Date: 20 Mar 2010
g 60 Understanding Muhammad It is through understanding the psychology of Muhammad, the ruthlessness and situational ethics so essential to his character, that we begin to understand why Muslims are so intolerant, so violent, and so paranoid. Why they see themselves as victims when they are the aggressors and the victimizors! What is Narcissism? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) as “an all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts.” (reference 80, p. 61) In translation, a narcissistic person typically is someone who obsessively seeks self-gratification, domination, and ambition. They tend to exaggerate their skills, talents and accomplishments. Narcissists are pathological liars. They will look you right in the eye, swear to God, and tell you the biggest lie you've ever heard. They will say they're not going to do something, while plotting to do that very thing. The third and fourth editions of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM) of 1980 and 1994 and the European ICD-10 describe NPD in identical language: An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts. Five (or more) of the following criteria must be met: 1. Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements) 2. Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, allconquering love or passion Muhammad’s Personality Profile 61 3. Is firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special, unique, or high-status people (or institutions) 4. Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation, or failing that, wishes to be feared and notorious (narcissistic supply) 5. Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or her expectations 6. Is “interpersonally exploitative”, i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends 7. Is devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others 8. Is constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her 9. Is arrogant, has haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted 80 All these traits were confirmed in Muhammad. Apart from thinking he was the anointed messenger of God and the Seal of the Prophets, (Q.33:40) Muhammad regarded himself as Khayru-l-Khalq “Best of Creation,” an “excellent example,” (Q.33:21) and explicitly or implicitly hinted to be “exalted above other prophets in degrees.” (Q.2:253) He claimed to be “the preferred one,” (Q.17:55) to have been sent as a “Mercy to the worlds,” (Q.21:107) to have been risen “to a praised estate,” (Q.17:79) a station which he said none but he would receive and this is the Station of Intercession at the right hand of the Almighty next to his Glorious Throne. In other words, he would be the person who would advise God as to who should he sent to Hell and who should be admitted to Heaven. These are just some of Muhammad’s megalomaniac claims about his own lofty station, reported in the Qur’an. The following two verses express vividly Muhammad’s sense of self importance and grandiosity. 80 The language in the criteria above is based on or summarized from: American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition (DSM IV). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. Sam Vaknin. (1999). Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited, first edition. Prague and Skopje: Narcissus Publication. ("Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" http://www.geocities.com/vaksam/faq1.html ) 62 Understanding Muhammad Truly, Allâh and His angels send praise and blessings [forever] upon the Prophet. O you who believe! Praise and bless the Prophet with utmost laud and blessing. (Q.33:56) In order that you (O men) may believe in Allâh and His Messenger, that you may assist and honor Him, and celebrate His praise morning and evening. (Q.48:9) He was so impressed with himself, that put the following words in the mouth of his sock puppet deity: “And you (stand) on an exalted standard of character” (Q.68:4) and are “a lamp with spreading light.” (Q.33:46) Ibn Sa’d reports Muhammad saying: “Among all the people of the world God chose the Arabs. From among the Arabs he chose the Kinana. From Kinana he chose the Quraish (the tribe of Muhammad). From the Quraish he chose Bani Hashim (his clan). And from Bani Hashim he chose me.”81 The following are some of the claims Muhammad made about himself in the hadith. • The very first thing that Allâh Almighty ever created was my soul. • First of all things, the Lord created my mind. • I am from Allâh, and the believers are from me.82 • Just as Allâh created me noble, he also gave me noble characters. • Were it not for you, [O Muhammad] I would not have created the universe. 83 Compare that to the words of Jesus, who when someone called him “good master,” he objected and said, “Why do you call me good? No one 81 Tabaqat V. 1 p. 2 82 http://www.muhammadanreality.com/creationofmuhammadanreality.htm 83 Tabaqat V. 1, p. 364 Muhammad’s Personality Profile 63 is good—except God alone.”84 Only a pathological narcissist can be so cut off from reality to claim the universe was created because of him. To an average person, a narcissist may seem to be quite selfconfident and accomplished. In reality he or she suffers from a great deficit of self-esteem and needs an outside supply of adulation, admiration, and greatness. Dr. Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self-Love. He claims to be a narcissist himself and perhaps because of that, can be regarded as an authority on the subject. Vaknin explains: Everyone is a narcissist, to varying degrees. Narcissism is a healthy phenomenon. It helps survival. The difference between healthy and pathological narcissism is, indeed, in measure. Pathological narcissism… is characterized by extreme lack of empathy. The narcissist regards and treats other people as objects to be exploited. He uses them to obtain narcissistic supply. He believes that he is entitled to special treatment because he harbors these grandiose fantasies about himself. The narcissist is NOT selfaware. His cognition and emotions are distorted… The narcissist lies to himself and to others, projecting ‘untouchability,’ emotional immunity and invincibility... For a narcissist everything is bigger than life. If he is polite, then he is aggressively so. His promises are outlandish, his criticism violent and ominous, his generosity inane. … The narcissist is a master of disguise. He is a charmer, a talented actor, a magician and a director of both himself and his milieu. It is very difficult to expose him as such in the first encounter. 85 The Cult of the Narcissist The narcissist needs admirers. He draws an imaginary circle around himself, where he is the center. He gathers his fans and followers in that circle, rewards them and encourages their sycophantism. Those who fall outside the circle, he views as his enemies. Vaknin explains: The narcissist is the guru at the center of a cult. Like other gurus, he demands complete obedience from his flock: his spouse, his offspring, other 84 Mark 10:18 85 healthyplace.com/Communities/Personality_Disorders/Site/Transcripts/narcissism.htm 64 Understanding Muhammad family members, friends, and colleagues. He feels entitled to adulation and special treatment by his followers. He punishes the wayward and the straying lambs. He enforces discipline, adherence to his teachings, and common goals. The less accomplished he is in reality – the more stringent his mastery and the more pervasive the brainwashing. The narcissist's control is based on ambiguity, unpredictability, fuzziness, and ambient abuse.86 His ever-shifting whims exclusively define right versus wrong, desirable and unwanted, what is to be pursued and what to be avoided. He alone determines the rights and obligations of his disciples and alters them at will. The narcissist is a micro-manager. He exerts control over the minutest details and behaviors. He punishes severely and abuses withholders of information and those who fail to conform to his wishes and goals. The narcissist does not respect the boundaries and privacy of his reluctant adherents. He ignores their wishes and treats them as objects or instruments of gratification. He seeks to control both situations and people compulsively. He strongly disapproves of others' personal autonomy and independence. Even innocuous activities, such as meeting a friend or visiting one's family require his permission. Gradually, he isolates his nearest and dearest until they are fully dependent on him emotionally, sexually, financially, and socially. “He acts in a patronizing and condescending manner and criticizes often. He alternates between emphasizing the minutest faults (devalues) and exaggerating the talents, traits, and skills (idealizes) of the members of his 86 Ambient abuse is stealthy, subtle, undercurrents of mistreatment that sometimes go unnoticed even by the victims themselves, until it is too late. Ambient abuse penetrates and permeates everything – but is difficult to pinpoint and identify. It is ambiguous, atmospheric, and diffuse. Hence it has insidious and pernicious effects. It is by far the most dangerous kind of abuse there is. It is the outcome of fear – fear of violence, fear of the unknown, fear of the unpredictable, the capricious, and the arbitrary. It is perpetrated by dropping subtle hints, by disorienting, by constant – and unnecessary – lying, by persistent doubting and demeaning, and by inspiring an air of unmitigated gloom and doom ("gaslighting"). Muhammad’s Personality Profile 65 cult. He is wildly unrealistic in his expectations, which legitimizes his subsequent abusive conduct. 87 Muhammad invented a big lie that his adherents believe to be the absolute truth. The danger is that they, like the believers of Hitler’s lies, are willing participants. In the previous chapter, where we read the introduction to Muhammad, we saw how he separated his followers from their families and the level of control he exerted over their private lives. The situation has not changed much after 1,400 years. I have received many heartbreaking stories from parents who told me their daughter or son converted to Islam and is now surrounded by Muslims who have persuaded them not to visit their parents. The Cause of the Narcissist The Narcissist knows that direct self-promotion will be seen as repulsive and will be rejected. Instead, he presents himself as a modest, almost self-effacing person, one in the service of God, humanity or the cause, whatever the case may be. Behind this facade is however, a clear stratagem. The narcissist “bestows” to his followers a CAUSE, one so great, so august that they cannot do without. Through hype and manipulation, this cause becomes more important than the lives of the people who would be believers. So brainwashed do they become that they are willing to die, and, of course, kill for it. The narcissist encourages sacrifice – the more, the better. Then he presents himself as the axis of that cause. The cause revolves around him. It’s he, alone, who can make it happen and lead the followers to that Promised Land. This colossal cause can't exist without the narcissist. He therefore becomes the most important person in the world. That is how the narcissist cult leader manipulates his followers. The cause is just a means to their personal end. It could be anything. For Jim Jones, the man who led 911 people to their mass suicide in Guyana, “social justice” was the cause, and he was the messiah of that cause. Hitler chose social nationalism as his cause. He did not openly glorify himself, but rather the cause of Aryanism and the superiority of 87 http://samvak.tripod.com/journal79.html 66 Understanding Muhammad Germany. He, of course, was the indispensable inspirer and fuehrer of that cause. For Stalin the cause was communism. Anyone who disagreed with him was against the proletariat and had to be killed. Muhammad did not ask his followers to worship him. In fact he claimed to be “only a messenger.” Instead he demanded obedience, by adroitly calling his followers to obey “Allâh and his messenger.” In one Qur’anic verse, he puts the following words into the mouth of his Allâh: They ask you about the windfall (spoils of war). Say: The windfalls are for Allâh and the Messenger. So be careful of (your duty to) Allâh and set aright matters of your difference, and obey Allâh and His Messenger if you are believers. (Q.8:1) Since Allâh had no use for things stolen from a bunch of Arabs, all those spoils automatically had to go to his proxy, his messenger. Since no one could see or hear Allâh, all the obedience was to Muhammad. It was he who had to be feared because he was the only intermediary of this most fearsome god of whom he was warning people. Allâh was necessary for Muhammad to dominate. Without the belief in Allâh, would his foolhardy followers sacrifice their lives, kill people, including their own relatives, loot people, and hand everything over to him? This imaginary Allâh was Muhammad’s tool of domination. Allâh was Muhammad’s alter ego, a convenient tool. Ironically Muhammad preached against associating partners with Allâh, when, in fact, he associated with Allâh in a manner which made them logically and practically inseparable. Narcissists need a cause to harness their followers. The Germans did not start the war for Hitler. They did it for the cause that he sold them. Dr. Sam Vaknin writes: “Narcissists use anything they can lay their hands on in the pursuit of narcissistic supply. If God, creed, church, faith, and institutionalized religion can provide them with narcissistic supply, they will become devout. They will abandon religion if it can't.” 88 Islam was an instrument of domination. After Muhammad, others used his cult for the very same purpose. Muslims become like putty in the hands of those leaders who invoke Islam. 88 healthyplace.com/Communities/Personality_Disorders/Site/Transcripts/narcissism.htm Muhammad’s Personality Profile 67 Mirza Malkam Khan, (1831-1908) an Armenian who converted to Islam and together with Jamaleddin Afghani launched the idea of an “Islamic Renaissance” (An-Nahda), had a slogan of unrivalled cynicism: “Tell the Muslims something is in the Qur’an, and they will die for you.” The Narcissist Wants to Leave a Legacy On his deathbed, Muhammad urged his followers not to remain idle, and exhorted them to push on and continue their jihad to conquest. Genghis Khan gave a similar command to his sons on his deathbed. He told them he desired to conquer the world, but since he could no longer do it, they should fulfill his dream. The Mongols, like Muslims, were terrorizors. For the narcissist, all that matters is to win. They have no conscience. For them, lives of other humans are cheap. In 1940, Hitler, at the age of 51, became aware of a tremor in his left hand. He usually hid it by keeping his left-hand in his pocket, by holding an object, or by cupping his left hand over his right. As the disease advanced, he stayed away from the public. He realized his death was approaching. He became more resolute, launching his attacks with a renewed sense of urgency, knowing he was in a race against time. The narcissist wants to leave a legacy. It is a mistake to think of Islam as a religion. The religious/spiritual aspect of Islam was created later by Muslim philosophers and mystics who gave esoteric interpretations to Muhammad’s asinine words. His followers molded the religion according to their penchant, and with the passage of time, those interpretations inherited the seal of antiquity and thus credibility. If Islam is a religion, then so were Nazism, communism, Satanism, Heaven’s Gate, People’s Temple, Branch Davidian, etc. If we think of religion as a philosophy of life to educate, to bring forth human potential, to elevate the soul, to stimulate spirituality, to unite hearts and to enlighten mankind, then Islam surely fails that litmus test completely, and therefore, by this measure, should not, nor cannot be regarded as a religion. 68 Understanding Muhammad The Narcissist Wants to be God For the narcissist, what ultimately matters is power. He wants to be respected, noted, and not neglected. Narcissists are lonely, insecure and shamed. Their greatest desire is to satisfy their need for the kind of respect and attention they receive as ambassadors of great causes. The cause is not really important. It is merely an excuse. Narcissists invent fictitious gods and spurious causes presenting themselves as the sole representatives of such causes. The more they glorify their false deities, the more power they can obtain for themselves. Allâh was for Muhammad a convenient tool by which to manipulate people. Through him, he could wield unlimited authority over his followers. He became the master of their lives. There was only one God, almighty, fearsome, as well as generous and forgiving, and he, Muhammad, was the one and only intermediary between Him and mankind. This made Muhammad God by proxy. Though obedience was supposed to flow from Allâh down to him, in actuality, it was always Muhammad and his every whim that they were expected to satisfy. Dr. Vaknin explains: God is everything the narcissist ever wants to be: omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, admired, much discussed, and awe-inspiring. God is the narcissist's wet dream, his ultimate grandiose fantasy. But God comes handy in other ways as well. The narcissist alternately idealizes and devalues figures of authority. In the idealization phase, he strives to emulate them, he admires them, imitates them (often ludicrously), and defends them. They cannot go wrong, or be wrong. The narcissist regards them as bigger than life, infallible, perfect, whole, and brilliant. But as the narcissist's unrealistic and inflated expectations are inevitably frustrated, he begins to devalue his former idols. Now they are "human" (to the narcissist, a derogatory term). They are small, fragile, error-prone, pusillanimous, mean, dumb, and mediocre. The narcissist goes through the same cycle in his relationship with God, the quintessential authority figure. Muhammad’s Personality Profile 69 But often, even when disillusionment and iconoclastic despair have set in, - the narcissist continues to pretend to love God and follow Him. The narcissist maintains this deception because his continued proximity to God confers on him authority. Priests, leaders of the congregation, preachers, evangelists, cultists, politicians, intellectuals - all derive authority from their allegedly privileged relationship with God. Religious authority allows the narcissist to indulge his sadistic urges and to exercise his misogyny freely and openly. …The narcissist, whose source of authority is religious, is looking for obedient and unquestioning slaves upon whom to exercise his capricious and wicked mastery. The narcissist transforms even the most innocuous and pure religious sentiments into a cultish ritual and a virulent hierarchy. He preys on the gullible. His flock becomes his hostage. Religious authority also secures the narcissist's Narcissistic Supply. His coreligionists, members of his congregation, his parish, his constituency, his audience - are transformed into loyal and stable Sources of Narcissistic Supply. They obey his commands, heed his admonitions, follow his creed, admire his personality, applaud his personal traits, satisfy his needs (sometimes even his carnal desires), revere and idolize him. Moreover, being a part of a "bigger thing" is very gratifying narcissistically. Being a particle of God, being immersed in His grandeur, experiencing His power and blessings first hand, communing with him - are all Sources of unending Narcissistic Supply. The narcissist becomes God by observing His commandments, following His instructions, loving Him, obeying Him, succumbing to Him, merging with Him, communicating with Him - or even by defying him (the bigger the narcissist's enemy - the more grandiosely important the narcissist feels). Like everything else in the narcissist's life, he mutates God into a kind of inverted narcissist. God becomes his dominant Source of Supply. He forms a personal relationship with this overwhelming and overpowering entity - in order to overwhelm and overpower others. He becomes God vicariously, by the proxy of his relationship with Him. He idealizes God, 70 Understanding Muhammad then devalues Him, then abuses Him. This is the classic narcissistic pattern and even God himself cannot escape it.89 Narcissists do not directly promote themselves. They hide behind the veneer of modesty, while they elevate their god, ideology, cause or religion, which in reality is their own alter ego. They may present themselves as mere messengers, simple, humble, self-effacing heralds of this mighty and all-powerful deity, or all-encompassing cause, but they make it clear that they are the only ones who know the cause and are extremely intolerant and unforgiving of dissenters and recalcitrants. Narcissists are ruthless, but not stupid. They are very much aware of the hurt that they cause. They enjoy the sensation of power they get from hurting others. They enjoy being gods – deciding whom to reward and whom to punish – who should live and who should die. Pathological narcissism explains everything that Muhammad was – his ruthlessness, his outlandish claims of grandiosity, his acts of generosity devised to impress those who submitted to him and establish his superiority, his selfassurance, as well as his manic and charismatic personality. What Causes Narcissism? The hallmark of a narcissist is the development of a superiority complex as a response to feeling inferior. This involves exaggerating one’s own achievements and putting down anyone the narcissist perceives as a threat. Faulty parenting is the major contributing cause of narcissistic personality disorder in a child. For example, permissive parents who give excessive praise to the child, overindulgence and spoiling of the child, failing to impose adequate discipline, and idealization of the child are all factors. As the result, the narcissist generally feels unprepared for adulthood, having been raised with an unrealistic view of life. Conversely, a child who does not receive enough support and encouragement may also develop a narcissistic personality. We know that Muhammad was given away in infancy to be raised by a stranger. Did his mother lack interest in him? Why did he not pray at 89 http://samvak.tripod.com/journal45.html 000000000