Wanting the love of another

James Byrne

Allah is an oddly conversational deity, though it has to be said the conversation is mostly one-way.  Let’s get this over with at the start: Allah is the externalised ego of his prophet, Mohammed, and is thus a human construct.  Any impartial reading of the Qur’an will lead us to this conclusion.  This will seem shocking to the believer, but nonetheless it is true.  Set aside considerations of faith; set aside all that you have been taught to believe.  Read the Qur’an in your own language, using a chronological edition, and you will see that Allah’s pronouncements follow the fortunes of His Prophet.  Ai’sha, the prophet’s wife, an astute woman, saw this when she said to her husband, almost as an aside, ‘Haven’t you noticed that, soon after you have need of something, Allah makes provision for it?’  Her wording was careful: she knew that the power lay with the man who had taken her for a wife when she was nine years old.  But there is a surprisingly modern irony implicit in every phrase.  (The fact that her aside was taken at face value — and recorded as such — says much about the credulity of the time.) 

Now read the Hadith from the Sahih Muslim, again in your own language: 

Book 042, Number 7058:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The world is a prison-house for a believer and Paradise for a non-believer.

There is a remarkable truth in this.  The world is indeed a prison to a man who has cast his ego beyond himself.  The truly surprising thing is that the Prophet has retained enough insight to see that, for the man of integrity, this Now, this Present, contains all that may be desired.  This insight is the one thing which kept the Prophet just this side of sanity.  One step beyond, and he (and his strange external ego, which re-worked Biblical myths and roped in hollowed-out Biblical characters very obviously to its own advantage) would have been lost to history. 

Occasionally he went over the edge, but this seems to have been accepted without a raised eyebrow.  As an example, read this Hadith, again from Sahih Muslim:

Book 001, Number 0071:

It is reported on the authority of Anas b. Malik that the Messenger of Allah said: None of you is a believer till I am dearer to him than his child, his father and the whole of mankind.

No comment is necessary.  What this Hadith says is that the Prophet was prone to mistake himself for his solitary projection.  Both yearn for love and immortality. 

It is a pity that Mohammad’s insight did not plumb more deeply.  It should have done.  Had he been deeply wise he would have seen that love always requires Another.  This he could not bring himself to face. 

And so Another is prohibited in the Islam of the Qur’an and the Hadith.