Islam Dismantled

by Sujit Das

  This sort of attack throws the victim off-track and causes him to become defensive in order to prove his honesty. Meanwhile the heat is off and the Narcissist is able to regain “control” (Zayn & Dibble, 2007, p. 93). Harm-doing, evildoing, hypocrisy and lying were the negative qualities of Muhammad himself, and through the Qur’an, unknowingly, he had projected these qualities onto others; he simply exposed his true character. As Zayn & Dibble (2007, p. 93) wrote, “ When someone tries to convince the Narcissist of something that does not comply with the false self he has created, the Narcissist may project the real self onto that person. … This type of projection is a common defense mechanism of the Narcissist ”.

  Now we know why the nonbelievers were called with such derogatory terms. All he wanted to do was to regain “control” of the situation. There are many verses in the Qur’an where Muhammad exposed various negative sides of his character without even realizing.

  And who is more unjust than he who forges a lie against Allah, or says: It has been revealed to me; while nothing has been revealed to him . (Q: 6.93).

  Nay, the wrong-doers promise each other nothing but delusions . (Q: 35.40)

  … but the unjust this day are in manifest error. (Q: 19.38)

  And none but the guilty led us astray . (Q: 26.99)

  Satan makes them promises, and creates in them false desires; but Satan’s promises are nothing but deception . (Q: 4.120)

  Then he caused them to fall by deceit . (Q: 7.22)

  And lo! In the love of wealth he is violent . (Q: 100.8)

  Prophets are more evil doers than habitual liars and hypocrites, because the former commit crimes on the pretext of divine authority, but the latter only fabricate falsehoods of their own making. In sum, Muhammad had suffered a complete intellectual defeat and the most embarrassing social humiliation. He was mocked mercilessly by his people and faced extreme skepticism (Smith & Haddad, 2002, p. 147). Such critics were not merely the dead voices of the past. They were asking the same questions about his heavenly mission that we still ask in our time without getting any answers from the Muslim scholars. These questions are as old as Islam.

  3.10: A Quest for the Impaired True Self of Muhammad

  “Know thyself” .

  An ancient Greek aphorism

  “I have often thought that the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says, ‘This is the real me!’”

  William James in a letter to his wife, 1878

  From his childhood, Muhammad was illfated and faced much psychological adversities. He lost his father before his birth and lost his mother’s love and warmth during the time he needed these most. After his mother’s death, he spent two years in the house of his grandfather, Abdul Mutalib, who also died shortly. It means whenever the child was emotionally attached to someone, he faced abandonment. It is a medically proven fact that adverse family and social situation often not only retard mental growth but the child may grow up with adjustment problems with others (Shepley, 2001, p. 3). This is called “attachment disorder”. It arises from a failure to form normal attachments to primary care giving figures in early childhood, resulting in problematic social expectations and behaviors. According to the psychoanalysts (Flores, 2004, p. xii), the interpersonal breaches and traumas early in life are embedded (i.e. imprinted) in our brain and reflected in adult life in errant and compulsive behaviors.

  During his early adult days Muhammad did not get a meaningful employment and remained unmarried till twenty-five which was quite a late marriageable age for the Arabs. Amongst them, the wealthy and the braves used to get better preferences in marriage. In this respect he was very unlucky. Neither had he money nor courage. Probably he was also physically weak. Arabs were good fighters and they really craved for the excitement of the battlefield, but Muhammad never fought a single battle personally. As Muir explains, “ Physical courage, indeed, and martial daring are virtues which did not distinguish the Prophet at any period of his career.” (Sina, 2008, p. 33). In one of the battles, known as “Sacrilegious war”, fought in Mecca, he assisted his clan by gathering up the arrows discharged by the enemy during the break in fighting and handing them to his uncles.

  According to Bukhari (4.56.762; 8.73.140), Muhammad was “shyer than a veiled virgin girl”. But once he became powerful at Medina, he was completely changed. As Twenge & Campbell (2010, p. 18) commented, “ A Narcissist has an overinflated view of his own abilities, similar to the kitten that sees himself as a lion on the popular poster.” Now it would be disgusting if he behaves like a coward. He has gathered enough strength by becoming the leader of a band of criminals. The megalomaniac Prophet of Islam declared openly,

  I will bring you slaughter . (Ishaq: 130; Tabari: VI.101)

  Allah made me victorious with terror . (Bukhari: 1.7.331).

  Deep inside in his heart, Muhammad still remained a coward in spite of having Allah on his side. Muhammad never put his life in danger in a battle. He often stood behind the fighting Muslims at a safe distance surrounded by bodyguards wearing two coats of chain-link armour, one on top of another and a helmet with a visor that covered his face. This double armouring would make him so heavy that his movements used to be very burdensome. He could not even stand in this condition without assistance from others, let alone walking. All he could do was to shout towards the front and encourage his men to show bravery and not to fear death.

  During the battle of Uhud, Muhammad was beaten up by the brave Meccans and knocked down into a ditch. In a panic, he cried out loudly, “ Come to my help you Muslim there, come to me you Muslim there, I am the Messenger of Allah.” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 173). He owed his life only to the devotion of his helpers, who shielded him with their bodies. Then Muhammad got up again all covered with mud and blood (Warraq, 2000, p. 141). Surely the battle of Uhud was the hardest day in Muhammad’s life. Ahmed (2006, pp. 173-4) described,

  Abd Allah Ibn Shihab was able to hit the Prophet on his forehead and caused a big cut on it. Ibn Qimah al-Harithi broke his nose and his shoulder. Then, he hit him with his weapon until two parts of it entered the blessed cheek of the Prophet. In all this, the Prophet was calling his friends to come for his help. Then, the Messenger of Allah fell in a ditch when Ibn Qimah made a second attack on him and strike his shoulder with full force. However, the two amours protected the Prophet from the strike but he continued to complain from the pain for a full month after Uhud .

  We often wonder where were Allah and the fighting angels on this fateful day. Why Allah did not send the angels to assist Muhammad and his gang when they needed the help most? However Muhammad’s defeat immediately contradicts following two verses.

  When thou didst say unto the believers: Is it not sufficient for you that your Lord should support you with three thousand angels sent down (to your help)? (Q: 3.124).

  When ye sought help of your Lord and He answered you (saying): I will help you with a thousand of the angels, rank on rank . (Q: 8.9).

  And this shameless spineless coward claimed to have a God on his side, and talked about bringing slaughter to the infidels. Allah and angels were Muhammad’s delusions, and either conscious or subconscious fabrications of his diseased mind. When he said, “I will bring you slaughter”, it was an act to hide the reality that he was a coward. He himself did not believe that Allah could save him. So he used to take extra precautions. Deep down, he knew that he was a fake. He knew that his prophetic claim was nothing but a concoction, a figment of his distorted thinking, that he could live only like a parasite in the guise of a Prophet. With falsehood, a number of people can be brainwashed, but in the harshness of battles, survival depends on courage, skill and physical strength. Sadly Muhammad lacked all these qualities and he was well aware of it.

  Though the seed of narcissism was deep-rooted in Muhammad’s mind much befor
e he claimed the title of Prophet, no one saw his narcissistic outburst because he had no followers. He was a lone Narcissist. Most of the Narcissists are shy and humble when they have hardly any following. But the narcissistic monsters lurk inside them waiting for a suitable chance to come out. From the very childhood days Muhammad had a strong desire for recognition.

  On the very same day, Muhammad started his mission; he lost several key capacities of his real self. When Muhammad got a strong foothold in Medina and started plundering the rich Meccan caravans, his real self was fully paralyzed by his false self. With this he lost his capacity to experience a wide range of feelings deeply with liveliness, joy, vigor, spontaneity and the excitement of creativity. From a helpless orphan to parasitic husband of a wealthy woman to a small-scale Prophet to a bandit king to the conqueror of Mecca to the de facto ruler of the whole Arabia to the founder of a world-threatening religion – Muhammad’s journey along the path of his life is really amazing.

  Muhammad was never a religious person. Islamic scriptures do not mention much about his religious views before his prophetic days. In Mecca; many Jews, Christians and, as some historians say, Hindus had settled and lived with harmony, but Muhammad had never showed any interest in the religious beliefs of other people. He did not even know that Jews and Christians have theological differences (Armstrong, 2006, p. 15). When he came to know, he was surprised. Let alone Jews and Christians, his knowledge about any religion of Arabia was very poor because of his illiteracy and lack of interest.

  In fact, in the early Surahs, Allah’s religious vocabulary was restricted to that which can be illustrated from the compositions of the pre-Islamic poets. But when Muhammad picked up bits and pieces about the religious doctrines of Jews and Christians, Allah’s language in the Qur’an started changing accordingly. From the Qur’an itself we can see him gradually acquiring more and more information about other religions. In spite of this, when Muhammad established himself as a Prophet, Allah declared that Muhammad was a Prophet when the body and soul of Adam were still in the making. There is no limit of magical thinking; this charlatan was neither a mystic nor a messenger of any God but a Narcissist political leader who used God and his neurosis for his selfish needs.

  Before his marriage to Khadija, Muhammad used to attend sheep with a miserly small payment. For the Arabs, this was an unmanly profession mostly reserved for girls. Muhammad took this unmanly job for two reasons – first, he was unsuitable for any better job. Secondly, it allowed him to avoid interaction with others with whom he (more correctly, his grandiose false self) was incapable of dealing as equal. Muhammad was a social misfit and his superiority complex was actually a mask of his inferiority complex. Haykal (1976, chapter 3) wrote,

  Muhammad’s occupation as herdsman during the years of his youth provided him with plenty of leisure to ponder and to contemplate. He took care of his family and neighbors’ herds. Later, he used to recall these early days with joy .

  Muhammad loved the job of a herdsman because he had adjustment problems. A study conducted by Lengua et al, (2000, pp. 232-4) with a sample of 231 children between the ages of nine and twelve provided data for the parental rejection and depressive symptoms. The study suggests that children who experience parental rejection and low levels of positive emotionality are more likely to exhibit higher levels of adjustment problems as they grow up. Muhammad had devalued himself (deflation of the false self) and became unduly sensitive. He was constantly envious of others and to witness the success and joy of others was too painful for him to see and too high a price to pay. So he had a favorite solution – social isolation. When things go wrong and we are hurt; the real self devises means to minimize and soothe painful feelings (Masterson, 1990, p. 42). It would never allow us to stumble in misery. Often one of the means is to interact with others or go to a therapist. But for a Narcissist, the situation is different.

  Muhammad preferred to withdraw from the world and live in his dream-like sweet imaginary world. He used to retreat into his own thoughts. Even when he was a child, he avoided the company of other children. He hardly laughed because he thought it was silly. In his fantasy world, Muhammad was no longer the cast-off or unwanted child; rather loved, respected, praised and even feared. He was the one and the only one. He was so absorbed in his fantasy world that it became as real to him as the real world, only more pleasurable (Sina, 2008, p. 15). This is called “rescue fantasy”. Neglected children often indulge in such fantasies. It is harmless, but it is a matter of grave concern when a grown up person cannot come out from these fantasies.

  Masterson (1990, p. 83) wrote, “ Such rescue fantasies have great appeal to the young child who has not yet learned how to cope effectively with reality, and the same type of fantasies appeals to patients whose ability to deal with life as it is, is severely impaired by the false self ”.

  This attitude is common amongst those who have developed an utter negative attitude towards society. As Masterson (1990, p. 42) wrote, “ The real self does not block feelings or deaden the impact of emotions. It provides a sense of what is appropriate”. The Narcissist cannot be happy, because his feelings and expression of emotions are all distorted. He is chronically depressed and “anhedonic” (the inability to experience pleasure from activities formerly found enjoyable) (Vaknin, 1999, p. 193). Muhammad also suffered from anxiety disorder. Children with a diagnosable anxiety disorder reported lower levels of maternal acceptance than other children (Hazen, 2005, p. 8). Sina continued, “ He would often spend his time in pensive mood. He did not know how to be happy or have fun … When reality became hard to bear and his loneliness overwhelmed him, he would escape into fantasy, where he could be anyone or anything he wanted to be. ”

  The very thought of being inferior often drives a person to overcompensate, which results either in spectacular achievement or extreme “schizotypal behavior” (a need for social isolation, odd behavior and thinking, and often unconventional beliefs), or both. Haykal continued,

  [Muhammad used to] say proudly that ‘God sent no Prophet who was not a herdsman … Moses was a herdsman; David was also a herdsman; I, too, was commissioned to prophethood while I grazed my family’s cattle at Ajyad’ .

  This is an odd thinking. It is normal for a child but not for a person who is at his young adult days and matured enough to work as a herdsman. According to Vygotskii & Rieber (1998, p. 161), the lively fantasy of a child does not use the riches of his ideas. It has its roots in the great intensity and the easier excitability of his feelings. This way, a child’s fantasy is significantly poorer than the adolescent’s fantasy. These harmless fantasies are just commonsense thinking. But when the child’s play ends in the fantasy of the adult, there is problem. When Muhammad still cherished such baseless, delusional and poor fantasies in his early adult days, certainly, he was not in touch with reality. As Jung (1933, p. 100) wrote, “ We are all thoroughly familiar with the sources of the problems which arise in the period of youth. For most people it is the demands of life which harshly put an end to the dream of childhood. If the individual is sufficiently well prepared, the transition to a professional career may take place smoothly. But if he clings to illusions that contradict reality, then problems will surely arise ”.

  When Muhammad secured a job to work for Khadija, a wealthy woman, the tough days of a herdsman were over. After some time, Khadija proposed him marriage. For Muhammad, the marriage with Khadija was a blessing because he found a financial security. This also allowed him to never work again. But still he was not happy because the childhood fantasies were haunting him. He left his wife at home to take care of several children and retreated to the caves around Mecca. This way he secluded himself from the world and wrapped himself in his own megalomaniac thoughts. His narcissistic fantasies also started developing and becoming rich and practical. As Vaknin (1999, pp. 74-5) described, “ The Narcissist feels miserably inferior and dependent. He rebels against this degrading state of things by partly escaping into a world of make-belief
, daydreaming, pretensions and delusions of grandeur. The Narcissist knows little about himself, and finds what he knows to be abhorrent ”.

  During later days when Muhammad established himself as a Prophet, his false self showed the same derogatory attitude toward others. Islam is a religion which was created from Muhammad’s frustration and hate for the society. The foundation of hate was within Muhammad himself, which made his religion so hateful and destructive. However, this was the beginning of the outburst of his NPD. He was in distress because a “Narcissistic deficiency dysphoria” set in. In this situation, a Narcissist would behave very much as a drug addict would react to the absence of his particular drug. Vaknin (1999, pp. 85-6) wrote, “ The Narcissist will gradually turn more and more mechanical, detached and unreal. His thoughts will constantly wander or become obsessive and repetitive … he will be far away, in a world of his Narcissistic fantasies where Narcissistic supply is aplenty. He will withdraw from this painful world which knows not how to appreciate his greatness, special skills and talents, potential, or achievements ”.