But then then author, Sohalia Omar, who has written for Palestinian media like Ma'an, goes on to defend jinn as a real thing, as evil spirits that possess many women. She has witnessed Islamic exorcisms and is friends with a sheikh who has done hundreds of such procedures, which she describes.
I attended a treatment session by Sheikh Ahmed Nimr for my neighbor in 1998. The patient does not know what is happening because she is in a complete altered state and the jinn is uttered on her tongue. ...The Sheikh goes to each patient and interviews the jinn and reads the Qurans and beats the woman with a stick to get the jinn to leave. The women here don't feel the beatings but the jinn feels it. Most of the jinn were Jews and I was amazed that even the jinn among the Jews persecuted our women. Of course, the jinn is not exorcised from women immediately and comes out only after advanced sessions of treatment and not from the first session or two. There were women who were possessed for many months until the jinn came out of them...
(h/t Ibn Boutros)