by Sujit Das
A Narcissist sees nothing unusual about it. After all he is in charge of his false self and the script that goes along with it. If he no longer wants to be related to someone a simple rewrite of the script is all that necessary. It is extremely simple .
Some Narcissists are so involved with their scripts and their false selves that they don’t see beyond their self-created worlds. Therefore they really are oblivious to the feelings of others.
The Qur’an is, in principle, the source from which the Muslims have drawn their inspiration; but Muhammad had neither time, nor possibly even the intention of establishing an exact doctrine settled in all its details. In his anxiety to attract followers, he tried his best to please everybody. He was diplomatic rather than a legislator. According to circumstances, he expressed an opinion or a theory which he had no hesitation in repealing on the following day, if the interest of the moment demanded it.
4.6: Why Narcissist Muhammad needed the Qur’an?
Muhammad wrote the Qur’an to serve two specific purposes. First; Qur’an was like a status symbol of Islam – Muhammad’s only proof of his prophetic claim. Secondly; through Qur’an Muhammad was capable of commanding Muslims in the name of God. He was more concerned for turning his people into a race of warriors. He bestowed on his people a character and determination that only a superb national reformer and a great patriot can do. The big lie of the Qur’an had skillfully and systematically paralyzed the rational faculty of those people who were forcibly converted to Islam. Thus a non-Arab Muslim’s life is completely dominated by the spiritual hegemony of Arabia in the expense of his own national honor. Beyond this, this supposed to be holy book of Islam has no other purpose. This book is purely manmade and Muhammad was one of the authors. In acknowledging the claims of the Qur’an as the direct utterance of the divinity, the early manipulators had blocked all the criticism, which could otherwise have exposed it.
Now I will give a scientific explanation. A Narcissist always exaggerates his talents and achievements. He has a grandiose sense of self-importance and expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements. He believes that he is unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions. But deep inside, he is hollow like a bubble – always fearful of being discovered as deceitful. To overcome his fear and to gain trust of the people, the Narcissists like to collect evidences of their dramatic talents, intellectual achievements, extraordinary performances, extreme sexual power or similar kind of things. As Vaknin (1999, p. 147) wrote, “ If he [the Narcissist] is an army man, he will show off his impressive collection of badges, his perfectly ironed uniform, the status symbols of his rank and if he is a clergyman, he will be overly devout and orthodox and place great emphasis on the proper conduct of rites, rituals and ceremonies ”.
In the case of Muhammad, he collected the Qur’anic verses as proof. Vaknin (1999, pp. 145-6) calls these objects as “Narcissistic Handles” which the Narcissist preserves almost compulsively. By interacting with these objects, the Narcissist recreates the narcissistic supply-rich situation. Vaknin (1999, p. 145) wrote, “[the Narcissist wants to prove that] he is not hallucinating and that what he is telling others regarding himself, his grandiose fantasies, his achievements, brilliance, ideal love, fabulous wealth and regarding his past is true. Contrary to common sense, he is not out to prove anything to the outside world. It is he who is in doubt ”. Qur’an served this purpose for Muhammad. When the Narcissist cannot collect proof of his exaggerated talent, he writes autobiography. Adolf Hitler wrote his autobiography when he was still nobody, so did Stalin. For a Narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself? At least Hitler and Stalin were educated, but Muhammad was illiterate.
Muslims have conditioned themselves to believe in this long existed deception of Muhammad. As a Narcissist, Muhammad projected his false self to his followers and constantly demanded “input” from the outside world. When his followers believed that the Qur’an was written by Allah; Muhammad was self-aware by watching their reactions, by listening to their words and by studying them. Without Qur’an the false self of Muhammad could not stand.
Qur’an was also a useful tool for him to use the fear factor for controlling obedience. There are 146 references to hell in the Qur’an. Out of this, only 6% of those in hell are there for moral failings – murder, theft, etc. The other 94% of the reasons for being in hell are for the intellectual sin of disagreeing with Muhammad – a political crime. Hence, Islamic hell is a political prison for those who speak against Islam (Glazov & Warner, 2007). Islam is actually a political movement in the camouflage of a religion – “Fear Allah and obey me” are pure political words. An integral part of Muhammad’s prophethood was to build an Arab empire. In a political movement, there is no such thing as a universal statement of ethics. Muslims are to be treated one way and unbelievers another way. The goal is to dominate the entire world under Arab supremacy.
Muslim scholars often try to silence the critics by saying – “If Qur’an is a lie, how the lie survived for so many centuries?” Qur’an survived because Qur’an is not “A Small Lie”, but “The Big Lie”. The big lies are very powerful, and it always has a psychological effect on the listeners. It is a propaganda technique – the bigger the lie, the more believable it is. Adolf Hitler wrote (1925) in Mein Kampf, “ The broad mass of a Nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”
Big lies are extraordinarily convincible because it offsets the scale of the listener’s common sense, as Sina (2008, p. 179) explains; an ordinary person does not dare to tell a big lie thinking that it would not be believed and he would be ridiculed. Since there is no one who had never told a lie in his life, small lies are often detectable sooner or later. But the big lies are so strange that it often startle the listener. It offsets the scale of our common sense. When the lie is gigantic, the average person is left to wonder how anyone can have the courage, the impudence to say such a thing. Big lies always work wonder in politics. As George Orwell (cites Sina, 2008, p. 179) said, “ Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.
Islam is nothing but a pure Arab political movement. Whereas other belligerent nations require armed forces to subdue foreign countries, the Arabs need nothing of the sort. Qur’an does it all for them through an incredible process of brainwashing. It is a rare political skill. Hitler knew it, Stalin knew it – so was Muhammad.
4.7: Conclusion
“Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis [It is] folly to be wise”.
Thomas Gray (cited Sagan, 1997, p. 12)
Qur’an is a highly confusing text. It contains commandments so contradictory that it would be difficult to extract any precise rules of conduct from it beyond the recognition of the unity of God and the mission of His messenger. Every single verse of the Qur’an directly or indirectly depicts the changing thought pattern of a severely confused author. Nothing is more foolish than dreaming of a paradise full of worldly pleasures as a reward for causing insult, injury and injustice to others. When the verses of the Qur’an are studied carefully with a critical mind, anyone who knows the different characteristics of narcissism will be able to, without any difficulty whatsoever, to detect that the author was a malignant Narcissist. Not only every verse; but every letter and every word of every verse is the product of Muhammad’s own sick narcissistic imagination to achieve his own sick narcissistic ambition and to secure narcissistic supply sources. So, if Qur’an calls itself to be “mubeen”, or clear, this is what it means; we have to study the book by the standard of a malignant Narcissist’s sick judgment.
Also, Muslims’ belief that Allah in heaven, before the advent of Muhammad, wrote the Qur’an on a stone tablet and its text is eternal and unchangeable, is also bogus.
If not, the question remains, why then Uthman took the labor to standardize common text and destroyed all the “other” manuscripts? Moreover, we know that many people preferred to recite their own text over the Uthman’s text and Uthman was compelled to use the threat of death to force the people to accept his revised text. In the early days, Qur’an was open for debate among different sects of Islam because they had witnessed that a large portion of the book was lost and corrupted. The authenticity of many verses had been called into question by the early Muslims themselves. Many Kharijites, who were followers of Ali, found the verses narrating the story of Joseph offensive, an erotic tale that cannot belong to Qur’an (Warraq, 1998, p. 17). We do not know when religious blindness crept in, but undoubtedly, those early Muslims after Muhammad were more liberal than the present generation we are seeing today. The Mu’tazilites (an Islamic sect, came into being in the second Islamic century) believed that the Qur’an was written by Muhammad himself and denied its revelation to the Prophet by God. They asserted that there is nothing miraculous in the Qur’an and that Arabians could have composed something not only equal, but superior to it, in eloquence, method, and purity of language. The Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun adopted the Mu’tazilites ideas about the Qur’an and ordered the chief officials in every province throughout the Islamic empire to publicly announce that the dogma in the Qur’an was created by Muhammad rather than Allah.
Muslims wrongly interpret the honesty Christians display about some variant readings of the Bible as weakness (Ali & Spencer, 2003, pp. 76-9). Christians, like Hindus, want to see their Holy book through scientific and historical point of view, as Rodinson (1980, p. viii) observed, “[For Bible] the scientific attitude begins with the decision to accept something as fact only if the source has been proved reliable”. When old manuscripts, or parchments of Christian faith, or ancient sacred manuscripts of Hinduism are discovered; Christian and Hindu scholars almost climb over each other’s shoulder to gain an early access to them. Such findings cause great excitement to them. But sadly, no such excitement exists in Islam. Christians and Hindus are eager to see more and more light shed on the earliest manuscripts of their religions, while Muslims resist, often with strong determination. While both Hindu and Christian faiths are strongly backed up by archeological and historical evidence; so far neither any archeological exploration was allowed in Mecca and Medina, nor is there any prospect in the future (Peters, 1986, pp. 72-4). The contrast is really striking.
Since Muslims cannot argue their religion with reason (Islam cannot survive if argued with reason), they resort to pathological lying or narcissistic rage. We often hear two such arguments from them – the “language” argument and the “out of context” argument (Warraq, 2003, pp. 400-4).
When the Qur’anic contradictions, or absurdities, or the violent verses are pointed out, Muslims will ask aggressively, “Do you know Arabic?” Then they tell triumphantly, “You have to read it in original Arabic to understand it fully”, or “These are not there in original Arabic Qur’an”. With this the Western critics are generally taken aback. Now the question is how many Muslims have read the Qur’an in original Arabic? Since the majority of the Muslims are not Arabs, they have to rely on translations. Moreover the freethinkers and critics do not need to know Arabic; all they need is a critical sense, critical thought and skepticism. The language of Qur’an is a form of classical Arabic which is totally different from the spoken Arabic of today. So, even Arabs have to rely on translations to understand their holy text. Also, when the Muslims criticize Bible and other holy texts of Christianity; how many of them know a word of Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek? When they criticize the holy scriptures of Hinduism, how many of them know Sanskrit? Muslims do not understand that their flawed logic to defend Islam’s foolishness goes against them. The Qur’an is indeed a confused text which confuses everyone – either he knows Arabic or not. Also, Muslims around the world preach Islam to make converts in languages other than Arabic. If Qur’an can only be understood in Arabic, why do they do this?
The second argument is, “You have quoted out of context”. This “out of context” argument is an old, standby argument of crooked and lying politicians. Though Muslims try to silence the critics by this argument, actually they themselves quote the verses out of context to deceive the critics. This argument has two parts, Historical context and Textual context. Historical context is out of question because Qur’an is supposed to be the eternal words of Allah and its truth and validity must not be limited to a certain period of time. Also, as Spencer observed (2003, p. 127), reading the Qur’an is often like walking in on a conversation between two people with whom one is only slightly acquainted. Frequently they make reference to people and events without bothering to explain what is going on. In other words, the context is often not supplied. Therefore if the context is not given in the Qur’an, how a verse can be quoted out of context?
The remaining is the textual context. No doubt there are some peaceful verses in the Qur’an which were revealed in Mecca. Muslims want to prove that Islam is a peaceful religion by quoting these verses. But all the peaceful verses were abrogated by the violent verses of the ninth Surah because the ninth Surah was revealed later in Muhammad’s career. In fact, most Muslim authorities agree that the ninth Surah was the very last section of the Qur’an revealed to him. Many Muslim theologians assert that the verse of sword (Q: 9.5) abrogates as many as 124 more peaceful and tolerant verses of the Qur’an (Spencer, 2007, p. 78; McAuliffe, 2006, p. 218). The ninth Surah is the only one of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters that does not begin with “Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim” – “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful.” It is because; Muhammad not only did not recite the Bismillah himself, but commanded that it not be recited at the beginning of this Surah. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn explains Muhammad’s command by saying that the Bismillah is security, and ninth Sura was sent down when security was removed by the sword. Ali ibn Abi Talib agrees, saying that the Bismillah “ conveys security while this Sura was sent down with the sword. That is why it does not begin with security.” (Oliver, 2006, p. 537; Spencer, 2009, p. 200). Ibn Kathir declares that the verse of sword (Q: 9.5) has “ abrogated every agreement of peace between the Prophet and any idolater, every treaty and every term … no idolater had any more treaty or promise of safety ever since the Sura Bara’ah (the ninth Sura) was revealed” (Spencer, 2003, p. 134). Ibn Juzayy, another commentator, agrees that the verse of the sword’s purpose is (Spencer, 2005, p. 25), “ abrogating every peaceful treaty of the Qur’an”.
Therefore, the tolerant verses are practically meaningless. The problem began when Uthman collected the verses of the Qur’an and arranged them in a way that the abrogated verses were mixed up with the abrogating verses (Ahmed, 2006, p. 77). This arrangement led to the appearance of discrepancies and contradiction in the Uthmanic Qur’an, which is used until our present day. The second proof is that the Sharia law does not take into account the peaceful verses because these are abrogated. Like a Narcissist tries to fool the victims with his delusional thoughts, Muslims try to fool the non-Muslims with their twisted logic and pathological lying. They repeat the same lies again and again thinking that it will become true if often repeated. “Islam is a peaceful religion” is a lie which is as old as the birth of Islam. Why do not we find the Taliban terrorists singing the peaceful verses from the Qur’an while beheading the captives? In November 2002, Osama bin Laden quoted eight jihadi verses from the Qur’an in a “Letter to the American People” and in his 1996 declaration of jihad against the USA, he quoted sixteen jihadi verses (Spencer, 2003, p. 125). Long history of lying has caused the Muslims to believe their own lies; they are delusional like their Prophet.
When the Narcissist tells a lie, he is the first person to believe his own lie. Though it looks contradictory, Narcissists are self-delusional. Deep inside, they are capable of distinguishing between a truth and a lie. Muslims distort the meaning of the Qur’anic verses as per their needs and
they are well aware of it. As example; though Allah allowed Muslims to marry maximum four wives, many Arab kings, noblemen and oil-rich Sheikhs have a large collection of wives. Akbar, the Mughal Emperor had more than 5000 women (Early, 1977, p. 642). Muhammad’s grandson Hasan had up to 300 wives. How they manage to have so many wives when only four are sanctioned to each of them? It is very simple, only a little manipulation is required. Allah said in the Qur’an (4.3) that Muslims are allowed to marry what seems good to them by two, three or four. This instruction was interpreted in different ways by different Qur’anic scholars – one scholar added two, three and four and got nine wives. Another got a total of eighteen wives by doubling two, three and four and added the results (Eraly, 1997, p. 666).
Secondly, reinterpretation of Qur’anic verses is officially allowed. Sheikh Youssef Alqardawi, the most famous Muslim scholar in the Arab world, appeared on Al Jazeera’s weekly program “Sharia and Life”, to discuss issues related to Islam and answer some of the questions put to him, through phone calls. On February 22 2009, he rejected the evolution theory, because the Qur’an says otherwise; but he reassured his audience that Muslims do not need to worry about the evolution theory as long as it remains a theory. Only if it becomes a recognized scientific fact, the Muslim scholars would reinterpret the relevant verses in the Qur’an to bring them in line with proven scientific facts (Salih, 2009). Muslims claim that Qur’an is divine, but shamelessly reinterpret the Qur’an by twisting the language and changing the meanings of the words or even introducing completely new meanings. Their logic is simple, “The Qur’an is correct even when it is wrong”. Is not it ridiculous?