Religion and Traditional Beliefs
The Yalunka are 99% Muslim. Although they follow most of the religious teachings of Islam and observe its rituals and ceremonies, some of their pre-Islamic beliefs still persist. For instance, they make sacrifices to ancestors to gain power referred to as Barinkiina. They also employ charms for personal power and have family-owned objects of power known as Suxurena which require sacrifices. They also continue to believe in Nyinanna, or "nature spirits," and sacrifices are regularly made to them. Some of the Nyinanna are said to be good spirits, helping with rice production and fertility in women; others are believed to be evil, living in the bush and stealing children from their parents. The more powerful spirits are called Yinnana.
The Yalunka also believe that witches, referred to as "night people" or Kweramuxuna, have the power to change into animals and cause harm to the villagers by eating their souls at night. Some put curses on victims' houses to ruin their crops. Special rituals are performed by diviners or sorcerers to keep the witches and evil Nyinanna away from farms and households.
Their devotion to Islam and fear of persecution have prevented all but a few Yalunka from converting to Christianity.
Read more about this topic: Yalunka People
Famous quotes containing the words religion and, religion, traditional and/or beliefs:
“I do love this people [the French] with all my heart, and think that with a better religion and a better form of government and their present governors their condition and country would be most enviable.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to children by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the philosophers celebrate in vain. And nothing stands between the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“What Mrs. Thatcher did for women was to demonstrate that if a woman had enough desire she could do what she wanted, do anything a man could do.... Mrs. Thatcher did not have one traditional feminine cell in her body.”
—Julie Burchill (b. 1960)
“To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states exhibiting what Brentano and others call intentionality.”
—Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)