Also, I don’t know any experienced gamer who has any faith in their dice at all. Untrustworthy little bastards.
I’m guessing it was intended as a “no atheists in foxholes” remark. If an atheist was confronted by a real vampire and their only defense was having religious faith, they would quickly acquire religious faith.
I want to see a series of scientific experiments on the subject.
Lock a vampire in a room with a Catholic Priest.
Lock a vampire in a room with an Orthodox priest.
Lock a vampire in a room with an Evangelical Protestant minister.
etc.
Lock a vampire in a room with a Prosperity Gospel preacher.
Lock a vampire in a room with another Prosperity Gospel preacher.
Lock a vampire in a room with another Prosperity Gospel preacher.
Lock a vampire in a room with another Prosperity Gospel preacher.
etc.
For the Jewish iteration, would you want a rabbi or a cohen?
The incredibly bleak science-fiction novel Blindsight has a similar plot-point:
(There are, of course, right angles in nature, as anyone who’s poured water into a lake can tell you. But it’s still a pretty cool idea.)
Authentic pre-modern Arabic folklore doesn’t really have any monsters equivalent to the modern pop culture image of the vampire.
The ghūl @Retzbu_Tox discusses isn’t actually very close - it’s not really undead (although real-world folklore is often much fuzzier on such matters than modern literature and games), it’s more of a wasteland demon that often hangs out in graveyards, but while it dwells among graves and tombs, it doesn’t sleep in them. It also can be encountered in the open desert, typically by a lone traveller. It’s a maneater, but not specifically a blood-drinker.
The djinn, another wasteland demon, in some Arabic folkore could be bound or warded off by the Seal of Solomon, as alluded to by @Tamerlane. If a pre-modern Muslim thought a “vampire” was some kind of djinn, and happened to have a Seal of Solomon to hand, they might try to use it.
As the Muslim Ottomans moved into the Balkans, they encountered and to some degree assimilated the Balkan folkore on “vampires”. But, as others have pointed out, our modern concept of a vampire is a largely literary and cinematic invention. Stoker drew on some real folkore, but he made a lot of stuff up out of whole cloth. There are some accounts in Ottoman records of “cadi”, which were witches that were also vampires - they slept in graves by day and emerged at night to spread mischief and disease and curse crops and livestock and drink blood, and appeared to be corpses if the grave was opened (that sort of conflation is common in authentic folklore). The Ottoman records indicated that suspected cadi bodies were beheaded and/or burned, or sometimes dispatched by more exotic methods (staking the abdomen and pouring boiling water onto the exposed heart, for example). No indication of any means to ward them off when they roamed at night ala Stoker’s cross.
Modern Muslims, of course, consume modern media, including modern vampire lore.
Drakula Instanbul’da is a 1953 Turkish movie adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, set in contemporary Istanbul. It’s actually a pretty faithful adaptation of the novel. No crosses, though, or other religious symbols, for that matter. Garlic is used to ward doors and windows, as in the novel.
Immortals is a 2018 Turkish vampire series (unseen by me) currently available on Netflix. For anyone really interested, it might be worth watching a few episodes to see if/how they deal with crosses or other religious symbols.
Googling around, there’s nothing substantial about Muslim Vampires. Supernatural menaces in the Muslim world primarily involve jinns, witchcraft, and the Evil Eye. Some Muslims may use protective talismans and charms to ward against them, but there’s no specific object of worship that’s considered most effective as far as I can tell. It’s more of a matter of praying to Allah for guidance and protection than brandishing a holy object.
Here’s a breakdown of what percentage of Muslims by country believe in supernatural entities.
Of course, in some traditions, vampires are also described as having problems with running water…
In fairness, as an atheist, I’d probably consider “Religious faith repels supernatural monsters” as pretty strong evidence that there’s more to this whole “god” thing that I thought.
I predict the results as following: The Vampire throws open the shutters and leaps into the streaming rays of beautiful sunshine.
I’d say it wouldn’t be scientifically proven. Was it really divine protection? Or was it the vampire’s own belief that prevented them from approaching you?
We’d need to conduct a series of double-blind tests.
Clearly, what we need to do is construct a massive, secret government installation underneath a state college. Get some Frankensteins and werewolves in there for diversity.
What could go wrong?
Yes, and many vampire legends make use of perversions of Christian practice… such as how vampires feed is a perversion of the Eucharist (where believers drink the blood of Christ), so other faiths were not really something that was considered.
Reminds me of a bit from Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics:
(Buffy holds up a large cross.)
Demon: Sssstupid human, I am no vampire. You think I fear the cross?
(As I said, it was a large cross, and a solid melee weapon. WHACK!)
Buffy: Might wanna start.
Depends on which fictional universe you’re discussing.
Personally, my guess would be that a proper copy of the Koran would do the trick for a Muslim (proper meaning in the original Arabic).
In the Comte de Saint Germain novels by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro the main protagonist, a (depending where in the series you come in) 2,000-4,000 year old vampire, is completely unaffected by holy symbols of any faith and at one point in Renaissance Italy sort of takes communion (he takes the wafer into his mouth along with the wine and doesn’t chew or swallow, and then spends some time trying to figure out what to do with it all) in a church full of crucifixes, Bibles, priests, holy water, etc. On the other hand, in the 20th Century American West he encounter a vampire from the 16th Century who very dramatically recoils from the notion of a cross or God’s name (Saint Germain is also very capable of swearing) at which point the elder vampire burst out in exasperation that the younger one has seen too many “Hammer films”.
In the Anita Blake novels (before they turned into bad fanfic porn) it’s the faith of the believer that counts.
I know at one point the Dresden Files addressed this issue in regards to Jews but it’s been awhile and I forgot the details. I think in that universe it was Torah verses. Harry Dresden uses his pentacle in the beginning, and by about halfway through the series as it currently stands the vampires were afraid of him. As in “see him and flee in utter terror” afraid of him. Before Dresden destroyed them all the Red Court was probably trying to find something with which to ward off Harry.
We could go on and on here.
Muslim forbids depiction of Allah, so there’s no art that uses iconic religious props. There is no equivalent of The Cross in their culture. Vampires are the same as infidels as far as they’re concerned, and dealt with similarly.
Pastafarians are doubly protected against vampires, because there’s garlic in the sauce.
@Broomstick, the most prominent Jew in the Dresden Files is Waldo Butters, but his faith is elsewhere. But it is explicit that it’s the wielder’s faith in the symbol that counts. And apparently true faith is rare enough that most vampires habitually just laugh at crosses, leading to the occasional unpleasant surprise when they meet the likes of Michael Carpenter.
But a steeple carved out of a piece of lumber would make an excellent stake.
They’re declared dhimmis, given a degree of communal autonomy, and subjected to jizyah taxes?
Yeah I am baffled as to what Knowed_Out meant by that. And again, I would say that as a physical talisman, although not as representational art, the Arabic Qur’an or parts of its text do function visually and symbolically as signifiers of Islam, much as the Christian cross does in Christianity.