Can anyone clarify what the heck is happening here?

This is a self claimed religious healer from Pakistan. A total joker in my opinion. What he’s holding is called a tasbeeh, and it is used for counting religious verses. And then after he has recited something a set number of times, he’s blowing into the mic. The religious concept is called “dum”, where a pious person recites a few verses (which are secret and only he knows) and then blows on the head of a patient. It supposedly helps the patient get better. He needed to industrialize it, hence the mic and people holding their heads. Total shit show. Edit2 to add further details as many are asking: I noticed the rise of this guys’s popularity in real time. Lots of social media bots just bombarding false praise and drowning out any dissenting comments. A reality TV criminal investigation show (Sare Aam) did a good job of exposing him on live TV. But bots won again. The most shocking for me was his international visits, one in particular to Oslo Norway where a hall full of “enlightened” people did exactly what you see in this video. His name is Haq Khatteb Hussain, aka shuf shuf Sarkar owing to the sound he makes in the mic. Edit to add: the women are supposedly possessed by supernatural creatures… the screams are of those supernatural creatures unwillingly forced to leave women’s bodies. Once the drama is over, those women will return to normal as the supernatural creatures would have left their bodies. I wish I was joking.

Thanks for the breakdown. It seems every day now I look at some shit like this and say “if I only had no moral compass I could make so much money.”

No morality, AND some kind of insight into what would be believable by their marks. Even if I had no morality, there is no fucking way I’d do that reverb cough and chicken dance and think “That’s it! That’s totally believable. Time to hit the rooooad!”

I think he’s just building on established ‘tradition’. Religious script-kiddie, basically.

Scripture-kiddie

Nice

It has some commonalities with [The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbSCEhmjJA) as well. The video I linked goes into the psychology of it a bit, in ways I think is relevant and translatable here.

You’ve just gotta commit to the bit. I mean, look at Joseph Smith.

More than once I considered brushing up on my cold reading and becoming a Pet Psychic. I live about an hour west of the Hamptons where there are plenty of people who would shell out top dollar to hear from their horse. I really don’t think it would be that difficult. Of course Pet Psychic is about as far as I’d be willing to go. People like John Edwards prey on people’s loss and pain when they pretend to speak with dead loved ones, and the hole in my soul just isn’t big enough to cash in on someone’s suffering like that. It just \*might\* be big enough to take some cash off of some trust fund kid who wants to hear encouraging words from their Labradoodle though…

I think you have it be truly evil to get away with this shit. If you have any morality left in you, that bias will come through and people won’t see it as “”authentic””

I recently tried to troll a local maga candidate for the smallest least consequential local election. Fake persona, social media, email, etc. I decided ahead of time I wanted it to be bulletproof, so I put some time and effort into the believability. The big day came, the culmination of the ruse! I wrote her a bullshit email! Thing is I was completely unprepared for her reply! I kept the exchange up for a few more emails and then realized how much work it was to flat out lie. And I just gave up. Then it dawned on me. Actual liars don’t put in that kind of effort, because it’s exhausting. They just lie, and if they get caught they just lie again. Completely 100% effortless.

Some people can’t help but lie, it disturbs me. By time most people realize or notice they have already moved onto the next person. Even if you call them out you aren’t able to communicate it to the next victim so they get away with it.

You only need to prey on the first few sets of rubes then ‘normies’ will adopt it even though they know it’s bunk. C’mon you can do it!

Truly. The only difference between a cult and a religion is that religions were once cults that gain acceptance by society through relative popularity and longevity.

And the screaming women?

Especially because the crowd is all male..,

I just assumed it was a carnival side show and the screaming was coming from girls on the sling shot ride next door.

I’m just going to pretend that’s what it is. Thank you for the mental bleach.

VFX for TikTok. Or could be actual women. The women in such gatherings are usually in separate women-only halls.

whatever is happening in that other hall it does not sound like they are enjoying it.

I’ve added some context for that in the main comment

No adult screams like that over and over. They’d make other noises or words if something were actually happening.

I have a feeling it’s a loop tape but the sound is being used because these men like the sound of women suffering.

It’s all very ”dum” indeed. What a fitting name.

So dumb they left out the b at then end

Dum means stupid in Swedish, no B needed

With how strict Islam is, I find it weird that such people are allowed to basically use it for grift. >few verses (which are secret and only he knows) How is this not blasphemy?

Because no religion is a monolith. Everything done by Pentecostals is pretty blasphemous to most sects of christianity, Sunni and Shia denominations of Islam also have very different views. There’s also the good ol’ cult aspect. The people who follow him don’t care that what he does might be outside the normal rules. He’s the leader, he’ll always be right.

Pakistan is full of contradictions. When I was there I saw culture permeated by Islam, but I also saw alcohol, weed, meth, little civic code, capricious law enforcement, and mores of rampant destitution. Calls to prayer came on loudspeakers five times a day but were mainly ignored except on Friday. I personally didn’t go to mosque and I never saw anyone pray while I was there at all. One thing that surprised me: while there were many beggars, there didn’t seem to be homeless people sleeping on the streets like we have. My hypothesis is that because there are effectively no building codes, affordable housing is as accessible as your own arms and a pile of bricks.

What you see here is a far cry from islam. This practice has no basis whatsoever in the fundamentals of the religion. It is, as you rightly pointed out, blasphemous in nature (however, the people who are at the gathering may not know any better). All it takes is a couple of people to start saying that such and such person ‘cured’ me of problem xyz, and it turns into an anecdotal snowball. P.s Practicing muslims believe that the healing and protective verses and prayers ordained by God have been revealed in the Quran and sunnah. As such, there are no secret verses 🙂