ers, just cannot understand metaphors. They are powerful but
stupid. In many places in Africa it is quite polite when visiting
friends or relatives to express one's sympathy with them for
having such "ugly" or "unpleasant" children. The idea is that
witches, always on the lookout for nice children to "eat," will
be fooled by this naive stratagem. It is also common in such
places to give children names that suggest disgrace or misfor-
tune, for the same reason. In Haiti one of the worries of peo-
ple who have just lost a relative is that the corpse might be
stolen by a witch. To avoid this, people sometimes buried
[8] their dead with a length of thread and an eyeless needle. The
idea was that witches would find the needle and try to thread
it, which would keep them busy for centuries so that they
would forget all about the corpse. People can think that
supernatural agents have extraordinary powers and yet are
rather easily fooled.
Salvation is not always a central preoccupation. To people famil-
iar with Christianity or Islam or Buddhism, it seems clear that
the main point of religion is the salvation or deliverance of
the soul. Different religions are thought to offer different per-
spectives on why souls need to be saved and different routes
to salvation. Now, in many parts of the world, religion does
not really promise that the soul will be saved or liberated and
in fact does not have much to say about its destiny. In such
places, people just do not assume that moral reckoning deter-
mines the fate of the soul. Dead people become ghosts or
ancestors. This is general and does not involve a special moral
judgement.
Official religion is not the whole of religion. Wherever we go,
we will find that religious concepts are much more numerous
and diverse than "official" religion would admit. In many
places in Europe people suspect that there are witches around
trying to attack them. In official Islam there is no God but
God; but many Muslims are terrified of jinn andafreet—spir-
its, ghosts and witches. In the United States religion is offi-
cially a matter of denomination: Christians of various shades,
Jews, Hindus, etc. But many people are seriously engaged in
interaction with aliens or ghosts. This is also among the reli-
gious concepts to consider and explain.
RELIGION EXPLAINED