by Sujit Das
On a large scale, the Caliphs made war on groups that chose to leave Islam and massacres of apostates occurred. On a smaller scale, individual apostates were executed. Many of those apostates became violent and attacked Medina and other centers of Islam. They were led by many false Prophets amongst their individual groups. This group included the rebellion of the Bani Asad in the Najd led by Talha Ibn Khalid, who claimed to be a new Prophet; the opposition of the Bani Hanifa in Yamama, led by Maslama Ibn Habib, who also considered himself a Prophet; the uprising of clans of the Bani Tamin and the Bani Taghlib in northeastern Arabia, led by a woman, called Sajah, who claimed to be a Prophetess and ultimately joined forces with Maslama and the Bani Hanifa; and the insurrection of the Bani Ans in Yemen, led by Aswad al-Ansi, another self-proclaimed Prophet. In the wars these apostates waged against Muslims, fifty or sixty thousand people were killed, and the number of casualties is unprecedented in Arab history (Warraq, 2003, p. 32). Dealing with the apostates in an inhuman way is an aspect of Islam that portrays one of its most ugly faces. This religion is a ridiculous unspiritual belief system; it functions as a religious mafia, forbids men to think and choose for themselves.
6.4: The Force of Narcissism
The malignant Narcissist seeks to dominate every space in which it participates, both on individual and group levels. This strong urge of domination is the origin of narcissistic force. Hotchkiss (2003, p. 9) commented, “ Narcissists exude a powerful force field that is difficult to stay clear of and nearly impossible to control once you [the victim] have been drawn in ”. Vaknin (1999, p. 34) compares the force of narcissism with the psychological element of drug addition. It is only interested in, committed to, and obsessed with power and control by any means, and it will sacrifice people and resources indiscriminately to achieve domination.
When the narcissistic defense mechanism is operating in an interpersonal or group setting, the Narcissist does not show the grandiose part of his character in public. He presents a front of patience, friendliness, and confident rationality. However, beneath the surface it is supremely smug and superior. It is “confident” that it can deceive the “fools”.
The Narcissists resist the audience in a methodical and calculated manner. The commonly employed methods are misinformation and blocking access to funding and other resources, and if necessary, they even indulge in character assassination. The target person is often unaware of his narcissism; hence he will often be unable to recognize the presence of a narcissistic force which is trying to enslave him, or already have enslaved him. Narcissistic forces are also critical; they can be harsh in their judgments of anything short of perfection, can be bullying and abusive in their verbal criticism, daring others to challenge their destructive communication tactics. Recognizing the presence of narcissistic forces is the only way for a potential victim to save himself. Otherwise, sooner or later everyone around him becomes his victim. Vaknin (1999, p. 114) commented, “ People are sucked – either voluntarily or involuntarily”.
Narcissists are everyday people like we meet in a general crowd. Often these people are very appealing. They are very cold and calculated type and rarely act out of passion. Some of them are masters of the art of flattery. In real world, the bad people do not look the way they are supposed to. They do not resemble werewolves or a psychopath staring at a corpse on a rocking chair. Famous crime psychologist Rajat Mitra (2007, p. 36) commented, “[These people] can be very charming and caring if they want to be. In fact they may appear normal to people around them. They have this remarkable ability of hiding other darker self from the world .”
They do not want the targets to know that they have set a trap for them. Unless one has the experience of dealing with narcissism, it is difficult to appreciate how strong a force drives the grandiosity of the narcissism. Only a very small fraction of the psychopaths and malignant Narcissists land in the asylum. A great majority of them are undetected and considered to be “harmless” and “normal”.
6.4.1: The Force of Narcissism of Muhammad and the Early Muslims
“A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness”.
Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924)
The strong force of narcissism of Muhammad makes Islam a die-hard religion and Muslims are the first victims. Islam, the legacy of Muhammad, is a powerful force field which is very difficult to stay clear of. Qur’an says,
This day have those who disbelieve despaired of your religion, so fear them not, and fear Me. This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed My favor on you and chosen for you Islam as a religion. (Q: 5.3)
The above verse cannot be from a God. If Islam is a favor bestowed upon the Muslims, then why Allah said, “Do not fear them, but fear me”? Actually it was not a warning from the God but from a Narcissist to his victims. In plain English he intended to say; “After my death do not lose your fear in me and be faithful to me and me only”. This is a fear based control mechanism designed by the Narcissists to keep their victims in their control. When a malignant Narcissist instills fear in his victims’ minds, he has tremendous power over them. The very strength of Islam is this “fear factor”. Muhammad had achieved what he desired through his Qur’an.
Anyone who, with a basic knowledge on narcissism, makes an objective study of the Qur’an will find an unmistakable signature of a malignant Narcissist on every page of this supposed to be holy book. Qur’an contains only deception, lies and meaningless blabbering of a mentally sick person. By putting their trust on Qur’an, the Muslims not only become a narcissistic supply source to Muhammad but also inherit his mental illness. This way, the ghost of Muhammad is still haunting the Muslims. Muslims fail to recognize Muhammad as a hardcore criminal and ruthless tyrant. For them, Muhammad was a holy Prophet and Islam made bad men good. Here lies Muhammad’s success. Born Muslims are indoctrinated by their parents, relatives, or at Madrassah that start at childhood. The irony is that the programming is done by those people who themselves are the victims of Muhammad’s narcissism. Converted Muslims are often misguided people. When a sane person converts to Islam, he automatically becomes a mental slave of Muhammad.
Muslims are unaware of their victimization. Once a person comes within the grip of Islam, it is difficult for him to detach himself from this evil force. The closer one gets to Islam, the more one surrenders to its calling. The more one emulates its Prophet and follows the Qur’an, the more perverted one becomes. While offering five obligatory prayers, Muslims think that they are praying to God, but actually their prayers go to Muhammad. Muhammad is the real God of Islam, not Allah. Earth has several time zones, which differ from one another gradually. It means; every moment there is some Muslim, who is praying to Muhammad, securing his narcissistic supply needs!
Today a billion plus people affirm their Muslim faith. This is the sweet dream of a malignant Narcissist. Muhammad put himself in an extremely enviable position to all Narcissists. A Narcissist never assumes responsibility of the welfare of his victims. Muhammad’s followers died happily in battles for him, but it never turned him. Narcissists are emotionally invalid (Vaknin, 1999, p. 28). Even today, when a Muslim picks the burden of Islamic jihad he fails to see the truth. This is the height of Muhammad’s brainwashing capability on the Muslims. As Mirza Malkam Khan had a slogan of unraveled cynicism (cited Sina, 2008, p. 66), “Tell the Muslims something is in the Qur’an, and they will die for you.”
6.5: Inverted Narcissism
Inverted Narcissism (also called covert Narcissism, codependency, Narcissist’s magnets, self-effacing) is a Dependent Personality Disorder. An inverted Narcissist is a codependent who relies exclusively on and actively seeks relationships with the Narcissist (Zayn & Dibble, 2007, p. 108). They prefer to live with the Narcissists, to cater to their needs and to succumb to their whims regardless of any abuse inflicted on them by the Narcissist. This is the way they have been conditioned. They feel alive, stimulated and excited only with Na
rcissists. The world glows in multicolor in the presence of a Narcissist and decays to sepia colors in his absence. The Narcissist is the only meaningful, crucially significant figure in the inverted Narcissist’s life.
Inverted narcissism can be compared with “Stockholm syndrome”. This term is used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors. This occurs when the hostages tend to identify emotionally with the captors rather than with the police. In this sense, the captor becomes the person in control of the captive’s basic needs for survival and the victim’s life itself. Similarly, the inverted Narcissists tend to remain in those situations because that is what they “know”. They feel empty and unhappy in relationships with any other kind of person. This is the Narcissist’s leverage over the inverted Narcissist.
The inverted Narcissists are typically insecure because they have not been valued for themselves, and have been valued by the Narcissist only to the extent that they meet their Narcissist’s needs. They develop their self-concepts based on their Narcissist’s treatment of them and therefore often have highly inaccurate ideas about who they are.
6.6: Pre-Islamic Arabia and the Dawn of Islam
Narcissism affects society and culture in profound ways (Vankin, 1999, p. 11). The Narcissists always try to modify the environment to make it conductive to his narcissistic needs. Muhammad did the same. Not only he had enslaved people but also changed the Arab society and the culture. His influence was utterly negative; he destroyed the “humanness” of the Arabs and brought jungle rule in a rather peaceful society through Islam.
Islam is condemned by history. Hence Muslims often rewrite it and try to give a rosy picture. Scholars write hundreds of books every year exaggerating the “chaos and confusion” that prevailed in pre-Islamic Arabia. One such book, published in India, claims that pre-Islamic Arabs used to drink the blood of their enemies in the battlefield, sisters and mothers were often raped by brothers and sons, and when Islam came, it civilized the Arabs. Another author (Kotb, 2004, p. 193) wrote that the pagan Arabs used to bury their female children alive, make women dance naked in the vicinity of Ka’ba during their annual fairs, and treat women as mere chattels and objects of sexual pleasure possessing no rights or position whatsoever, and when Qur’an was revealed Arabs became civilized.
But the history says something else. The revisionist image of pre-Islamic Arabs as skilled fighters is widely accepted by the historians. But its derogatory overtones are preached because they are essential to show Islam as a divine religion which makes bad people good. Muslim scholars try hard to paint the pre-Islamic period, called Jahiliyyah or “Period of Ignorance” in the worst possible light. They demonize Arabs to make the resulting Islamic society, arguably the most ignorant and brutal in history, look good by comparison. But whatever little evidence we have of these people, their lives, and their customs, indicates that they did not act foolishly. Unlike their descendants in the twenty-first century; seventh century Arabs were a free, brave and peace-loving people who cherished family values and honored tribal commitments.
There is no historical evidence of Arabs conquering their neighbors before Islam. They were illiterate, isolated, and perhaps even ignorant about the outside world. But there is no evidence at all that they were bloodthirsty criminals who terrorized and looted in violent raids. However, that all changed with the advent of Muhammad. After Islam, religious intolerance crept in, and Muslims conquered much of the world. When Muhammad could not establish his religion peacefully, he became a criminal. When Muhammad took control as a leader, the Muslims put Arabia in turmoil, spilling blood for plunder. They became a gang who terrorized and raided settlements and caravans alike. They knew terror, rape, murder, thievery and slave trade were wrong, yet they did these things in the name of God. Their consciences were simply paralyzed by a malignant Narcissist’s powerful force. They became inverted Narcissists of Muhammad. Muhammad and his Allah said that booty was good, that raping the infidel women pleases God, and that killing the enemies was the surest way to reach the paradise, and people believed him. The Narcissist leader gave a sacred aura to crime and terrorism.
Islam turns good men bad, destroys civilization and replaces it with barbarism; it brings sickness to a rather healthy society. For this reason, today’s Muslims find it essential to revise their past and invert truth. Deep inside, they are afraid, the truth might come out. This is why Muslims strongly resist Qur’anic criticism, does not allow any archeological exploration in Mecca and Medina, and stopped all further research on Sana’a manuscripts. But it is their true past, their actual history, their pre-Islamic superior culture which accuses them and haunts them. Simply stated – Islam perverts men and erodes culture.
Muhammad’s narcissistic force had a very bad influence on Arab society and culture. During Muhammad and his successors, prostitution diminished for a time (Durant, 1950, p. 220). It was not because Muhammad had a high regard for women and he worked for the welfare of the fallen women. But it was because Muhammad lowered the status of married women to the lowest level of sex-slavery and prostitution. He allowed sexual appetite so many outlets within the Islamic law that the prostitutes became jobless. Muhammad viewed women as domestic animals. There is enough evidence that prior to Islam’s aggression, women were much more respected and used to enjoy more rights than at any time since.
Before advent of Islam, many Arab families had a matriarchal (mother is the ruler of the family) system. There were many dominant queens during the pre-Islamic era; e.g., Zabibi, Shamsiyah, Zenobia, and above all, the queen of Sheba (her original name was Bilqis), whose beauty had bewitched Solomon (Shaikh, 1999, p. 16). Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija was a powerful merchant-woman. It is surprising that Allah neither commanded Muslim women to veil nor allowed Muhammad to practice polygamy despite the fact that Khadija was fifteen years older than him and had been married twice before. Only after Khadija’s death all these unfair Qur’anic verses started coming down. It is also a misconception that in pre-Islamic Arabia female infants were murdered and Islam abolished that practice. If that were true, how did Arab men marry multiple times? Muhammad allowed his followers to marry four women and he himself had more than a dozen. How could it be possible, if there were female infanticide in practice?
Pre-Islamic Arabs were mainly polytheists. Every tribe had their own idols in Ka’ba. Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Sabeans (an extinct monotheistic faith) and also some Hindus used to live in peace and harmony with one another. There were many self-proclaimed Prophets. The followers of different faiths had equal freedom and dignity. But Muhammad was a breath away from destroying all of that. He would transform his world into a killing machine poised to plunder Arabia and then the world. Today Saudi Arabia is the most extremist of the Muslim states.
For the centuries before Islam, tribal alliances had formed the foundation of peace in the Arab world. There were no policemen or courts, as none were needed. Caravans traveled safely and people lived in harmony because they had established a means to work together and to work things out. They were fond of poetry. Poets were the journalists during those days. Apart from the Jews, most Arabians were illiterate, so poetry became the most effective means of disseminating a message. Walker (2002, p. 79) wrote, “ The court poets were preoccupied with form and style, the melody of words, the rhythms of balanced phrases, the music and harmony that emerged from the interplay of vowels and consonants, and the beauty of expression. They discovered new metres and new rhythms, developed to the full opportunities their language offered for poetic eloquence, and set standards for excellence that later poets were long to emulate ”.
Later on, poetry composed by Hanifs became the initial ingredient in Islam. But once Muhammad became a ruler, he cursed the poets. In pre-Islamic days, the poets used to meet during Ramadan in a great seven day national gathering with their compositions at Okaz. But once Muhammad attained power, he put an end to the contests (
Walker, 2002, p. 80). He had developed a strong detest for the poets.
Those who go astray follow the poets. (Q: 26.224)
Narrated Ibn `Umar: The Prophet said, ‘It is better for a man to fill the inside of his body with pus than to fill it with poetry’ . (Bukhari: 8.73.175)
Narrated Abu Huraira; Allah’s Apostle; said, It is better for anyone of you that the inside of his body be filled with pus which may consume his body, than it be filled with poetry . (Bukhari: 8.73.176)
Original works of pre-Islamic poets did not survive much after advent of Islam. Within hundred years of Muhammad’s taking over of Mecca, the Arab genius of poetry was completely erased (Warraq, 2000, p. 151). As Taha Husayn, an Egyptian scholar, writing in 1925, lamented that little of any genuine pre-Islamic literature had survived (Krizeck, 1964, p. 60). Most of those poets were Christian Arabs. But Muhammad and his followers had wiped out almost everything through deliberate neglect. Wherever Muhammad went; bloodshed, death and destruction followed him. He destroyed everything good whatever he found close by. Muslims followed his instruction and carried out his order blindly.
Ethics and religion are not only interdependent but have great influence on each other. A religion without ethical values cannot be called a religion. As Lewis (1961, p. 257) wrote, “ If religion is true, we should expect religion and ethics to have much importance for one another… Religion is itself nothing but ethics – or ethics with relatively incidental accompaniment ”. The moral teachings of the Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, and Jain religions have enormous positive influence on the progress of the modern civilization. But the poisonous teachings of Qur’an gave us nothing except violence, misery, poverty, cruelty, death and destruction. Can any good thing ever come out from Muhammad’s teaching? Was Pope Benedict XVI, far away from truth when he quoted, “ Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached ”?
