by Wafa Sultan
During this period of anarchy I can remember rumors being spread of a deal the Assad family had made with the Saudis, as represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, to the effect that Assad would turn a blind eye to the Brotherhood as long as it did not target Assad or other members of the ruling family personally. Indeed, this is what happened and Syrians followed events as if they were watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The struggle became serious only when a detachment of Muslim Brotherhood volunteers attacked a convoy of vehicles in which Assad was traveling, and opened fire on it. They then threw a bomb at the convoy, killing one of Assad’s companions, while Assad himself escaped by a miracle.
This 1979 incident caused the whole situation to explode, and the Syrian authorities launched a merciless manhunt. They attacked the Syrian town of Hama, the traditional Muslim Brotherhood stronghold, and pulverized it with tanks, then pursued the defeated remnant in other Syrian cities. This bloody struggle continued for about two years, and many Syrians unconnected with either the authorities or the Brotherhood were among its victims. However, the authorities crushed the Brotherhood only after its failed attempt on the president’s life, not in defense of any religious community.
In 1979, when I was in my fifth year of medical school, I witnessed the death of our ophthalmology lecturer, Dr. Yusef al-Yusef At first I didn’t realize who had been killed. The shots that rang out on all sides—sending everyone nearby into a state of shock—mingled with the killer’s voice shouting from the loudspeaker: “Allahu akbar … Allahu akbar!”*
Later, when the fear and shock of the attack started to wear off, I discovered that the victim was a man I had looked up to as an ideal of morality and humanity—an upright, generous, and cultured man from a poor family that had sacrificed everything to cover the cost of his medical studies in Europe. He had come back at once and begun his work as a lecturer at the college of medicine. The sound of the killer’s voice glorifying God mingled with the sound of the shots. Ever since that moment, Allah has been equated in my mind with the sound of a bullet and become a God who has no respect for human life. From that time on I embarked upon a new journey in a quest for another God—a God who respects human life and values every human being.
Does God exist? As I can perceive his influence, I have to acknowledge his existence. As I have described myself on more than one occasion as an atheist with no belief in the transcendental, it is only natural that some people regard this insistence of mine as an incomprehensible contradiction. My response is this: Though I never saw God throughout my entire life within the prison of Islam, I did see the influence he wielded, and in order to dispel his influence I have to deal with him as if he exists. When a young child is afraid of the monster under his bed, he suffers from the effects of that fear just as he would if the monster really existed. Things we believe to be real affect us as if they were real, even if they are no more than an illusion.
God, as I perceive him, arises out of our feeling of need for him, that need which we cannot satisfy in other ways. God, to me, is the thing that satisfies that need. People believe in God in an attempt to fill an intellectual or psychological void that cannot be satisfied by more realistic methods. He is like a key fitting into any lock we need to open.
Let me give you an example of what I mean: I was driving my car down Route 91, bringing my daughter Angela home from the dentist. Usually the drive home takes half an hour, but that noonday the roads were jammed with cars and it took us about an hour to cover half the distance. Angela was due to go to a friend’s birthday party. She got very upset and, as usual, vented her frustration on me. I suffered her adolescent criticisms in total silence. Silence is my way of dealing with her fifteen-year-old adolescent outbursts. Once she had calmed down a bit I began to chat with her, calmly, so as to avoid another emotional outburst.
When Angela’s emotions were at their height, she opened the car window and said with childish innocence: “I wish I could turn into God right now!” Keeping completely calm I asked her, “And if you did become God, what would you do?” She replied without hesitation, “I would build a special road for myself to take me home now so that I could avoid the traffic jam, get back quickly, and get to my friend’s birthday party on time.” God, in an attempt to fulfill Angela’s need, had become a road-builder!
Of course, sometimes, we ask too much of God. An old woman was standing on the beach watching her adolescent grandson dancing over the surface of the water on his surfboard. After only a few minutes a powerful wave came along and flung him into the depths of the sea. The old woman rushed back and forth until she was exhausted, not knowing what to do. Finally, she dropped to her knees and raised her hands to the heavens: “Lord, oh Lord, bring my grandson safely back to me. I promise not to burden you with demands after this.”
No sooner had the grandmother finished uttering her plea than the same wave came along and tossed her grandson safe and sound at her feet. The grandmother knelt and raised her arms to the heavens: “Thank you, Lord, thank you! You’ve brought my grandson safely back to me, but”—she bowed her head in embarrassment at breaking her promise—”have you forgotten that he was wearing a cap?”
God is our feeling of need for him—a need which extends from the most important request (Lord, bring my grandson back to me safely!) to the most trivial: And don’t forget, Oh Most Sublime, that he was wearing a cap!
We ourselves created God, and then we allowed him to create us. We shaped him to fit our need, and then we allowed him to shape us to fit his. We dressed him in our clothes, and then he dressed us in his. With time we got things confused, and we no longer knew which of us had created the other, whether he had created us or we had created him. The question remains: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
This question is not very important, except when this vicious cycle produces a deformed chicken or a rotten egg. When searching for the reasons for this defect we do not need to know which came first, whether the rotten egg hatched out the deformed chicken or the deformed chicken laid the rotten egg. What I believe is important is that we should begin the job of searching on both levels, and that we should start to re-create both ourself and God at the same time. When we create God then allow him to create us, each of us is responsible for the well-being of the other, and for the degree to which the resulting creation is sound. When one of us is defective, the other is defective, too; and as time passes it becomes hard for us to recognize the point at which the distortion began. If we are serious about rectifying this creational defect we must not waste time answering this question. Instead the time must be used to begin to deal with both axes, both chicken and egg: both God and Man.
In the young man’s village I spoke of earlier, just as in my own, people created an ogre that corresponded to the size of their fears, then allowed that ogre to re-create them in his image. After a long time had elapsed, the true facts were lost and no one knew anymore which of them had created the other or which of them was responsible for the other’s imperfection. Did the fear which dwelt in the hearts of the inhabitants of the village play a part in the creation of that ogre, or did the ogre implant that terror within them?
The young man was brave. His wanderings and constant traveling had given him a rare degree of courage that helped him to surpass the wisdom of his time, which had warned him against risking his life. Courage is one of the rarest human virtues. To bring about change and rectify defects one must first acquire courage. Wisdom alone cannot change things. On the contrary, sometimes it helps perpetuate a lack of change. Only courage can bring about change. The received wisdom in my village taught me that the eye is no match for the needle, while the courage I acquired after facing the terrors of departure and emigration taught me that my eye can face up to a needle, when that eye is the only weapon I have.
*Mufti: a Muslim scholar who interprets the Sharia.
* When Muslims kill, they shout “Allahu akbar!”—”Allah is the greatest!”
5.
The Nat
ure of God in Islam
BEFORE WE CAN expose the true nature of an ogre, we have to examine the need that produced it, we have to explore, even if only briefly, the environmental circumstances which participated in its creation. When one examines the social, political, and economic situation of the Arabs before Islam that paved the way for its emergence, one can more easily understand the nature of God in Islam.
The people of that era were enveloped in fear, the fear of the unknown. The nature of arid desert life, which made predicting the next moment well nigh impossible, caused people who lived this life to fear what the next moment would bring. Of all human emotions, fear of the unknown is one of the most destructive to one’s intellectual and mental capacities. Those who experience this destructive emotion feel an urgent need for security, and are unable to live in the moment, because they are so afraid to face the unknowns they fear.
In the Arabian Desert people did not feel secure for so much as a single day. Raiding was the only way to stay alive and force was the law that governed this means of survival. Consequently, strong tribes raided and plundered their weaker neighbors.
The Arabs became famous for their linguistic knowledge and their ability to express themselves. Anyone who reads the poems, stories, and other works of literature written in that atmosphere charged with the fear of the unknown will realize the extent of that fear and the destructive influence it had on their productivity and creativity. They excelled only in boasting of their courage and daring. But this boasting of theirs was nothing more than a psychological defense mechanism of the kind which evolves in the unconscious to overcome the fear that has taken control of the conscious mind. When a person is fearful he hones his sword, and so the swords of the Arabs were keen, well-honed, and plentiful, both in reality and in their imagination, to the point of taking over every aspect of their lives.
It was in this environment charged with fear that Islam was born. It emerged as a natural response to the psychological need of the people of the Arabian Desert—that need which sought a greater power than that of the fear whose hostage they had become. And so they created an ogre inspired by their fear-ridden imagination, an ogre bigger than their fear, which had the power to enable them to confront everything that frightened them.
They gave this ogre complete power and allowed the ogre to use this to defy all the sources of their fear. They created this ogre, and then allowed it to create them. They grew to resemble it, then internalized it until they merged with it. To protect their ogre, they surrounded it with an iron fence and threatened to slit the throat of anyone who approached it. No one has been able to approach it since, on pain of death.
Ogres seemed to exist in every story I heard while I was growing up. I remember that when we were young and used to gather around my grandmother every evening, she would often tell us the story of the beautiful young girl who lived alone in a deserted cavern where she was visited every evening by a large ogre that used to bellow outside the cave: “Give me your hand so that I can suck the blood out of it or I’ll break it in half!” And the young girl would stretch out her hand through the entrance to the cave and it would suck as much blood as sufficed for its evening meal then leave her, only to come back the next day.
Ever since the day I escaped the clutches of our village ogre I have asked myself why my grandmother was so fond of that story that never seemed to have an ending, the ogre returning every day to prey on the young girl. Perhaps it represented life with my grandfather? Was that beautiful young girl a symbolic representation of my grandmother in the realms of her unconscious?
I can still remember the terror that gripped me when I heard that story. In an attempt to overcome my fears I used to imagine that my father, too, was a big ogre capable of defying the ogre that sucked the hand of the beautiful girl in my grandmother’s story. I regarded my father as the only force capable of protecting me, and it was inevitable that I should imagine him as being stronger than the ogre in my grandmother’s story, in order to ensure that he would be able to protect me should the ogre come to my room and ask to suck my hand. In my conscious and unconscious mind I had created another ogre, bigger than the one that threatened me, just to guarantee that I would be safe.
The inhabitants of the Arabian Desert could adapt to their fears only by resorting to the same psychological protective mechanism I had used. They proceeded to create an ogre bigger than their fears and capable of vanquishing every source of fear.
The inhabitants of the Arabian Desert bestowed on their new god ninety-nine attributes. Each beautiful attribute was borrowed from the books of the religions that preceded Islam, so as to establish his divine power, while the other attributes were bestowed upon him in order to distinguish him from other gods. His repugnant qualities are not to be found in other gods, while his good qualities were identical with those that preceding gods had displayed.
“The Harmer” is one of the attributes they have given to the God of Islam. Is it reasonable that God should cause harm? Yet this is an attribute which Muslims bestow on their god and take pride in, just as they take pride in describing him as “The Merciful” and “The Patient.” “The Subduer,” “The Compel-ler,” “The Imperious,” “The Humiliator,” “The Nourisher,” “The Bringer of Death,” “The Most High,” “The Avenger,” “The Protector”—all these are attributes they bestowed upon their ogre and subsequently internalized in an attempt to merge with their ideal.
Whenever I discuss the legitimacy and morality of these names with erudite Muslims I hear nothing but shouts and screams that within minutes turn the dialogue into a futile quarrel. They cannot confront the negativism of these attributes other than by a desperate attempt to justify them, but when they do this they make things worse. Muslims justify portraying God as “The Harmer” because they believe such a portrayal is necessary in order to strike fear into people’s hearts and prevent them from disobeying God’s commands. They say: “When a person believes in God’s ability to harm he will take care not to disobey him, so as to avoid being harmed by him.”
I once tried to find common ground on this very point with a Muslim reader from London, an Oxford University graduate with whom I conducted an extensive e-mail correspondence. She wrote to me on one occasion: “Can you deny that God is capable of causing harm? Could he not destroy the universe if he wanted to?” She continued: “What’s wrong with proclaiming his destructive powers? Isn’t this necessary in order to prevent people from crossing the line and disobeying his commands?”
I replied: “A father has the ability to harm his child when he disobeys him, but does he do so? Is that the proper way to educate our children not to overstep the boundaries we set for them?”
The Oxford graduate responded: “There’s no comparison! The difference between God’s power and that of a human being is much greater than the difference between a father’s and his son’s.”
I replied: “But shouldn’t God’s wisdom, mercy, and love far surpass the wisdom, mercy, and love of a father?”
The exchange turned into a fruitless quarrel at the end of which I heard only the e-mailed shouts of the Oxford graduate as she described me as a misguided unbeliever and apostate deserving only of being put to death.
When you teach a child the attributes of God and tell him that he is an avenger, a compeller, imperious, one who subdues, as well as one who nourishes, what have you done to him? You have helped create a vengeful, tyrannical, and overbearing person who also nourishes, but at what cost? For people see their God as their ideal, and strive both consciously and unconsciously to internalize him and merge with him. When we convince them that God is vengeful we justify their becoming vengeful, too. Human nature strives for union with its ideal, so what do you think happens when that ideal is God Himself?
Arguing with Muslims becomes more complicated when they try to persuade you that their God is also merciful, patient, and forbearing. I asked a Muslim doctor who specializes in psychiatry: “How can you persuade your son that
God is simultaneously merciful and vengeful? Doesn’t teaching this type of religious lesson contain a contradiction which splits the child’s personality and makes him feel more lost and confused?”
He replied: “No. I teach him that God is merciful with believers and vengeful toward unbelievers. I don’t see any contradiction in this.”
I asked again: “How do you teach your son to tell the difference between believers and unbelievers so that he’ll know with whom to be merciful and toward whom to be vengeful?”
He said, beaming: “A believer is one who believes in God, his Prophet, and the Day of Judgment and so forth.”
I inquired: “So when your son hijacks a civilian plane full of passengers, hurtles into a tower, and kills three thousand ‘unbelievers’ he won’t be doing anything outside the boundaries of what his God and ideal would do? Is that the way to distinguish between believers and unbelievers?”
The conversation ended with shouts and screams and turned into a futile argument that led only to my being accused of blas-phemy, apostasy, and sympathy for the enemies of God and his Prophet!
When one lives in an environment beset by the unknown and has difficulty in predicting what the next moment will bring, one is surrounded by fear which eventually results in an inability to act. Islam came into being as a response to this fear. Since people in that environment feared the unknown, Islam fought against probing the depths of anything unknown. Islam dealt with the problem by avoiding the source of the fear, not by preparing to tackle it. The Muslim is a frightened man, and the only way he can deal with his fear is to keep away from what causes it. Everything he distrusts frightens him, and everything he fears he avoids. His education has made him suspicious of everything unfamiliar to him, and this same education has deprived him of his ability to discover the truth about the things he distrusts.
