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The tale of a woman with a village of otherworldly beings living inside her was just one of many scary stories shared during this year’s Halaloween event, hosted by the University of Michigan Global Islamic Studies Center. Halaloween, an annual Muslim horror film festival hosted by GISC and many other departmental sponsors screens a selection of international films and short films that are made by, for or about Muslim people at in-person theaters and online.
GISC director Aliyah Khan told The Michigan Daily that while they prioritized a diverse selection of movies from across the globe, all of this year’s films have a feminist lens.
“One is from Azerbaijan, one is from Jordan, one is from Morocco and one is from Palestine,” Khan said. “They’re not necessarily related, except they all have a kind of vaguely feminist theme. They are centered around the perspectives of Muslim women and girls.”
Halaloween also included an in-person lecture and discussion led by the Jerusalem-based Palestine Fiction Council (مجلس الخيال) and its founder Ahmad Nabil on jinn, Islamic beings common in Muslim stories, myths and legends. Khan defined this type of Islamic being in an interview with The Daily as something similar to humans but living in a parallel dimension. They are commonly depicted in Muslim horror films, including at the Halaloween festival.
“Islamically speaking, there are three types of sentient beings,” Khan said. “There are human beings, angels and jinn. Amongst those, the only two kinds of beings that have complete free will are human beings and jinn. (Jinn) live in a parallel world to us where they have lives, they marry, they are Muslim or not Muslim. The worlds aren’t supposed to cross with each other. Some (jinn) are evil and some are good and some are neutral, like people.”
Nabil elaborated on this idea in his lecture, explaining how there are different types of jinn, which act and impact people differently.
“(Jinni) are a rank of jinn that likes to mess with little human children,” Nabil said. “They tickle them, they make them laugh, they make them smile. Al’ana is the jinn that actually lives within the people. Shaytan are satan and they’re powerful. There are more powerful, which are Marid. Ifrit are the highest, most powerful ever.”
At the Fiction Council event, audience members shared their own jinn stories and supernatural experiences. LSA sophomore Ayah Dagher, who shared a story at the event, wrote in an email to The Daily that she did not grow up with a heavy emphasis on jinn but is curious about them and the encounters other audience members had with jinn.
“When I think of jinn, it’s mainly me wondering about their sociology, as funny as it sounds,” Dagher wrote. “Considering how prevalent jinn are in Muslim horror movies, I think they can be a common fear of Muslims who’ve heard stories of (or even experienced!) jinn phenomena. There’s also the aspect of the superstitions being passed down through generations; I noticed many of the audience’s jinn stories were ones they’d heard from older relatives.”
Dagher went on to write that, as a Muslim person, she experiences existential anxiety: the fear regarding the promise of eternal life in Islam. Dagher wrote that she did not feel this fear was sufficiently addressed in the films presented at Halaloween.
“I’m actually surprised that few of them seem to touch on existential horror,” Dagher wrote. “While I hope that heaven is as lovely as it sounds, it still doesn’t erase that underlying fear of eternity and the unknown … I certainly can’t speak for all Muslims in regard to our individual mindsets, but I do think that jinn and existentialism are present fears and fascinations within our community.”
Khan said Halaloween is significant for its ability to educate the University and Ann Arbor community about Muslim culture and communities.
“(Halaloween) showcases the breadth of the Muslim communities around here,” Khan said. “We also understand things about the rest of the world. We’re not just a little silo called Michigan. It is a way of reaching out to the very large Arab and Muslim community in Southeast Michigan and inviting them to come to campus events that are relevant to them and might appeal to them. It is part of our mission as the GISC to welcome the community because a lot of students are from that community as well.”
Daily Staff Reporter Delilah Dakis can be reached at delilahd@umich.edu.
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