GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — “Are you a male or a female? A Muslim or a nonbeliever? If you are a nonbeliever, raise the index finger of your left hand. If you are a Muslim, raise the index finger of your right hand!” Sheikh Abu Harith screamed the words in Ghada’s ear as she lay in one of the beds in his clinic. He was talking to what he thought was a djinn, a supernatural creature in Islamic tradition, which was possessing her.

He placed a recording device next to her head that played Quranic verses, while her mother and brother stood next to her. Then, Abu Harith asked the djinn to leave Ghada’s body through one of the toes on her left foot. Indeed, her finger moved, though Abu Harith insisted that Ghada was not the one moving her finger, but rather the djinn controlling her body. The girl was still conscious and once she got out of bed, she was asked if she was OK and she nodded.

“I brought my daughter here because she has been constantly hearing words of apostasy and strange noises,” her family told Al-Monitor. They attended the so-called exorcism session of Ghada in one of the Islamic medicine clinics in Gaza City on the afternoon of Feb. 16. Ghada entered and left the clinic in good health.

She died in front of her family