German-Egyptian Scholar Hamed Abdel-Samad Analyzes the Psychology of the Prophet Muhammad - Archival

In one of a series of online lectures, German-Egyptian scholar Hamed Abdel-Samad analyzes the personality of the Prophet Muhammad, whose biography, he says, is "held captive in a prison of unwarranted over-sanctification and glorification." Abdel-Samad, who suggests that "there can be no reform or cleansing of the [Islamic] heritage until we rid Muhammad and the Quran of this sanctity," describes the Prophet Muhammad as a human being who was driven by human motivations and urges. "Did he have marital problems? Psychological problems? Some illness? We don't know," says Abdel-Samad, suggesting that Muhammad's revelations reflect "the psychology of a sick and rejected man, an outcast." The lecture was posted on the Internet on June 24, 2015.

Hamed Abdel-Samad: In my view, the Muslims are held captive by Muhammad's life story and personality. He has affected them in an abnormal way. All the things that he said and did, and all the errors that he made, have led to mistakes that still occur today. But the opposite also holds true. The personality and biography of Muhammad are likewise held captive in a prison built by the Muslims - a prison of unwarranted over-sanctification and glorification. Whatever you do, you must not criticize the Messenger of Allah, and anyone who dares to do so dies.

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One story begins when the Prophet Muhammad is going to the mosque, and he finds a slain woman in front of it. "Who did this?" he asks. A blind man comes forth and says: "I killed her, oh Prophet of Allah. She was my slave woman, and she gave me two sons who are like pearls, but she cursed you, oh Messenger of Allah. I would not tolerate this, so I killed her." Muhammad stands up and says: "As you are my witnesses, her killing was sanctioned." This is a strange notion of justice. We are dealing with the killing of a human being, the killing of a woman. The man who killed her could have done so for any reason whatsoever, and then could have gone to the Prophet and said to him: "I did this because she cursed you." This was enough for the Prophet to declare that her killing was sanctioned. No trial? No witnesses? No. A human being is killed just like that. Whether or not this story really happened, it appears in Islamic heritage, and is used as evidence.

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As a result of this glorification of Muhammad, you cannot discuss the problems of Islam and its inception, because whenever you start to touch upon these subjects, they say to you: Who are you to criticize Allah's Prophet?! This is blasphemy. This is the denial of things that are obligatory in Islam. So the Muslims are held prisoner by Muhammad, and vice versa, and nobody knows how to get released from this fix. In my own view, there can be no reform or cleansing of the heritage, before we rid Muhammad and the Quran of this sanctity.

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There are many turning points in the life story of Muhammad, and these turning points affected him psychologically. This is an aspect that the Muslims always refuse to deal with. Is it possible that Muhammad had psychological and existential problems? "No," they say. "The Prophet was perfect." No, he wasn't. He was human - just like me and you. He was driven by human motives, by psychological motives, by urges. Once we realize that, we can understand his laws, and the development of the Quran and of his biography.

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Why didn't he get married until he was 25? We read in his biography that when he was young, he asked for the hand of his cousin in marriage. She was the daughter of his uncle Abu Taleb, who had raised him after the death of his mother and his other uncle, Abd Al-Muttalib. His uncle Abu Taleb took upon himself to raise him. But when he asked for his daughter's hand in marriage, Abu Taleb refused. Why?

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Muhammad was upset. He asks his uncle: Why did you marry her off to Hubeyra and not me? He speaks from the perspective of a humiliated human being. This is very important if we want to understand the psychology of the prophecy that is to come. This person was an outcast. He was not loved. He had problems even within his own family. His own uncle refused to marry his daughter off to him. When he asks his uncle: "Why did you marry her off to Hubeyra and not me?" Abu Taleb answers: "The honorable goes with the honorable." In other words, he is saying to him: Muhammad, you are not honorable. The second turning point was his marriage to Khadija. The same problem happened again. Khadija was 15 years older than him. She was 40 years old at the time. She had been married before and was widowed. She had children from her previous marriages. A woman like that today, in any Arab country, would have a difficult time finding someone who would marry her. And here we are talking about one of the elite, from the Bani Hashem tribe, the "trustworthy man," and all those nice things... But her father says: "No."

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According to the story recounted in Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Khadija gave her father wine to drink until he got drunk. She dressed him up and dyed his beard with henna, and when he awoke the next day, (Khadija and Muhammad) were married. He went berserk and wanted to get his weapon, but she told him not to embarrass them... The point is that when a woman needs to resort to such a ploy in order to marry a man, that man clearly has a problem. What was the problem? We don't know. Many things were removed from the prophetic biographies, and we cannot know what it was. What was the subsequent turning point in the life of Muhammad? He married Khadija and led a stable life. He became a merchant and would travel to the Levant. He had money now. This was supposed to be it. He had a stable life, and everything was fine. But when he was 40, he had a crisis, and nobody knows what caused it. When someone leaves his job, or leaves his home, and goes to the desert, or to some mountain, and secludes himself in a cave, this must be a man fleeing some crisis, although we don't know what it was. Did he have marital problems? Psychological problems? Some illness? We do not know, but there was a turning point at the age of 40. He began doing very strange things. For example, he said that a stone talked. When I say assalaam alaykum, the stone replies alaykum assalaam. If someone said such a thing today, we'd take him straight to the psychiatrist.

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Muhammad had an ingenious and sick personality at the same time. He managed to turn his illness into something good.

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I don't want to analyze Muhammad's character, and say that he was criminal and violent. No. I say that basically he was a neglected orphan, who experienced humiliation and deprivation as a child. He wanted to compensate for this deficiency. For him, the revelation was an opportunity... It was just like the cave - a place in which to hide. It was just like all the women he would later marry. They served as a place for him to hide after the death of his mother. When we deal with Muhammad's character, we must not forget the human aspect.

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The first thought that came to his mind was not that this was a revelation and that God was talking to him. His first thought was that this was Satan. He was going to commit suicide. The Islamic books tell us that. He was standing on a mountaintop and was about to throw himself off, but then he saw Jibril sitting on a chair... See the kind of ideas he had... And Jibril said to him: You are the Messenger of Allah. Don't kill yourself. You'd better get down from there. Khadija managed to take the edge off this. Since there were no psychiatric clinics in Mecca, she served as one. She's the one who said to him: This is a revelation. You are a prophet. You are okay.

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Ten years after the so-called "revelation," Khadija died. This was an enormous turning point in the life of Muhammad. With the death of Khadija, Muhammad became more radical politically, ideologically, morally, and mentally. Strange things began to happen to him following the death of Khadija.

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After Surat Al-Jinn came another surah that describes a miracle. In Surat Al-Isra, he rides a strange animal - half-mule half-donkey - all the way to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where he led all the prophets in prayer, including Abraham, the father of all prophets, and Adam, the father of humanity. It was the epitome of honor. These are the kind of things in the Prophet's biography that a Muslim hears, and just lets them pass.

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Nobody even considers that maybe this revelation, this entire story, is a psychological reflection of the rejection and the loss. The man had just lost his wife, who was the dearest thing he had, and his uncle Abu Taleb died the same month, by the way... All the people who had given him support were gone. He went to Taif, and the people there pelted him with stones. The logical thing is that the man began to hallucinate, to develop megalomania. Not only do the jinns believe in him, but the Lord would stop the natural laws of the universe, and let him fly a horse all the way to Jerusalem, and then ascend to the heavens, and come back... This is the psychology of a sick and rejected man, an outcast.

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