24- Don't you think that he (the Prophet) was pretty smart for his time? If he was insane like you said in your report, then how did he fool so many people so easily? You cannot say that the barbarians back then were stupid because not everybody was stupid?

The Prophet used to see Jinns, hear voices and used to battle with Satan. He even attempted suicide several times. This man was certainly not a mentally sane person. At first he might himself have believed that his psychological experiences were real, but when the voices that he used to hear ceased, as usually is the case with those who suffer from schizophrenia when they age, he kept lying about it and kept fooling his followers. He had already started something and there were those who believed in him. The dreams of conquering the Arabia and subduing the Ajam (Persia) may not have been in his mind when he started but when he saw that people are accepting him as a messenger of Allah, his ambition also soared.

It is not true that Muhammad was in any danger for his life. For 13 years he taunted the deities of the Quraish, mocked them and insulted them and neither him nor any one of his followers were ever persecuted. It was him who started the hostilities after he immigrated to Medina by raiding the merchant caravans of the Quraish and killing their men. For a more detailed study of this subject please read my response to Ayatollah Montazeri, Muhammad’s raids at merchant caravans.

Yes Muhammad became rich after marrying Khadijah and he might have been also smart but he was far from being mentally sane. Muhammad was a bigot and extremely narrow minded. However he had a very charismatic personality and an unwavering conviction that influenced the simple-minded people around him. His bizarre behavior for some was the sign of his madness and for others the proof of his prophethood. All the cult leaders we know today are mentally insane; look at the case of Shoko Asahara, Jim Jones, the founder of Heaven’s Gate, David Koresh, etc. These people were not healthy yet they had their followers spellbound to the stage that death and life meant nothing to them. The many of the practitioners of the Heaven’s Gate were university grads with PhDs and very intelligent people, yet they committed mass suicide along with their leader to join the extraterrestrials that were, as they believed, traveling in the tail of the comet Haley. These people along with their leader abstained from sex and were living very frugally –proof that sex and money are not the incentives for starting a religion.

Today we know that the human brain is compartmentalized. A person’s brain can work perfectly in some areas and fail in others. Intelligence is not the only parameter for mental sanity. Hitler was by all means a maniac, yet millions of intelligent Germans did not see that because he was a brilliant man.

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