’s it for today. One last thing, a quick poll. Do you believe in the evil eye?
