Motherless child

Muhammad was born in 570 AD within the Quraish tribe that inhabited Mecca. According to the Islam’s own traditions (the Sunna), Muhammad did not grow up in a loving or happy environment. Muhammad’s early family life was marked by poor family relationships, abandonment, and insecurity. His father Abd-Allah (Abdullah), died before his birth (check out his father’s name...given before Muhammad’s “revelation”...how does that work?). Ambiguators record that Muhammad was an orphan, but the truth is that his mother, Aminah did not want him. She gave him away to be suckled by another woman, Halima, for several years. Two or three years later, his mother died when Muhammad was only six years old. At that point, he was raised by his grandfather Abd al Muttalib until his death, whereupon Muhammad’s upbringing was taken over by his paternal uncle Abu Talib. As a result of all this family turmoil, it is difficult to believe that Muhammad did not harbor some kind of abandonment complex. And who knows how he was treated by those who were obliged to accept him perhaps less than enthusiastically into their homes?

However, the story of Muhammad’s nurse, as accepted by Muslims in their traditions is particularly disturbing. In a historical account of Muhammad’s life, [Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah (The Life of Muhammad), A. Guillaume, tr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 71-72], Muhammad’s nurse relates the following account of a strange event that occurred during the prophet’s childhood. Muhammad’s mother did not ask for her child to be returned, and did not welcome his presence. His nurse insisted on returning Muhammad prematurely to his uncooperative mother. What follows sounds as bizarre as an alien abduction, but more likely refers to actual demonic possession.

Something’s wrong

The account tells of the nurse suddenly appearing to Aminah with the child, Muhammad, insisting that she take him back. When Aminah pressed Hamima for a reason why the sudden desire to give Muhammad back, she told her: “Some months after our return [Muhammad] and his brother were with our lambs behind the tents when his brother came running and said to us, ‘Two men clothed in white have seized that Qurayshi brother of mine and thrown him down and opened up his belly, and are stirring it up.’ We ran towards him and found him standing up with a livid face. We took hold of him and asked him what was the matter. He said, "Two men in white raiment came and threw me down and opened up my belly and searched therein for I know not what." So we took him back to our tent.”

“His ‘father’ (foster father) said to me, ‘I am afraid that this child has had a stroke, so take him back to his family before the result appears.’ So we picked him up and took him to his mother who asked why we had brought him when I had (previously) been anxious for his welfare and desirous of keeping him with me. I said to her, ‘God has let my ‘son’ live so far and I have done my duty. I am afraid that ill will befall him, so I have brought him back to you as you (originally) wished.’ She asked me what happened and gave me no peace until I told her. When she asked if I feared a demon possessed him, I replied that I did.”

What is so shocking about this account is that it is part of Islamic traditions. Muslims accept this record of events. If you believe in demon possession, you may have to accept the possibility that the religion of Islam was demonically inspired. If you do not, you may have to accept that Muslims believe their prophet was possessed.

Little more is known about his childhood, until 595, AD, when Muhammad was twenty-five, he was chosen as a husband by a wealthy, independent, assertive, outspoken widow, Khadijah who was fifteen years his senior. Through this marriage, Muhammad went from being an unwelcome hand-me-down child, probably an introverted, friendless person to being the boy-toy of a wealthy merchant's widow. But Muhammad did not complain, he was set for life (reminds me of John Kerry), and the wealth he inherited purchased Muhammad a lot leisure time (also known as idle time, which is often referred to as “the devil’s workshop”). It must have been embarrassing for Muhammad to be so dominated by a strong female figure in such a paternalistic society. But of course, Muhammad would change all this in due time, and avenge those he felt were responsible for his trampled ego, for the love denied him, and for the respect that had escaped him in life. It’s hard to believe that any child could grow up in such a barren interpersonal environment and remain psychologically balanced. Muhammad was no aberration in this regard. Most such “lost” children self-destruct, but an occasional few grow to become full-blown monsters.

It is important to know that the traditions of Islam do not record that Muhammad had any special knowledge of pre-Islamic prophesy. He was not schooled by wise elders, scholars or priests. He did not understand Old Testament prophesies that were accepted widely by the people the Middle East, nor Christian theology, even as his wife’s money could have purchased access to the knowledge he needed to become wise. In fact, it is likely that Muhammad remained essentially illiterate during his entire life. Evidence for this is the manner in which the Quran is written, which suggests an author who had not fully comprehended or understood the precepts of his own theological foundation...the Bible and its interpretations by the Hebrew sages. For example, he displays a complete lack of comprehension of the meaning behind the Sabbath as a day of rest, and its value to the Judeo-Christian heritage. Many other errors and examples invalid interpretation of Abrahamic prophesy plagues the Quran, indicating an author only superficially acquainted with foundational scripture.

Sick or Bad

Rather than receive wisdom from ancient texts and elders, Muhammad acquired his “wisdom” by going off alone to a cave called Hira to meditate. Leaving an unstable man alone in a dark cave is probably not a good idea in any era, but it is in that environment of isolation that Muhammad began to hear voices. It was there that he began to receive what he called revelations from an entity he claimed was the angel Gabriel. Muhammad claims Gabriel indicated that Muhammad was chosen to be the final prophet of God. We don’t know the actual date of his first prophetic revelation, because Muhammad actually forgot on which day this incredible event occurred, but Islamists have affixed a date at the end of Ramadan in 610 AD.

So Muhammad had no witnesses to his revelations and had not studied or exhibited knowledge of traditional pre-Islamic prophesy that was generally accepted by the scholars of the day, but he seemed able to convince some people that his words were representative of a god he named Allah, the name of which can not be found anywhere in prior codices, but which was apparently the name of his paternal father! All of this may have been an extension of his personality disorder. He was not a likable person, and he desperately sought affection and meaning in life. He got the attention he needed by re-telling his “prophesy” and getting gullible believers in Arabian society to listen (sounds an awful lot like Al Gore and the global warming scandal, does it not?).

Perhaps Islam is just an invention of the mind of a desperately lonely and insecure person. On the other hand, Muhammad’s ministry may have begun as a real-life demonic, spiritual possession. Or perhaps Islam was simply the result of evil invading the heart of a weak and disturbed man. During his cave encounters, and before Muhammad went public with his prophesy, he became so disoriented and depressed that he became suicidal. The early Muslim historian Tabari (d. 923) records this tradition:

I [Muhammad] said to myself, "Your humble servant (meaning himself [Muhammad]) is either a poet or a madman, but Quraysh [a large Meccan tribe] shall never say this of me. I shall take myself to a mountain crag, hurl myself down from it, kill myself, and find relief in that way." (Tabari, Muhammad at Mecca, trans. W. Montgomery Watt and M V McDonald, vol. 6, SUNYP, 1988, p. 71, Arabic p. 1150)

Muhammad even claimed that God’s angel Gabriel “treated him roughly”, such as pressing down on him, physically (Ibn Ishaq, p. 106 / 152-53). So he decided to take himself to a mountain crag and throw himself off of it, killing himself. This reliable hadith agrees completely with Tabari:

... But after a few days Waraqa died and the Divine Inspiration was also paused for a while and the Prophet became so sad as we have heard that he intended several times to throw himself from the tops of high mountains and every time he went up the top of a mountain in order to throw himself down, Gabriel would appear before him and say, "O Muhammad! You are indeed Allah’s Apostle in truth" whereupon his heart would become quiet and he would calm down and would return home. (Bukhari)

A full account of Muhammad’s first encounter with Gabriel is given in the Sirat Rasul Allah. It is clear that even Muhammad considered himself possessed. He was intimidated, afraid, depressed and abused. Is this the hallmark of God?

“When it was the night on which God honoured him with his mission and showed mercy on His servants thereby, Gabriel brought him the command of God. ‘He came to me,’ said the apostle of God, ‘while I was asleep, with a coverlet of brocade whereon was some writing, and said, ‘Read!’ I said, ‘What shall I read?’ He pressed me with it so tightly that I thought it was death; then he let me go and said, ‘Read!’ I said, ‘What shall I read?’ He pressed me with it again so that I thought it was death; then he let me go and said ‘Read!’ I said, ‘What shall I read?’ He pressed me with it the third time so that I thought it was death and said ‘Read!’ I said, ‘What then shall I read?’—and this I said only to deliver myself from him, lest he should do the same to me again. “

But these visitations, these occurrences were not mere apparitions or visions or dreams. Muhammad related: “So I read it, and he departed from me. And I awoke from my sleep, and it was as though these words were written on my heart." And the occurrences were anything but pleasant, reassuring, or uplifting. They were a dark, menacing, sinister form of haunting, the kind that drives men to madness.

Muhammad later related in a suicidally depressed state of mind: “Now none of God’s creatures was more hateful to me than an (ecstatic) poet or a man possessed: I could not even look at them. I thought, Woe is me poet or possessed—Never shall Quraysh say this of me! I will go to the top of the mountain and throw myself down that I may kill myself and gain rest.”

Note that Muhammad— the man responsible for the contemporary religion of over a billion people, in the time of his testing, displays no faith in a loving, guiding God. He displays fear, anguish, and a sense of... abandonment!

A Religion of Ego, Pride, Revenge

So Muhammad was either disturbed or possessed, but he was certainly not normal. If he was just an insecure egoist, he would prove in time to be a man driven abnormally and compulsively to distort and usurp prophesies of the longstanding and pre-existing faiths of Judaism and Christianity. From evidence in the Quran, it seems Muhammad had some knowledge of Hebrew apocrypha and legends - as evidenced by the large amount of material (religious, folklore, historical and legal concepts) which he plagiarized and recorded within his Quran. For example, the physical attributes of Adam, the story of Abraham and his father's idols, Abraham & Isaac/Ishmael sacrifice story, the Joseph story, Zachariah, etc. are examples of distorted allusions to previously documented and accepted stories. Subsequent archeological finds have completely supported Jewish and Christian scripture as having been duplicated with high fidelity. It was Muhammad who attempted to distort it with the “revelation” of the Quran.

Thus the prophet of Islam, with no schooling in the wisdom and canon of his predecessors was driven to protect his fragile ego by asserting that the tribal myths of his youth and the legends of his local Arabic communities were superior to all accepted Christian and Jewish faith, and certainly superior to the beliefs of the pagans. Islam would become Muhammad’s way of creating a sense of self esteem and also a way to establish blame for a life he felt was lacking in his own life. His pitiful condition must have been the fault of the arrogant Jews, the “hippie” Christians, and the irresponsible pagans. Why hadn’t any of them cared for him when he needed love?

So Muhammad eventually began to preach about the messages he was receiving from the psychological disturbances caused by visitations from an intimidating spirit-being claiming to be the arc-angel Gabriel. And as birds of a feather often flock together, Muhammad somehow retained a following, especially among the most ignorant and rebellious malcontents among the society of his day. As he attracted attention, good or bad he gained self confidence; he got bolder and more arrogant, and it is likely that he started believing the self-made delusions of his 'divine mission'. Soon the focus of his message would become wrathful and vituperative, as he turned arrogantly and relentlessly towards condemning and mocking the People of the Book (Christians and Jews), hoping to convert them to his own definition of prophesy.

Most of the Jews and Christians knew he was ignorant and slanderous. They of course wanted nothing to do

 with him. They didn’t kill him or imprison him...they shunned him, which is a perfectly civilized way to deal with megalomaniacs. But they did not know he harbored a deep-seated, latent abandonment complex, which would lead him to despise his detractors and eventually seek revenge against anyone who rejected him and turned their back on him. They were going to give him the love he demanded for himself, the attention and respect that had been unjustly withheld from him his entire life...or else! This exact personality disorder can be seen in people like the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre. But Muhammad’s resentment simmered for a much longer time. He was not a deranged teen. By the time of his visitations, he was a disturbed and dangerous adult who was establishing a cult.

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