Edip Yuksel vs. Ali Sina

Round VII -22

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In Islam everything hinges on Muhammad. Muhammad claimed to have “sublime morals” 68:4 and ordered his followers to emulate his “good example” 33:21 because, as he claimed, he is “as a lamp spreading light” 33:46.  While in Buddhism the practitioner must rely on his/her own understanding, in Islam the believer must stop reasoning and submit his understanding to what Muhammad said. No contradiction is allowed or tolerated.  

The message of Islam is not also logical. You can’t arrive at it through induction or deduction, such as postulating assumptions and axioms and sequentially deriving a conclusion. It is a belief system. It boils down to the fact that Muhammad stated his claim and demanded people to believe. No logical argument or proof was ever given.  Whenever people asked for proof, he called them:

 “Deaf, dumb and blind” 2:18, 2:171 or “Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.” 2:7, 4:155, 6:46, 7:101,  

These are called logical fallacies. They are argumentum ad hominem and argumentum ad baculum. He either insulted his opponents calling them blind and deaf with no understanding or threatened them with hellfire. Muslims keep rehashing the same logical fallacies ever since. But there is not a single logical argument presented in the Quran to convince us that Muhammad was indeed a messenger of God.  

Therefore, since Muhammad presented no proof to back up his claim all we have are his words and his credibility as an honest or sane person. The sanity of Muhammad, his character and truthfulness are central to his claim. As we discussed this before, we do not question the credibility of a mailman when he hands us a sealed envelope that has not been tampered. But if someone brings you a verbal message you want to know how credible is this person, especially when you see he stands to benefit immensely from that message. If someone comes to your door and claims to have a warrant to search your house you want to see that warrant. His words are not enough. Muhammad not only did not produce any warrant, he actually convinced the inhabitants of the house to become his slaves, to worship him and to submit to his demands. In exchanged he promised them a bogus reward after death and threatened them of the consequences if they question him. What if he was an impostor? Imagine the embarrassment and the loss.  

You say Muhammad and his life have no bearing on the message of “salvation” that he delivered.  What was this message of salvation? The only message that Muhammad gave is “BELIEVE IN ME”. That is in nutshell all what Muhammad said. He wanted people to believe in him. That is the message. Basically Muhammad IS the message. Of course he had to present himself as the mouthpiece of a very powerful and tyrannical deity to instill fear in people and manipulate them. God was a tool by which he could manipulate people and make them do anything including killing their own fathers.

 Dr. Sam Vaknin, a psychologist and an expert in narcissism writes:  http://samvak.tripod.com/journal45.html

“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, imitate 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.”

The idols of Muhammad were the Biblical prophets. In his quest to become godlike, he tried to impersonate the prophets of the Jews and Christians. But when the followers of these prophets rejected him, he became vengeful, changed the Qibla and went on a killing spree of the Jews and Christians. Of course he could not disparage Moses and Jesus. That would have given away his plot. So instead he decried their scriptures claiming they are corrupt. Furthermore we can see Muhammad’s problem with authorities in Mecca as you yourself pointed out in your book.

Vaknin continues:

“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.

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. Such a narcissist is likely to taunt and torment his followers, hector and chastise them, humiliate and berate them, abuse them spiritually, or even sexually. 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 hostages.

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, then devalues Him, then abuses Him. This is the classic narcissistic pattern and even God himself cannot escape it.’

The above perfectly explains the phenomenon of Muhammad. Vaknin says: http://www.toddlertime.com/sam/47.htm

The narcissist is prone to magical thinking. He regards himself in terms of "being chosen" or of "having a destiny". He believes that he has a "direct line" to God, even, perversely, that God "serves" him in certain junctions and conjunctures of his life, through divine intervention. He believes that his life is of such momentous importance, that it is micro-managed by God. The narcissist likes to play God to his human environment. In short, narcissism and religion go well together, because religion allows the narcissist to feel unique.

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