Source & Credit: The Nation | Editorial
Title: Horror | Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The death of any child is a tragedy, but to have an infant killed by its parents in an attempt to rid their household of demons takes us beyond the tragic.
In Karachi's Zaman Town area a four-month-old was killed in the course of an exorcism and her body buried in the family compound. When the police broke into the house they found the father of the child in a trance surrounded by earthenware lamps; and the mother locked in a closet with another child with both in a distressed condition. The father told the police that he believed the family to be cursed because they had broken an 8-day fast.
He said that their spiritual leader, said to be living in Dera Ismail Khan, had told them to silence the child if they wanted to remove the demons from their house.
Although the death of a child in this manner is unusual, the practice of exorcism is common and found in all our faith communities. They are sometimes performed by reputable people, but increasingly they are performed by 'fake Pirs' who prey on a highly suggestible populace, girls and women in particular, and there is ample anecdotal evidence of 'fake Pirs' molesting women and girls. [Read related story here]
The conventional wisdom is that it is the poor and uneducated who are the primary victims of these unscrupulous people, but there is again evidence that the educated and moneyed classes are no less susceptible to their wiles. Also vulnerable are the mentally ill, in particular those suffering from epilepsy (a condition that is controllable with medication) who are believed to be possessed by evil spirits manifesting themselves through fits.
We do not know for certain at this point if the influence of a 'fake Pir' lies behind the death of this child, or if it was the parents acting of their own volition. Either way, the child was murdered – sacrificed – in the belief that her death would drive out whatever evil was believed to be in the house.
In 2008 two women were killed in Mirpurkhas by being thrown alive into a fire on the pretext of exorcism, the sad result of interfamilial jealousy and false accusations.
There are reports of broken limbs and other injuries associated with the casting out of 'devils'.
Exorcising the malign spirits in our midst is as much a job for the law-enforcement agencies as it is for 'holy men' and the exposure of 'fake pirs' and their prosecution will leave us all a little cleaner.
Read original articles here: Exorcism: Horror
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