Christopher Nolan’s much-acclaimed summer blockbuster Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy and his hat, tells the complex story of the great atomic physicist J Robert Oppenheimer and his successful quest to build the US an atom-bomb in 1945. In subsequent decades, several other nations have succeeded in splitting the atom too – including Pakistan, which first went nuclear in 1998. Every domestic A-bomb programme had its own specific internal methods of constructing such an awesomely powerful doomsday device, but one proposed Pakistani plan was unique: to exploit captured genies.
NO FIRE WITHOUT SMOKE?
Not merely the stuff of fictional Arabian Nights fairytales, genies – known in Muslim lands as djinn/jinn (plural) or djinni/jinni (singular) – are a standard element of belief in Islam (see FT147:30-33, 324:20-21). In the Koran, they are described as a race of spiritual beings akin to the Western fairies, shape-shifting humanoids inhabiting an invisible world parallel to our own. Some are good, and serve Allah, some are evil, and serve Iblis or al-Shaytan, the Islamic Devil. Others once served King Solomon, the wisest man of all, who could enslave them with his magic ring. At the dawn of Creation, it is said Allah created three distinct breeds of intelligent being: humans from clay, angels from light, and djinn from some mysterious substance called ‘smokeless fire’. If you are a pious Koranic literalist of the old-school, you are doctrinally required to believe all this.1
So, ‘smokeless fire’ – what could that be? How about under his direct command, Dr Syed is not only “the fastest typing champion in Ballari District, typing at the Speed of 100 words per minute with no mistakes”, but also “the highest educated person in Louisville and in the State of Kentucky”, and even “perhaps the only highest educated Muslim in India” [sic – he or his finally made a typo after all]. To prove his intellectual superiority over all Kentucky, Syed has produced a short paper, “The Jinn: A Scientific Analysis”, which opens by stating the Koran’s claims that men are made from clay and water by the Divine Hands of Allah “are scientifically correct” (perhaps he’s thinking of Morph and Tony Hart).
