What Do You Think?

[dorahuegens]

This is a very interesting book that makes some very enlightening points about Islam and Muhammad. How the cult got started and why it is the way it is.

I really recommend everyone getting a copy of this book from the bookstore or downloading the pdf from any number of sites listed in a web search.

For everyone's convenience here is a google search link for the pdf file.

http://www.google.com/search?q=UNDERSTANDING_MUHAMMAD_By_Ali_Sina.pdf

I am going to post a few sections of the pdf to give everyone some idea what the book is about.

I may post other sections later . . . but the pdf is far easier to read and will have all the footnotes and references.

[dorahuegens]

Synopsis

Since September 11, 2001, there have been over 12,000 terrorist
attacks, resulting in the deaths and injury of hundreds of thousands of civilians, throughout the world. The perpetrators of these attacks were not monsters; they were Muslims, people who believed and acted in accordance with their faith.

There are millions more who think like them and are ready to do the same.

If you think Islamic terrorism is a new phenomenon, think again. Islam
owes its success to terrorism. Since the day Muhammad set foot in Medina, he started his campaign of terror. His followers have been doing the same since.

Muslims are intolerant, supremacist, bullies, and violent. They are
inflammable and can explode if contradicted or they are not treated
preferentially and with respect. At the same time, they abuse others and violate the rights of people of other faiths.

To understand Muslims, one must understand their prophet. Muslims worship and emulate Muhammad. Islam is Muhammadanism. Only by understanding him can one know what makes them tick.

Understanding Muhammad is a psychobiography of Allah’s Prophet.
It seeks to unveil the mystery of that man. Historians tell us Muhammad used to withdraw to a cave, spending days wrapped in his thoughts. He heard bells ringing and had ghostly visions. He thought he was demon possessed, until his wife reassured him he had become a prophet.

Convinced of his status, he was intolerant of those who rejected him, assassinated those who criticized him, raided, looted, and massacred entire populations. He reduced thousands to with a clear conscience and a sense of entitlement.

He was magnanimous toward those who admired him, but vengeful
toward those who did not. He believed he was the most perfect human creation and the universe's raison d'être. Muhammad was no ordinary man. He was a narcissist.

Understanding Muhammad, ventures beyond the stories. Focusing on
the "why" rather than the "what," it unravels the mystique of one of the most enigmatic and influential men in history.

Muhammad believed in his own cause. He was so certain of the reality
of his hallucinations that he expected everyone to believe too. He made his Allah indignantly ask “What! Do you then dispute with him [Muhammad] as to what he saw?” (Q.53:12) This is psychopathology. Why should others believe in what he saw? Isn't it up to him to prove what he saw was real? Only a narcissist expects others to believe in his claims without asking for evidence.

Muhammad was an orphan. Spurned by his mother in his infancy and
left in the care of a Bedouin couple, he had a loveless childhood. He then
passed to the care of his grandfather and uncle who took pity on him and spoiled him. Not receiving love at a time he needed unconditional love and not receiving discipline when he needed to learn about boundaries, he developed narcissistic personality disorder, a trait that made him a megalomaniac bereft of conscience. He fantasized about unlimited power, expected praise and admiration, believed he was special, and expected others to believe him and go along with his ideas and plans. He took advantage of others, was jealous, yet believed others were jealous of him, and was extremely hurt when rejected, even killing those who deserted him. He lied and deceived, feeling entitled and justified in doing so. All these are traits of narcissistic personality disorder.

Thanks to another mental illness, temporal lobe epilepsy, the prophet of
Islam had vivid hallucinations he interpreted as mystical and divine intimations.

When he claimed he heard voices, saw angels and other ghostly entities, he was not lying. He could not distinguish reality from fantasy.
Muhammad also suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, causing
his fixations on numbers, rituals and stringent rules. This explains why he lived such an austere life and why his religion is filled with so many absurd rules.

In the later years of his life Muhammad was affected by acromegaly, a
disease caused by excessive production of a growth hormone, resulting in large bones, cold and fleshy hands and feet and coarse facial features such as enlarged lips, nose and tongue. Acromegaly occurs after the age of 40 and usually kills the patient in his early 60s. It causes erectile dysfunction (impotence). On the other hand temporal lobe hyper activism increases libido. This explains Muhammad's sexual vagaries in his old age and why in the later years of his life he had such an insatiable craving for sex. He would visit all his 9 wives in one night to touch and fondle them, without being satisfied. His impotence explains his insecurity, paranoia, and intense jealousy of his young wives. He ordered them to cover themselves, lest other men would cast a lusting eye on them.

Today, half a billion Muslim women veil themselves, because Muhammad was impotent. Muhammad's illnesses explain a lot of mysteries of Islam.
The combination of all these psychological disorders and his unusual
physiognomy made Muhammad a phenomenon that set him apart from ordinary people. His uneducated followers interpreted his differences as signs of his prophethood. Like devotees of all cults, they rose to champion his cause with dedication. By defying death and butchering others they made Islam the world's second largest religion, now the biggest threat to world peace and the survival of human civilization.

Why is it important to know Muhammad? Because over a billion
people try to be like him and do as he did. Consequently, the insanity of one man is bequeathed to all his followers. It is by understanding him that we can see through them, and be able to predict these unpredictable people.

We live in a dangerous time. When a fifth of humanity worships a
psychopath, eulogizes suicide bombing and thinks killing and martyrdom are ultimate acts of piety, the world becomes a dangerous place. When these people acquire atomic bomb, the earth becomes a powder keg.
Islam is a cult. It is time to wake up and realize that this cult is a threat
to mankind and there can be no co-existence with Muslims. As long as Muslims believe in Muhammad, they are a threat to others and to themselves. Muslims must either leave Islam, discard their culture of hate and join the rest of mankind as fellow humans, or non-Muslims must separate themselves from them, ban Islam, end the immigration of Muslims and send home those who plot against democracy and refuse to integrate.

Islam is incompatible with democracy. It is a warring creed that uses
democracy to destroy it and to establish itself as a world wide dictatorship.

The only way to avert the clash between this barbarity and civilization, and a world disaster, is to expose the fallacy of Islam and demystify it.

Muslims must be weaned from Islam for humanity to live in peace.
Understanding Muhammad is imperative for both Muslims and non-
Muslims. This book makes that task easy.

[dorahuegens]

Introduction


After the 9/11 attack on America, a distraught American mother told me that her son, aged 23, had converted to Islam at 14. He had married a Muslim woman whom he had never seen before in an arranged marriage by his Imam (Islamic cleric), and now, with a baby, he wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban killing American soldiers and become a “martyr.” She also said that a few years earlier he told her that once Islam takes over America, he would not hesitate to behead her, should the order come to slay the unbelievers.

****

Samaira Nazir, a bright and well educated 25-year-old British national of
Pakistani descent was stabbed to death. Her throat was slashed by her thirty – year-old brother and her seventeen-year-old cousin at her parents’ home.

Samaira had dishonored her family by falling in love with an Afghan man they thought was of lower caste and had rejected suitors lined up to meet her in Pakistan. In April 2005 she was summoned to the family home and ambushed by everyone. A neighbor witnessed seeing her trying to escape while her father grabbed her by the hair, pulled her back into the house and slammed the door.

She was heard screaming, “You are not my mother anymore!” which indicates that her mother was also involved in her cold-blooded murder.

Her nieces, aged two and four were made to watch the whole proceeding as the neighbors heard them screaming. The amount of blood on the children suggested that they were only feet from the attack. The family was educated and well to do.

****

Muhammad Ali al-Ayed, a 23-year-old Saudi millionaire's son living in
America, one August evening, in 2003, called Sellouk, his old Jewish Moroccan friend and suggested they get together. The two had drinks at a bar before going to Al-Ayed’s apartment about midnight. There he took a knife, stabbed and nearly decapitated his friend. Al-Ayed’s roommate told police the two “were not arguing” before Al-Ayed killed Sellouk. The reason for this cold-blooded murder was “religious differences,” said Ayed's attorney.

****

Mohammad Taheri-azar was a 25-year-old Iranian graduate from the
University of North Carolina. One day in March 2006, he rented a SUV and
drove it slowly onto the campus. Then he suddenly accelerated into the college crowd with the intent to kill as many people as he could. He hit nine people and injured six of them.

****

Sanao Menghwar and his wife, a Hindu couple residing in Karachi,
Pakistan, were traumatized one November evening in 2005, when upon
returning from work they discovered that all their three daughters were missing.

After two days of futile searching, they found out that their daughters had been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. The police arrested three Muslim youths in connection with the crime, who were later granted bail by a court because they were minors. The girls remain missing.

“Kidnapping Hindu girls like this has become a normal practice. The
girls are then forced to sign stamped papers stating that they’ve become
Muslims,” says Laljee, a Hindu resident of Karachi. “Hindus here are too
frightened to vent their anger — they fear victimization,” he added.
Many Hindu girls meet similar fates in Pakistan. They are abducted,
forced to convert to Islam and forced to marry a Muslim man while their parents are denied the right to see or talk to them. “How can a Muslim girl live and maintain contact with kafirs (infidels)?” remarked Maulvi Aziz, the cleric representing a Muslim kidnapper in another case that was taken to the court.

When a Hindu girl is converted to Islam, hundreds of Muslims take to the
streets and chant religious slogans. The cries of the parents fall on the deaf ears of authorities. The unfortunate girls are then threatened that if they recant Islam they will be executed as apostates. Often lawyers avoid taking up these cases, fearing a backlash from the extremists.

****

In October 2005, three girls were walking through a Cocoa plantation
near the city of Poso in Indonesia. The girls attended a private Christian school.

They were attacked and beheaded by a group of Muslims. Police said the heads were found some distance from the bodies and one of the heads was left outside a church. The Muslim militants have targeted central Sulawesi Province and believe that it could be turned into the foundation stone of an Islamic state. In 2001 and 2002, Muslims attacked the Christians in that province. The fighting drew Islamic militants from all over Indonesia and resulted in the death of more than 1,000 Christians.

****

Muriel Degauque was a 38-year-old Belgian woman who, according to a
neighbor who knew her since childhood, was an “absolutely normal” little girl who liked to go for sled rides when it snowed. She converted to Islam when she married a Muslim man. Later she traveled with her husband through Syria to Iraq, where she blew herself up in an attack on an Iraqi police patrol on November 9, 2005. Five policemen were killed outright and a sixth officer and four civilians were seriously injured.

****

These acts are insane, yet none of the perpetrators were insane. They
were “absolutely normal” people. What motivated them to commit these
heinous crimes? The answer is Islam. Such occurrences are daily events in the Islamic world. Everywhere Muslims are busy killing people for what they believe.


Why? What makes sane people commit such evil? Why are Muslims, as
a lot, so angry with others, so at war with the world that they are often quick to resort to violence? Millions of Muslims riot, protest, and kill completely innocent people anytime, anywhere, when someone says something about Muhammad. This kind of behavior is not rational. Yet the perpetrators are completely sane people. How can we explain this paradox?

To understand this we must understand that Muslims are expected to be
like, and to think like, their prophet. As such, their attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and actions come to reflect his personality and mind. Since Muhammad is the model for all that is righteous in Islam, it is expected that his followers emulate him in every way. The result of this is that Muslims, as a whole, by virtue of taking on the life of Muhammad, leave behind their own, forsaking their humanity and to a large degree, their individuality. As they come to inhabit the narcissistic bubble universe of their prophet, and to the extent that they follow his examples, they become extensions of him. Muslims are twigs from the tree of Islam and the root of that tree is Muhammad. They share his character, his
attitude and his mindset. You could say each Muslim is a mini Muhammad of a sort. To them, he is the best part of creation, the most perfect human being and the example to follow. They believe that if he did something, no matter how egregious, that must be the right thing. No question is asked and no value judgment is allowed.

As a subject, Muhammad is one very few like to engage. Muslims get
offended if anyone slights their prophet. Any comment, no matter how
innocuous, can elicit opprobrium. Though they may allow you to criticize his followers, they do not tolerate any criticism of the prophet himself.

You can criticize Allah and get away with it, but you can’t criticize Muhammad.

It is not possible to make a thorough evaluation of the psychological
profile of someone centuries after his death. However, our goal is not to
prescribe medication but to get a better insight of the prophet of Islam.

There is a wealth of information about the details of the life of Muhammad and his sayings that are recorded meticulously. Many of these accounts are embellished by exaggeration and are full of hyperbole. It is to be expected that believers would elevate the status of their prophet, falsely attribute miracles to him and make him look saintly. In the biography of Muhammad, however, we also find thousands of accounts that do not portray him as a holy man, but rather, depict him as vile, ruthless, cunning, and even as a sexual pervert. There is no reason
to believe these stories are false. It is not characteristic of believers to portray their prophet as a villain. So if such stories exist, narrated by his companions, those who believed in him and loved him, in such a large numbers, it is likely that they are true.

Traditions that are diffusely recurrent are called mutawattir. These
traditions have come down to later generations through a large number of chains of narrations, involving diverse transmitters. It is virtually impossible that all these people, living in different localities and espousing (at times radically) different views, would come together, to fabricate the exact same lie and attribute it to their prophet.

Availing ourselves of these stories, called hadith, and the Qur’an, a book
believed by every Muslim to be the verbatim word of God, we shall peer into Muhammad’s mind, as we try to understand him and to figure out why he did what he did. I will quote the opinions and theories of various psychologists and psychiatrists, and compare what Muhammad did with what these experts of the mind say. The sources I quote are all experts in psychopathology. What they say is accepted as commonsense and is shared by the majority of professionals in their field.

This book is not so much intended to be psychoanalysis of a man who
lived 1400 years ago as it is an attempt to unravel his mystique.

Muhammad is an enigma to many and particularly to his followers who accept the myth, and embrace the image, while refusing to see past it. His conduct was ungodly, yet he gave all indications that he truly believed in his cause. How could such a man, so vengeful, so ruthless, and so depraved, have such charisma as to leave spellbound not only his companions, but billions of people for so many centuries?

Michael Hart, in his book, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential
Persons in History, places Muhammad at the very top of his list, followed by Isaac Newton, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Confucius and St. Paul. Hart’s list does not take into consideration whether the influences these people exerted were positive or negative. In his list are also tyrants, such as Adolph Hitler, Mao Ze Dong and Joseph Stalin. The list even includes Niccolò Machiavelli. How could a man like Muhammad, so devoid of humanity, become the most influential person in history? As this book attempts to show, the answer to this question has more to do with human psyche than it does with Muhammad.

There is no other cause for which more blood has been shed than Islam.
According to some historians, in India alone, more than 80 million people were massacred by the sword of Islam. Millions were killed in Persia, Egypt and in all other countries that were attacked by marauding Muslims, both during their conquests and in the centuries that followed.

These bloodsheds continue today.

Muslims often brag, “We love death more than you love life.” They have
proven it in thousands of terrorist attacks in recent years. How can one man have so much influence over so many people, even to cheerfully die for him and not hesitate to sacrifice their own children in his cause? Why nine out of ten ongoing conflicts worldwide involve Muslims, who comprise only one fifth of humanity? Taken as a statistical average, this means that Muslims, as a group, are a whopping 36 times more likely to resort to violence for conflict resolution than the rest of humanity. How can this be?

This book presents two theses. The first is that Muhammad suffered from
narcissistic personality disorder. The second is that he was affected by temporal lobe epilepsy. He had other mental disorders as well, but these two conditions of personality and brain explain the entire phenomenon known as Muhammad.

This book proves with overwhelming evidence that Muhammad was mentally disturbed. Though he believed in his cause and was sincere in his claim, he could not differentiate the imaginary from the real. His contemporaries and those who knew him better, called him majnoon (lunatic, crazy, possessed by jinns). They unfortunately succumbed to his brute force and their voices of sanity were silenced. New discoveries of the human brain have finally vindicated them. But we should keep in mind, a narcissist is fully aware he is lying and despite that he is the first to believe in his own lies.

There are several books in the market critical of Muhammad that give the
account of his violence and perverse character, however few of them explain what went in his mind. This book aims to do just that.

Although this book is not addressed to Muslims, it is mainly for them I
have written it. As a Persian proverb says, I talk to the door so the wall can hear. Enough has been said about Muhammad being a looter, a mass murderer, a marauding gangster, a pedophile, an assassin, a lustful womanizer, and what not. Muslims hear all that, and continue believing in him without blinking.

Oddly, some of them even claim that after they read my articles on the Internet, their “faith in Islam grew.” They have accepted Muhammad as a superior being and the “Mercy of God among mankind.” They do not judge him by the standards of human morality and conscience. On the contrary, they believe that it was he who set the standards. For them, right and wrong, good and evil are not determined by the Golden Rule, a concept that is alien to the Muslim psyche, but by halal (permitted) and haram (forbidden), wanton religious values that have no basis in logic, ethics, or morality. Muslims are genuinely incapable of questioning Islam.

They dismiss every doubt and consider things that are incomprehensible as “tests.” To pass this test and to prove their faith, all they have to do is believe in every nonsense and absurdity unquestioningly.

[dorahuegens]

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if you have read this far you will probably be curious what all is covered in the book. here is a copy of the content titles to give you an idea.


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Contents


Synopsis
Acknowledgement
Preface
About the Author
Introduction

Chapter 1
Who was Muhammad?
The Birth and Childhood of Muhammad
Marriage to Khadijah
Mystic Experience
The Myth of Persecution
Immigration to Medina
Divide and Rule
Promise of Heavenly Rewards
Incite to Violence
Raids
Rape
Torture
Assassination
Genocide
Invasion of Banu Qainuqa’
Invasion of Banu Nadir
Invasion of Banu Quraiza
Taqiyyah: the Holy Deception

Chapter 2
Muhammad’s Personality Profile
What is Narcissism
The Cult of the Narcissist
The Cause of the Narcissist
The Legacy of the Narcissist
Narcissist Wants to be God
What Causes Narcissism?
Khadijah’s Influence on Muhammad
Muhammad’s Belief in His Own Cause
Did the Meccans Call Muhammad Honest?
More on the Policy of Divide and Rule
A Comparison between Islam and the Cult of the
Narcissist
Muhammad’s Sacred Secretions

Chapter 3
Muhammad’s Ecstatic Experiences
Suicidal Thoughts
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
The Symptoms of Temporal Lobe Seizure
Other Symptoms of TLE
The Heavenly Night Journey
Muhammad Was Telling the Truth
The Origin of Muhammad’s Mystical Experiences
Brain Stimulation Creates Shadow Person
Camel Kneeling Under the Power of Revelation
The Case of Phil K. Dick
Other Cases of TLE
Other Famous People with Epilepsy
Sexuality, Religious Experience and Temporal Lobe
Hyperactivation
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Schizophrenia
Bipolar Disorder
The Mystery of Cave Hira

Chapter 4
Muhammad’s Physical Ailment

Chapter 5
Muhammad and his Cult
The Harder the Better
A Few Famous Narcissist Cult Leaders
Jim Jones
David Koresh
Order of the Solar Temple
Heaven's Gate
Charles Manson
Joseph Kony
The Power of the Big Lie
Use of Violence
He Frowned
Why Did Everyone Praise Muhammad?

Chapter 6
When Sane People Follow Insane People
Absolute Obedience
Death as the Proof of Faith
Punishment and Coercion
Elimination of Dissension
Inconsistencies
Destruction of Family Ties
The Power of Persuasion
Claims of Grandiosity
Claim to Secret Knowledge
Performing Miracles
Distrust of Outsiders and Self –Blame
Self Justification
Isolationism
Gradual Absorption
Demanding the Ultimate Sacrifice
Overwhelming Believers
Control of Information

Chapter 7
Ripples and Effects
The Socio-Political Factor
Dialogue Between Civilizations?
Where Are We Headed?


= == = = = == =

For everyone's convenience here is a google search link for the pdf file.

http://www.google.com/search?q=UNDERSTANDING_MUHAMMAD_By_Ali_Sina.pdf

[dorahuegens]

Introduction

After the 9/11 attack on America, a distraught American mother told me that her son, aged 23, had converted to Islam at 14. He had married a Muslim woman whom he had never seen before in an arranged marriage by his Imam (Islamic cleric), and now, with a baby, he wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban killing American soldiers and become a “martyr.” She also said that a few years earlier he told her that once Islam takes over America, he would not hesitate to behead her, should the order come to slay the unbelievers.


****

Samaira Nazir, a bright and well educated 25-year-old British national of
Pakistani descent was stabbed to death. Her throat was slashed by her thirty – year-old brother and her seventeen-year-old cousin at her parents’ home. Samaira had dishonored her family by falling in love with an Afghan man they thought was of lower caste and had rejected suitors lined up to meet her in Pakistan. In April 2005 she was summoned to the family home and ambushed by everyone. A neighbor witnessed seeing her trying to escape while her father grabbed her by the hair, pulled her back into the house and slammed the door.

She was heard screaming, “You are not my mother anymore!” which indicates that her mother was also involved in her cold-blooded murder. Her nieces, aged two and four were made to watch the whole proceeding as the neighbors heard them screaming. The amount of blood on the children suggested that they were only feet from the attack. The family was educated and well to do.

****

Muhammad Ali al-Ayed, a 23-year-old Saudi millionaire's son living in
America, one August evening, in 2003, called Sellouk, his old Jewish Moroccan friend and suggested they get together. The two had drinks at a bar before going to Al-Ayed’s apartment about midnight. There he took a knife, stabbed and nearly decapitated his friend. Al-Ayed’s roommate told police the two “were not arguing” before Al-Ayed killed Sellouk. The reason for this cold-blooded murder was “religious differences,” said Ayed's attorney.

****

Mohammad Taheri-azar was a 25-year-old Iranian graduate from the
University of North Carolina. One day in March 2006, he rented a SUV and
drove it slowly onto the campus. Then he suddenly accelerated into the college crowd with the intent to kill as many people as he could. He hit nine people and injured six of them.

****

Sanao Menghwar and his wife, a Hindu couple residing in Karachi, Pakistan, were traumatized one November evening in 2005, when upon
returning from work they discovered that all their three daughters were missing.

After two days of futile searching, they found out that their daughters had been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. The police arrested three Muslim youths in connection with the crime, who were later granted bail by a court because they were minors. The girls remain missing.

“Kidnapping Hindu girls like this has become a normal practice. The
girls are then forced to sign stamped papers stating that they’ve become
Muslims,” says Laljee, a Hindu resident of Karachi. “Hindus here are too
frightened to vent their anger — they fear victimization,” he added.

Many Hindu girls meet similar fates in Pakistan. They are abducted,
forced to convert to Islam and forced to marry a Muslim man while their parents are denied the right to see or talk to them. “How can a Muslim girl live and maintain contact with kafirs (infidels)?” remarked Maulvi Aziz, the cleric representing a Muslim kidnapper in another case that was taken to the court.

When a Hindu girl is converted to Islam, hundreds of Muslims take to the
streets and chant religious slogans. The cries of the parents fall on the deaf ears of authorities. The unfortunate girls are then threatened that if they recant Islam they will be executed as apostates. Often lawyers avoid taking up these cases, fearing a backlash from the extremists.

****

In October 2005, three girls were walking through a Cocoa plantation
near the city of Poso in Indonesia. The girls attended a private Christian school.

They were attacked and beheaded by a group of Muslims. Police said the heads were found some distance from the bodies and one of the heads was left outside a church. The Muslim militants have targeted central Sulawesi Province and believe that it could be turned into the foundation stone of an Islamic state. In 2001 and 2002, Muslims attacked the Christians in that province. The fighting drew Islamic militants from all over Indonesia and resulted in the death of more than 1,000 Christians.

****

Muriel Degauque was a 38-year-old Belgian woman who, according to a
neighbor who knew her since childhood, was an “absolutely normal” little girl who liked to go for sled rides when it snowed. She converted to Islam when she married a Muslim man. Later she traveled with her husband through Syria to Iraq, where she blew herself up in an attack on an Iraqi police patrol on November 9, 2005. Five policemen were killed outright and a sixth officer and four civilians were seriously injured.

****

These acts are insane, yet none of the perpetrators were insane. They
were “absolutely normal” people. What motivated them to commit these
heinous crimes? The answer is Islam. Such occurrences are daily events in the Islamic world. Everywhere Muslims are busy killing people for what they believe.

Why? What makes sane people commit such evil? Why are Muslims, as
a lot, so angry with others, so at war with the world that they are often quick to resort to violence? Millions of Muslims riot, protest, and kill completely innocent people anytime, anywhere, when someone says something about Muhammad. This kind of behavior is not rational. Yet the perpetrators are completely sane people. How can we explain this paradox?

[dorahuegens]

Understanding Muhammad


To understand this we must understand that Muslims are expected to be
like, and to think like, their prophet. As such, their attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and actions come to reflect his personality and mind. Since Muhammad is the model for all that is righteous in Islam, it is expected that his followers emulate him in every way. The result of this is that Muslims, as a whole, by virtue of taking on the life of Muhammad, leave behind their own, forsaking their humanity and to a large degree, their individuality. As they come to inhabit the narcissistic bubble universe of their prophet, and to the extent that they follow his examples, they become extensions of him. Muslims are twigs from the tree of Islam and the root of that tree is Muhammad. They share his character, his
attitude and his mindset. You could say each Muslim is a mini Muhammad of a sort. To them, he is the best part of creation, the most perfect human being and the example to follow. They believe that if he did something, no matter how egregious, that must be the right thing. No question is asked and no value judgment is allowed.

As a subject, Muhammad is one very few like to engage. Muslims get
offended if anyone slights their prophet. Any comment, no matter how
innocuous, can elicit opprobrium. Though they may allow you to criticize his followers, they do not tolerate any criticism of the prophet himself.

You can criticize Allah and get away with it, but you can’t criticize Muhammad.

It is not possible to make a thorough evaluation of the psychological
profile of someone centuries after his death. However, our goal is not to
prescribe medication but to get a better insight of the prophet of Islam.

There is a wealth of information about the details of the life of Muhammad and his sayings that are recorded meticulously. Many of these accounts are embellished by exaggeration and are full of hyperbole. It is to be expected that believers would elevate the status of their prophet, falsely attribute miracles to him and make him look saintly. In the biography of Muhammad, however, we also find thousands of accounts that do not portray him as a holy man, but rather, depict him as vile, ruthless, cunning, and even as a sexual pervert. There is no reason to believe these stories are false. It is not characteristic of believers to portray their prophet as a villain. So if such stories exist, narrated by his companions,
those who believed in him and loved him, in such a large numbers, it is likely that they are true.

Traditions that are diffusely recurrent are called mutawattir. These traditions have come down to later generations through a large number of chains of narrations, involving diverse transmitters. It is virtually possible that all these people, living in different localities and espousing (at times radically) different views, would come together, to fabricate the exact same lie and attribute it to their prophet.

Availing ourselves of these stories, called hadith, and the Qur’an, a book
believed by every Muslim to be the verbatim word of God, we shall peer into Muhammad’s mind, as we try to understand him and to figure out why he did what he did. I will quote the opinions and theories of various psychologists and psychiatrists, and compare what Muhammad did with what these experts of the mind say. The sources I quote are all experts in psychopathology. What they say is accepted as commonsense and is shared by the majority of professionals in their field.

This book is not so much intended to be psychoanalysis of a man who
lived 1400 years ago as it is an attempt to unravel his mystique. Muhammad is an enigma to many and particularly to his followers who accept the myth, and embrace the image, while refusing to see past it. His conduct was ungodly, yet he gave all indications that he truly believed in his cause. How could such a man, so vengeful, so ruthless, and so depraved, have such charisma as to leave spellbound not only his companions, but billions of people for so many centuries?

Michael Hart, in his book, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, places Muhammad at the very top of his list, followed by Isaac Newton, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Confucius and St. Paul. Hart’s list does not take into consideration whether the influences these people exerted were positive or negative. In his list are also tyrants, such as Adolph Hitler, Mao Ze Dong and Joseph Stalin. The list even includes Niccolò Machiavelli. How could a man like Muhammad, so devoid of humanity, become the most influential person in history? As this book attempts to show, the answer to this question has more to do with human psyche than it does with Muhammad.

There is no other cause for which more blood has been shed than Islam.

According to some historians, in India alone, more than 80 million people were massacred by the sword of Islam. Millions were killed in Persia, Egypt and in all other countries that were attacked by marauding Muslims, both during their conquests and in the centuries that followed. These loodsheds continue today.

Muslims often brag, “We love death more than you love life.” They have proven it in thousands of terrorist attacks in recent years. How can one man have so much influence over so many people, even to cheerfully die for him and not hesitate to sacrifice their own children in his cause? Why nine out of ten ongoing conflicts worldwide involve Muslims, who comprise only one fifth of humanity? Taken as a statistical average, this means that Muslims, as a group, are a whopping 36 times more likely to resort to violence for conflict resolution than the rest of humanity. How can this be?

This book presents two theses. The first is that Muhammad suffered from narcissistic personality disorder. The second is that he was affected by temporal lobe epilepsy. He had other mental disorders as well, but these two conditions of personality and brain explain the entire phenomenon known as Muhammad.

This book proves with overwhelming evidence that Muhammad was mentally disturbed. Though he believed in his cause and was sincere in his claim, he could not differentiate the imaginary from the real. His contemporaries and those who knew him better, called him majnoon (lunatic, crazy, possessed by jinns). They unfortunately succumbed to his brute force and their voices of sanity were silenced. New discoveries of the human brain have finally vindicated them. But we should keep in mind, a narcissist is fully aware he is lying and despite that he is the first to believe in his own lies.

There are several books in the market critical of Muhammad that give the account of his violence and perverse character, however few of them explain what went in his mind. This book aims to do just that.

Although this book is not addressed to Muslims, it is mainly for them I have written it. As a Persian proverb says, I talk to the door so the wall can hear. Enough has been said about Muhammad being a looter, a mass murderer, a marauding gangster, a pedophile, an assassin, a lustful womanizer, and what not. Muslims hear all that, and continue believing in him without blinking.

Oddly, some of them even claim that after they read my articles on the Internet, their “faith in Islam grew.” They have accepted Muhammad as a superior being and the “Mercy of God among mankind.” They do not judge him by the standards of human morality and conscience. On the contrary, they believe that it was he who set the standards. For them, right and wrong, good and evil are not determined by the Golden Rule, a concept that is alien to the Muslim psyche, but by halal (permitted) and haram (forbidden), wanton religious values that have no basis in logic, ethics, or morality. Muslims are genuinely incapable of questioning Islam.

They dismiss every doubt and consider things that are incomprehensible as “tests.” To pass this test and to prove their faith, all they have to do is believe in every nonsense and absurdity unquestioningly.