Psychology of Mohammed

333 Pages·2008·2.23 MB·English

by  Dr. Masud Ansari

Psychology of Mohammad

By: Dr. Massoud Ansari
1
Preface

This book should be read almost as though it were a work of fiction. It
deals with a religion and events in the life of a man who pretended to
be a prophet, elements of both subjects being far from truth and reality.
In other words, the contents of this book explain realities about
unrealities. Mohammed through his book, the Koran, both tried very
hard to make realities out of unrealities. He fabricated a preposterous
metaphysical faith that, by its appeal to the baser instincts of pagan
Bedouins, began on the Arabian Peninsula and then, by bloody
conquest, spread throughout the Mid-East, northern Africa and even
into Spain. If anyone should ask why more than one billion of the
world’s population follows this absurd creed and accepts Mohammed
as a prophet, I would refer them inter alia to the works of two distin-
guished scientists; Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene1 and Susan
Blackmore, The Meme Machine.2
It is not the intention of the author to delve into the definition of
religion because it would be impossible to find one that would be
acceptable worldwide. I am writing this book to analyze and expose
the psychology of the creator (Mohammed) of the religion called
Islam; the despicably crafty methods he used to achieve his ambitions;
the spirit and principles of Islam; and the drastic and destructive
impact of that religion on Muslims’ minds in particular and the world
in general.
Religion should transcend human ethics, generate a sense of spiri-
tuality, and establish principles to guide human behavior along paths
of peaceful, caring coexistence with one’s fellow man. But no phe-
nomenon in human history has caused as much bloodshed and fratri-
cide as religion. One of many examples: at the beginning of the sixth
century a Jewish king, Dhu Nowas, after having defeated the Chris-
tians of Najran and having conquered their land, dug an enormous
trench which he filled faggots and burned twenty thousand Christians
alive. During the Crusades, Christians and Muslims butchered each
other for 300 years; each side called it a Holy War. Crusaders commit-
ted themselves with solemn vows and in the thirteenth-century were
granted full Indulgence, i. e. remissions of all punishment for sins
committed in their quests and an assurance of direct entry into heaven.
The battle cry of Christians, Pope Urban II urged, should be Deus volt
2
[God wills it]. In a like manner, Muslim theocrats called fighting
against Christians, Holy War (Jihad) against infidels and promised
Muslim fighters a paradise with houris (virgin girls) among other
delights in return for their deaths in battle.
The Thirty Years War (1618-48) eventually involved almost all of
the European powers and they were all convinced that they were
fighting for a Holy Cause. The actual cause of these wars was the
attempt of the Habsburg controlled Holy Roman Empire to impose
Catholicism on Protestant principalities such as Sweden and the
Netherlands. The war affected the lives of the 500 million or so people
who were then living on the earth, and that of their descendents.3
Historians have written that in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Pomerania,
the Palatinate, Wurttemberg, and parts of Bavaria, civilian population
losses may have been 50 percent or more. Art, science, trade, and
industry declined.4 Whole cities, villages, farms, and much property
were destroyed. It took almost 200 years for the German territories to
recover from the effects of the war.
For 1400 years Jews and Muslims have been killing each other,
the Muslims believing that they are following a sacred edict. Many of
the tragic conflicts in the world today are rooted in long-standing
religious differences and animosities. Even within a certain religions
such as Islam, intramural differences have caused Sunnis and Shi’as to
massacre each other for hundreds of years and Irish Catholics and
Protestants have been at each other’s throats for over a century.
Homo sapiens, is a Latin term meaning a wise or knowlegable
man. But in actuality many times we simply ignore our innate wisdom,
believe in superstitions and easily become the victim of impostors.
Where religious ideas are concerned, we often become narrow-minded
and ethnocentric because we naturally tend to identify religion with
our heritage or with those conventional forms of religious behavior
that we observe in our own communities. We simply believe the
religious faith that our parents have chosen for us is the best and even
thinking about the authenticity of that faith is profane. The new-born
mind is a blank slate upon which all the environmental and cultural
elements that are prevalent in our milieu, including our religious
beliefs, are copied.
The ubiquitous characteristic of religion is “sacred power.” What
is the nature of this “sacred entity” that we unconsciously inherit from
our forefathers? If all the multitude differences of worship are elimi-
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nated, then the only remainder will be the common denominator of an
unseen power, sanctity. If we remove sanctity from religion, then what
remains will be superstition. In other words, sanctity plus superstition
makes religion; religion minus sanctity makes superstition or myth.
Therefore, sanctity is an attribute peculiar to religion. Sanctity is a
man-made invisible power that man must live in contact with it or be
condemned to chaotic experience where there is no foundation for
reality.5
In the Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), Emile
Durkheim (1858-1917) writes, “The division of the world into two
domains, which include everything that is sacred in one and everything
that is profane in the other, is the characteristic feature of religious
thought.” For Durkheim, sanctity is not an intrinsic status. Sacred is an
appellation conferred by human beings on other persons, places, or
things. This has been expressed as the vague and undefined Mana of
the Melanesians; the Kami of primitive Shintoism; the fetish of the
Africans; spirits possessing some human characteristics, that pervade
natural places and animate natural forces; the Sutras and impersonal
principle of Buddhism; Tao Te Ching and the Analects of Confucius,
the Vedas and Upanishads of Hinduism, the gods and goddesses of the
Greek and Roman Pantheons, the essence of Judeo-Christian faiths, the
preposterous content of the Muslim’s Koran echoing the power-
hungry, lascivious thoughts of Mohammed who presented himself as a
prophet of God. It is this invisible sacred power which generates
obedience and reverence, awe, and fear in the mind of whomever
becomes the follower of a particular religion.
The difference between a sacred power and that which is almost
powerless is, according to the Dutch scholar Gerardus Van der Leeuw,
what distinguishes the sacred from the profane. When elaborating on
sacred power, der Leeuw points out that a unique characteristic of
sacred power is the fact that it evokes an ambivalent response. He
believes that sacred power awakens a profound feeling of awe which
manifests itself both as fear and as being attracted. There is no religion
whatever without terror, but equally none without love.6 The author of
this book rejects Van der Leeuw’s characterization of religion insofar
as its application to Islam. Throughout passages of the Koran, one can
rarely find a verse indicating Allah’s “love” of his followers. Rather,
the bloodthirsty Allah of Islam, among other threatening verses,
clearly states: “Many of the jinns and human beings I have made for
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Hell,” (Koran, VII: 179); “I have only created jinn and human beings
that they may worship me” (Koran, LI: 56) and “I shall assuredly fill
hell with all of you” (Koran, VII: 17, XXXII: 13).
A truly ‘sacred power’ condemns evil and cruelty and embraces
good and truth. In other words, in all religions sacred power, God, and
truth are virtually synonymous. Plato said goodness, knowledge and
truth are interrelated and since the goal of knowledge and truth is
goodness, therefore, the goal of knowledge is also goodness. Gandhi
believed that the truth is higher than God.7 Every religion teaches that
rejecting the faith means turning away from truth. The sacred power
turns evil and cruelty into good and truth. Plato, in Euthyphro also
proposes the same idea, that what makes an action right is simply the
fact that it is commanded by God. But, Socrates asks him’ “Is some-
thing right because God commands it or does he command it because it
is right?” Euthyphro replies that, of course, God commands it because
it is right and it is against the nature of God to command cruelty.
Most theologians would tend to agree with this norm. However,
some writers including Soren Kierkegaard do not agree. As an ex-
ample, Kierkegaard believes that the God’s command to Abraham to
sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22) is not just. In the Koran, Allah
orders Muslims to kill the cursed people mercilessly (Koran, XXXIII:
61). The interesting point in this verse is that Allah not only com-
mands Muslims to kill the cursed people, but they have to do it
mercilessly and because it is the command of God it should be taken to
be the “truth.”
Women may not resist sexual abuse and the Koran commands
that the men who abuse them get off free.8 Believing in such cruelty
makes a person good Muslim; rejecting it arouses the wrath of Allah
and condemnation to Hell. To be religious and have faith is to believe
without asking questions such as an explanation of Mohammed’s trip
to seven heavens on an animal similar to a donkey. This fantasy
cannot be tested because God is invisible and invisibility is the sacred
characteristic of Him. Thus blind faith protects a religion from
rejection.
Contrary to science, which will not validate any theory until it is
tested, religious injunctions are considered to be “sacred” and de-
manding proof will be “profane,” liable to punishment and hell-fire. In
Islam, questioning the ascendance of Mohammed to seven heavens is
considered “apostasy” and the punishment of an apostate in Islam is
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death.9 Whatever has been discussed above boils down to the fact that
in order to be a true believer all of the ludicrous and illogical precepts
found in “sacred” books should be considered absolute truth and any
doubt leads to hell. Thomas Moore brilliantly explains that, “Spiritual
intelligence requires a particular kind of emptiness, a sophisticated
ignorance, an increasing ability to forget what you know and to give
up the need to understand.”10
Just as DNA is passed from generation to generation, so religion
passes from parent to offspring. In his book, The Selfish Gene,11
Richard Dawkins for the first time proposed the theory of transmission
of ideas through culture. Many authors after Dawkins followed his
lead by devoting entire chapters to the subject. In countless lectures
for the past two decades, Dawkins has strongly suggested that God is a
meme and religion is akin to a viral transmitter.
The recurrent pattern of social behavior defines a culture. John
Teske quotes a number of scholars that as a result of their scientific
studies they have come to the conclusion that both our cognitive and
emotional lives may be locatable socially rather than individually;
between rather than inside persons. Vygotsky and Luria also believe
that even our thoughts and memories are dependent of our social life.12
The ideas of “belief in life after death” and “hell-fire” are self-
perpetuating unconsciously because of their physical impact.13
The reason that religions with all of their weak points became
successful was that their litany and doctrines were passed down from
one person to another throughout the long history of humanity; at first
orally, then in hand-copied manuscripts and, finally, in printed books
and via the perorations of TV evangelists. That is why they have been
with us for thousands of years, and why millions of people’s lives are
controlled by ideas that are preposterous as well as historically inaccu-
rate.
Having analyzed the psychosocial mechanism of religiosity and
how religious faith transfers like a cultural virus from generation to
generation, now we have to understand that though all religions sprang
from the same psychological compulsion, none of them is more inane
than Islam. It is not too much to say that if Islam had not developed as
one of the major world religions, civilization would have evolved with
less bloodshed and to a higher level than it is today.
Finally, one author writes: “The five oldest and most trusted Is-
lamic sources don’t portray Mohammed as a great and Godly man.
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They reveal that he was a thief, a liar, an assassin, a pedophile, a
womanizer, a rapist, a mass murderer, a pirate, a warmonger, and a
scheming and ruthless politician. It’s hardly the character profile of a
religious leader.”14
I am writing this book with the sincere aim of helping the Mus-
lims of the world understand the base origin of the god they worship
and, hopefully, persuade them to stop throwing away their lives on
such horribly misanthropic precepts such as jihad. It is also my hope
that this book will help the non-Muslims understand the the nature of
Islam and alert them to the implacable, vicious and endless menace of
Jihad.

7
Chapter One

A Short Account of the Life of
Mohammed, Founder of Islam

“Paradise is under the shade of swords.”
Mohammed Sahis al-Bukhari, Vol. IV, N. 7.

Prophets are more evil doers than professional liars, be-
cause the former commit crimes on the pretext of divine au-
thority, but the latter only fabricate falsehoods of their own
making.
Masud Ansari

It is not the intention of this book to go fully into the details of the life
of Mohammed, but in order to understand how an ambitious Arab
camel driver was able to establish one of the most successful organized
world-wide religions, by means of the sword, terror and guile, we must
take a brief look into his origins and at those individuals who influ-
enced his early thinking. To understand Islam and the Koran, we first
have to shed light on the life of its author. Over the centuries, thou-
sands of biographies of Mohammed have been written. This short
biography is based on information gleaned from the works of the most
reliable authors who have written about Mohammed, both Muslim and
non-Muslim.
The author will try to show how the mores of the clans and tribes
that lived in and around Mecca, the birthplace of Islam in the early
years of the seventh century, influenced Mohammed’s character.
Analysis of the works of Islamic historians shows that the chief
philosophy governing the creation of the Islamic empire, which at its
apogee stretched from India and China in the East through Southeast
Asia and the Mediterranean to Spain in the West, was “the ends justify
the means,” and the chief tactical instrument was terrorism.

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The Birth of Mohammed

There is no agreement on Mohammed’s precise date of birth. It has
been estimated as sometime between 567 and 573 CE. The most
commonly accepted time is the autumn of the year 570 CE, the Year of
the Elephant.15 The infant was born in Mecca, the Holy City of Islam
on the western side of Arabian Peninsula. At the time of Moham-
med’s birth, Mecca was inhabited by followers of the traditional
Arabic idolatrous religion as well as adherents to the religion of
Abraham (Koran, II: 130).
Mohammed’s father, Abdullah, belonged to the clan Hashim, a
sept of the Quraysh tribe. He married a woman named Amina, the
daughter of Wahb, who belonged to the Bani Zuhra tribe. They named
their only child Mohammed, a name derived from the root hamada,
meaning ‘the praised.’
The Quraysh tribe during the previous two centuries had risen to
undisputed pre-eminence in Mecca. They controlled, in so far as the
nomadic nature of Arab life permitted, all civil, military, and religious
matters.

Mohammed’s Childhood

It is a historic certainty that Mohammed was the first and only child in
his family. Mohammed’s father, Abdullah, died while on a business
trip to Medina either during his wife’s pregnancy or shortly after her
delivery. At that time, the city of Mecca was considered unhealthy for
infant children and it was customary for the Mecca nobles to employ a
wet-nurse chosen from one of the neighboring nomadic tribes to
nourish their infant progeny. The men reasoned that their wives,
without the distraction of suckling infants, would dedicate themselves
more assiduously to their pleasure and bear more children. Their infant
children would benefit from the pure desert air and, away from the
filth of the city, thrive in the black tents of the Bedouin. Thus the
infant Mohammed, shortly after his birth, was placed with a Bedouin
wet-nurse named Halima. She was a slave belonging to his uncle Abu
Lahab and came from the clan Bani Saad, a branch of the great tribe
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known as the Hawazin. Halima was encamped near Mecca and had
been brought, along with other lactating women, to take care of
Meccan infants.
Mohammed’s infancy and part of his childhood was spent with
Halima among the Bani Saad clan. When Mohammed was two years
old, his foster-mother, Halima, weaned him and took him back to his
mother.
Amina was delighted with the healthy and robust appearance of
her child but, because Mecca was still deemed insalubrious, she
ordered Halima to take him back to the desert hoping that he would
continue to thrive there. Even though the epileptic seizures that were to
plague him later in life were not yet manifest and he appeared healthy,
Amina’s insistence on takimg the child back to the desert beyond the
usual term of suckling indicates that she believed he suffered from
some constitutional delicacy.16
At the end of his fourth year, however, a strange event occurred
that greatly concerned his foster-mother. This event is palpable proof
that Mohammed was from childhood subject to emotional distur-
bances.17
Koelle quotes Ibn Ishaq as follows: One day a friend of Mo-
hammed asked him for an account of an event that occurred during his
[Mohammed’s] childhood. Mohammed explained it thusly: “Once,
while my foster-brother and I were tending the cattle in the desert, two
men clothed in white and bearing a golden wash basin filled with snow
came toward me. They split open my body, took out my heart, cut it
open, and removed from it a black clot, which they threw away. Then
they washed my heart and body quite clean with the snow and one said
to the other, ‘Weigh him against ten of his people’ and, when he did
so, I outweighed them. Then he said, ‘Weigh him against a hundred of
his people’ and again I outweighed them. He continued, ‘Weigh him
against a thousand of his people;’ and when I outweighed them, too, he
said, ‘leave him now: for if thou wert to put his entire people onto the
scale, he would outweigh them all.’”18
Tabari refers to the same story as told by Mohammed on another
occasion. He quotes Abu Dharr al-Ghaffari who asked him, “How did
you first know with absolute certainty that you were a prophet?”
Mohammed answered this question as above with some minor differ-
ences.19 Some historians have written that when Mohammed was
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