A few days ago, a business card with the follows words was dropped through my letterbox:

[center]Mr El Hahj -Claivoyant, Spiritual Healer, World Renowned

Mr El Hahj, medium, psychic, spiritualist world renowned for accurate revelation in the past, present and future. He inherited the power from his grandparents. This is a gift passed on from generation to generation. He will solve your problems in relationships, business, stock market, work, finance, exams, court cases etc., bring your loved one back, health related problems that can't be identified & sexual impotency. Protect yourself and your family from bad spirits & bad luck these and many other problems.

Guaranteed Results within 7 Days

Pay after results

Tel: (Withheld)
Mobile: (Withheld)
Email: (Withheld)[/center]

The Tel number suggest this individual resides within the Greater Manchester district, UK.

What a way to solve his own financial problems by fleecing the simple and gullible! Why is he demanding payment at all? If he truly has all these "gifts", he should already be floating on the money and demanding money would be a tad greedy.

The more serious point here is that there apparently are millions of people who believe in the effectiveness (powers) of these spiritualists and black magicians. The local African/Caribbean and Asia newspapers in the UK carry dozens of advertisements from the likes of Mr El Hadj. That such people are able to trade their reprehensible wares so easily is a modern-day scandal. Hundreds of people are negatively affected (death, loss of money, loss of health, etc) from contact with such charlatans.

Unfortunately, the likes of Mr Hadj thrive because of a general climate that condones and encourages "belief" on little or no evidence, a concept called faith. This really is the bane of our civilization. I favour an environment where people who make such claims are challenged to present evidence for the effectiveness of their claims. And this is exactly what was recently done on live Indian TV, challenging a charlatan to justify his claims;


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeJVUbpF8Mg&feature=user
http://www.rationalistinternational.net/


I would like to see more of such endeavours to debunk these miscreants in the african public domain, where they seem to have an incredible hold on the public psyche.