My interpretation (admittedly speculative) is that Bilquis on the plane is following (tied to?) the young Iranian woman she was seducing in the Teheran disco, since that woman is seated in the front of the same plane, reading an English phrase book. (It's also the same woman we see dying of AIDS in the 1988 hospital…

A few years ago I watched the pilot episode for a Canadian show called "Little Mosque on the Prairie", and there was a amusing scene where people were arguing about how best to determine the start of Ramadan ("Look, I've got a telescope! We can go up on the roof and look for the new moon!" "No, we should just wait for…

His parents became Scientologists, yes. But since he mentions spending two years studying for his bar mitzvah (and convincing the rabbi to talk about weird stories from the Midrash instead of what he was supposed to be learning), it seems clear he was raised Jewish in a cultural sense, at least.

All the gods and supernatural beings (djinns, leprechauns) have "traveled across country lines", so there's nothing unique about Bilquis in that regard.

There is a bit in the Gospel of Matthew about an earthquake, with rocks being split and tombs being opened, happening at the moment when Jesus dies; maybe it's a reference to that?

It is the same woman, who was on the same plane out of Teheran as Bilqis.

Yes, you're right, it's the same woman in the hospital. (I have the advantage of watching this on German Amazon, which has "X-ray" pop-ups and IMDB links for some of the actors in each scene. So I was able to tell that it was a woman named "Parveen Kaur" each time.)

My own (speculative) feeling was that since Yahweh/God/Jesus/Allah is/are so widely and openly worshipped in America, they're in a different league from the Old Gods or the New Gods — they have no need to squabble over scraps of quasi-religious attention, not when they're getting millions of heartfelt, consciously…

And if you look carefully, the Iranian woman she was seducing at the disco was seated near the front of the plane, reading from an English phrase-book. It's possible that her connection is what helped bring Bilqis along, in something like the same way that Sweeney followed Essie MacGowen to America.

It's the Arian heresy!
(It's like the Council of Nicaea never happened…)

Wow, that Abyss clip basically has nothing to do with that trope; it's much more a curious early example of female agency in an action movie. (Not entirely surprising given that it's early James Cameron.)