Islam Dismantled

by Sujit Das

  Since the members of Jewish faith are the most vulnerable amongst all, we take the Jews as example to find out the actual reason of Muslims’ hate towards Jews today, and how it originated. When the Jews declined Muhammad he was furious, and this is the starting point of his enmity towards them. His false self felt deflected and his narcissistic balloon got punctured. So he strengthened his self-image by humiliating and degrading the Jews. Today, Jews-bashing is a political game played by many Muslim nations who have got nothing to do with Israel. Many state controlled newspapers are full of anti-Jews propaganda. A writer on British Muslim forum declared (cited Spencer, 2006, p. 190), “ I am fed up with these dirty filthy Israeli dogs. May Allah curse them and destroy them all, and may they face the same fate as Banu Quraiza”. Didn’t Muhammad say, “Kill any Jews that fall into your hands? ” But, by hating the Jews today, what Muslims are achieving?

  Islam had paralyzed the true selves of the Muslims. This evil Prophet is still living through the lives of his followers. By occupying the Muslim minds, Muhammad made them compatible with his own disorder and secured their submission. After this he made them do what he always dreamt of doing, what he often desired, what he constantly feared of. He compelled them into collaborating in the expression of the repressed side of his personality. The whole Muslim Ummah is a narcissistic supply machine of Muhammad and every individual Muslim is an essential part of it. Every Muslim, even today, is trying to re-inflate Muhammad’s false ego, his narcissistic balloon which was punctured by those early Jews. With every hateful activity directed towards the Jews, Muslims are still securing narcissistic supply sources to their Prophet. Muhammad is still consuming the narcissistic supply flowing through these human conduits of his own making.

  Muhammad is seen as the personification of the qualities Muslims are trying to copy. In the runner of 2004 American Presidential Election, a Muslim preacher invoked Muhammad to denounce democracy (cited Spencer, 2006, p. 188), “ Our Prophet did not run for office in any election … he did not win any political debate. [Instead] he won the war against the infidel.”

  Subdued creativity and inverted narcissism are the two factors that make the Muslims so destructive and bloodthirsty. And the final result is the backwardness of Ummah. Today, Muslims must understand the root causes of the problem and face the reality. They have to separate this Narcissist’s seed which is germinating inside them and recapture their impaired true self from the grip of Muhammad. Unless they can do it, they will never be able to deal with the problems and challenges of life. The alien growth in the human mind, the mental cancer that is the result of following Muhammad, should be uprooted. It is high time the trauma and abuse inflicted upon the Muslims by a ruthless malignant Narcissist should be stopped. Muhammad is still present amongst Muslims in spirit long after he had gone to his grave. By willingly cremating themselves in the narcissistic flame of Muhammad, Muslims will get nothing but misery and misfortune. They suffer in the same way the early companions of Muhammad had suffered. If Muslims want to preserve their mental health, they have no other alternate but to abandon their Narcissist Prophet. No doubt this “waking up” is traumatic but only truth can set them free. It is only the true self that can accept and modulate the various, even conflicting, self-images and resolve any apparent, temporary confusion.

  8.6: Unshackling the Victims of Muhammad

  Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

  Where knowledge is free

  Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

  By narrow domestic walls

  Where words come out from the depth of truth

  Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

  Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

  Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

  Where the mind is led forward by thee

  Into ever-widening thought and action

  Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake .

  Noble-Laureate, Poet Rabindra Nath Tagore (1861 – 1941)

  [Note: I read the above poetry in Bengali when I was a school student. It was really mind blowing. When I grew up I understood the deeper meaning of it. I am amazed every time I recite this poem by its sheer simplicity in conveying such deep thoughts with such elegance. To date it still remains one of my favorite poems. While writing this part suddenly I wished to recite it once more. – Author]

  For common Muslims, apostasy is an unthinkable act. It is not only a crime punishable by death, but a sin. The apostate is damned both in this world and the next. In spite of this, there was large scale apostasy during Muhammad’s lifetime and after his death. Those early Arabs, who took him as a Prophet, could not remain quiet by seeing the irrationalities of his supposed to be revealed doctrine and the contradictions in his behavior. Many of them had no inclination towards Islam, its dogma and ritual. It is estimated that at the time of Muhammad’s death, the total number of people who really believed in Muhammad did not exceed a thousand (Warraq, 2003, p. 41). The early rulers had mercilessly criticized Muhammad, Qur’an and Allah. As example, a Muslim leader of the early days is reputed to have said (cited Warraq, 2003, p. 42), “ If there were a God, I would swear by his name that I did not believe in him”. Caliph al-Walid II (ruled 783) is said to have stuck the Qur’an onto a lance and shot it to pieces with arrows. He wrote poem, a similar type of Qur’anic verses and mocked the Qur’an mercilessly as follows,

  You hurl threats against the stubborn opponents,

  Well than I am a stubborn opponent myself.

  When you appear before God at the day of resurrection,

  Just say, ‘My Lord, al-Walid has torn me up .’

  Walid II certainly did not abide by the Allah’s instructions. An intensively cultivated man, he surrounded himself with poets, dancing girls and musicians, and lived the merry life of a libertine, with no interest in Allah, Muhammad and Islam altogether (Warraq, 2003, 42).

  From history, we can learn countless examples of those who have struggled free from the all-encompassing and suffocating embrace of Islam to breathe the fresh air of freedom. One of them was Ubaydallah b. Jahsh. He joined Islam but afterwards along with three friends left Islam, embraced Christianity and died as Christian in Abyssinia during the lifetime of Muhammad. These freethinkers, who secretly opposed the stubborn dogma of Islam and acknowledged only the moral law while publicly professed Islam, are called “Zindiq” (Warraq, 2003, p. 43). A Zindiq is a guilty of “zandaqa”. The first person who was executed on the charge of a zandaqa was Djad Ibn Dirham by the order of Umayyad Caliph in 742 or 743. He denied the divine attributes of Qur’an and accused Muhammad of lying and denied resurrection. Around 760, another famous Zindiq named Ibn al-Muqaffa was executed. He died in the most horrible manner – his limbs were cut off one by one and fed into a blazing fire. From 786, the repression, persecution and execution of the freethinkers were carried out with greater ferocity. Special Magistrates were appointed to pursue the Zindiqs. Often these freethinkers were arrested en masse, imprisoned and beheaded or crucified. A short description (Warraq, 2003, pp. 43-54) of some of the early apostates of Islam is as below.

  Abu Nuwas, a great classical Arabic and Persian poet, was accused of zandaqa. He was fond of wine. Once he entered a mosque drunk as ever and when the Imam recited the first verse from Surah 109, “Say! O you unbelievers…”, Abu Nuwas is said to have cried out “Here I am”. He was handed over to religious police and imprisoned. He was imprisoned on other occasions as well for insulting Islam.

  Zindaqa even penetrated the Hashemite family (The Hashemites trace their ancestry from the great-grandfather of Muhammad, although the definition today mainly refers to the descendants of Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima). Several members of this family were executed or died in prison. Ibn Abi-I-Awja (executed 772) cast doubt on the justice of some of the punishments described in the Qur’an. He also disbelieved that Islamic pilgrimage was ordered by God.

/>   Bashshar Ibn Burd (714-784), another freethinker, came from a noble Persian family. He was tortured for glorifying the ancient memories of Iran. He was also disrespectful toward the institution of pilgrimage. On one occasion, he left for the pilgrimage but stopped on the way and spent his time in drinking. As the pilgrims were returning, he joined them and pretended on arrival home to have completed the entire pilgrimage. He also ridiculed the Qur’an many times with his satires and denied resurrection. Another skeptic, Hammad Ajrad (executed 777) wrote some verses, which were parody of the Qur’an and preferred those verses over Qur’anic verses during the prayer. Another great poet in Arabic language was Al-Mutanabi (in Arabic, one pretends to be a Prophet). He rejected Muslim religious dogmas regarding it as spiritual instruments of oppression. He also began revolutionary propaganda and claimed to be a Prophet with a new Qur’an. He was imprisoned.

  Ibn al-Rawandi (827-911) was a skeptic of Islam and a critic of religion in general. He was a Mutazilite scholar but later rejected Islam completely and became an atheist. According to him, the Qur’an, far from being a miracle and inimitable, is an inferior work from literary point of view, since it is neither comprehensible nor of any practical value and certainly not a revealed book.

  Perhaps the greatest freethinker in the world of Islam was Muhammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865 – 925). He had studied mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and literature. He challenged tradition and authority in every field to which he turned his attention. His general philosophical attitude was that no authority was beyond criticism. He was a true humanist and had boundless faith in human reason. Al-Razi argued (cited Hecht, 2004, pp. 227-30),

  On what ground do you deem it necessary that God should single out certain individuals [by giving them prophecy], that he should set them up above other people, that he should appoint them to be the people’s guides, and make people dependent upon them?

  If the people of this religion are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.

  Al-Razi maintained the view that reason is superior to revelation and salvation is only possible through philosophy. The Prophets, the Billy goats with long beards, as Al-Razi disdainfully described them, cannot claim any intellectual and spiritual superiority. These Billy goats pretend to come with a message from God, all the while exhausting themselves spouting their lies and imposing on the masses blind obedience to the “words of the master”. As for the Qur’an, it is but an associated mixture of “absurd and inconsistent fables”. Al-Razi commented,

  You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: ‘Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one’. Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter. … By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: ‘Produce something like it’? ! (cited Stroumsa, 1999, p. 103).

  It is clear from the above accounts that Islam never had shortage of apostates. These enlightened people hold philosophical viewpoints that formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason instead of authority, tradition, or any other dogma. Though their field of criticism varied, one point was very common amongst them. None of them either accepted or rejected ideas proposed as truth without judging them under the searchlight of knowledge and reason. They understood the utter hollowness of life under Islam; hence they did not merely react like robots.

  Muslims unknowingly sabotage their real happiness. Many people are excited when they ask a question to themselves – “how to find ‘meaning’ in life?” But Muslims are terrified asking something like this. For others, all of life is a period of experimenting, testing, growing and developing; but for Muslims, experimenting and testing are wasted efforts because they have Allah’s divine guidelines to follow. Islam had entered their lives in such a way that a Muslim can spend his whole life in this delusion without even thinking once. They can bury their heads in sand and pretend as if nothing has happened. In this life, everything is Insha’Allah and Muhammad will take care of afterlife. What they cannot see is that the entire religion of Islam is based on the truth claim of one man who was a pathological liar and had shown all the symptoms of his lunacy.

  If Muslims want to come out of their mental disability, first they have to come out of this “Muhammad-sycophancy” or “Muhammad-slavery” – by whatever name we can call it, and only then they will be able to develop and activate their real self. They have to assert themselves instead of complying. Self-deception leads nowhere; only the real self has the capacity to function successfully in the real world. When they will hear the genuine urges of the real self, they will find a new meaning in their lives.

  Those therapists who treat the NPD patients often find it very difficult because of the defensive tactics of the Narcissist on which his grandiose false self relies (Benjamin, 1996, p. 142). The Narcissist uses aggression to coerce others including the therapist. He may often walks out from the therapy saying the therapist “means nothing to him” (Masterson, 1990, pp. 174-5). We see the same attitude in Muslims. We all know how die-hard the Islamic belief of a Muslim is. When the truth about Muhammad, Allah and Islam is brought to his notice, he denies it overwhelmingly. Denial is the way Muslims handle what they cannot handle logically. He argues, rejects the facts and sometimes even tries to twist the facts. If he cannot manage with this, he gives threat. If he cannot win or silence the critic by threat, he says that the criticisms have no impression on him. He may even say that his faith in Islam has grown after hearing all the criticisms. He may also walk away. Muhammad had a standing instruction in the Qur’an on this.

  When you hear His verses being disbelieved or mocked, do not sit with them until they engage in other talk, or else you will surely be like them. Allah will surely gather the hypocrites and unbelievers altogether in Hell . (Q: 4.140).

  What an appropriate advice from one Narcissist to the codependent. Now, the most dramatic point in the therapy of a Narcissist! Underneath this aggressive refusal what looks like a failed therapy, there lies an extreme vulnerability. As Masterson commented (1990, p. 175), “ Even when they are not in a session, they cannot get the therapist out of their minds”.

  What actually happens in his mind? When the Muslim says that his faith in Islam has strengthened after facing the critics, it is not an act of faith; rather this “returning to religion” is in order to escape an intolerable doubt. He makes this decision not out of devotion but in search of security (Fromm, 1978, p. 4). A trained psychoanalyst who is not at all concerned with religion considers this step as a symptom of failure of nerve. By the demands of treatment, when the Narcissist is forced to venture out of his narcissistic cocoon and compelled to activate his real self, after a certain time “the denial of reality” fails to protect him. He struggles with himself but at one yield point he gives up. Slowly, the realization that it was my entire fault, that I was sick and needed help penetrates the decades old defenses that he erected around himself. Masterson continued, “ Up to a point, the Narcissist’s denial of reality helps him to maintain his psychic equilibrium; but if the denial is too great, it will cause conflict ”. The time frame for this conflict to take place is different for different NPD patients.

  When Islam is criticized and exposed, Muslims strongly oppose it sometimes even with violence, but they cannot show a complete apathy to all these criticisms. Like children, though very scared of ghosts, cannot restrain themselves from reading ghost stories; the Muslims, in spite of their dislike, cannot show a complete lack of
concern to the critics; something like, “they cannot get the therapist out of their minds”. This forces them to look into themselves and their cherished belief, or in other words, to come out of their air-tight cocoon of narcissistic enjoyment and to activate their real self. A conflict takes place and on one day when he regains his self-esteem, he takes baby steps towards recovery. The harsh words of the critics are like “time bombs” waiting to explode. Sooner or later he is on another spiritual journey from Islamic bondage to the “heaven of freedom” as Poet Tagore had envisioned. And yes, this heaven of freedom is much more pleasant than Allah’s brothel that Muhammad had envisioned.

  Change of Islamic faith can reform a murderer; e.g., the strange case of Anwar Shaikh. During the partition of India / Pakistan (1947) he was a young man, and was so filled with hate against non-Muslims that he went out with a knife and killed three innocent Sikhs, two of them were father and a son. He did not know anyone of them but he killed them because they were the first non-Muslims he saw on the streets (Warraq, 2003, p. 286). This gruesome memory of his crime under the influence of Islamic “drug” pained him so much that he renounced Islam. He argued with himself – how God can command us to kill? Only the strength of reason can set the Muslims free. Renan (cited Warraq, 1995, p. ii) wrote, “ Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the orient that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him ”.