he said, “He has told you the truth, even though he is an inveterate liar,” and he made it known that the visitor was a devil.

For that very reason, whenever a person recites Āyat al-Kursī sincerely in moments of satanic influence, it breaks their power. A man may, while under a diabolical state, walk into a blaze, or join assemblies of whistling and clapping where the devils descend upon him and speak through his mouth words he does not recognize—and perhaps cannot even comprehend. At times the devil will unveil to those present what lies in their hearts, or speak in various tongues, just as a jinni speaks through the tongue of one who is possessed.

The person swept up in such a state remains unaware of it, like the epileptic whom the devil strikes, possesses, and speaks through; when he comes to, he recalls nothing of what he said.

For this reason the possessed individual might be beaten—beaten so severely that an ordinary man would have been killed, or at least left gravely ill—yet the blows have no effect on the person himself. When he later regains awareness, he explains that he felt nothing at all, because the beating had in fact fallen upon the jinni that had possessed him.