PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF MUHAMMAD
By: Dr. Hafsa ‘bint Sharif, Ph.D
Attempting a psychological evaluation of any person is difficult, and considerably more so, after the passage of more than 1,350 years. However, an attempt can be made, based on known factors influencing Muhammad ‘bin Abdallah’s formative years, and the fruits of his life, once the formation of his character could be considered complete. For this admittedly speculative endeavor, we are assuming that a person’s psyche should have been formed, if not in its entirety, at least of its majority, by forty years of age. This was Muhammad’s age, when experiencing his first revelation from “Allah”, the name he assigned to the maximum authority, or “God” of the universe. I then consider that the principal factors, contributing to his psychological profile are as follows:
Muhammad never knew his father, who died before his birth. His mother died when he was six, and a grandfather, to whom his care had been passed, died when he was nine. He was then passed to an uncle. He undoubtedly felt resentment at having been abandoned by father, mother and grandfather, though in all three cases, the abandonment was due to their deaths. Later, as a young man, he resented the uncle, to whom he passed on the grandfather’s death, who turned him out for cowardice on the battlefield. From these temporary relationships, he had little opportunity to receive and interact with the filial love so necessary for the formation of a well-adjusted individual.
A young orphan, passed from family member to family member, would probably have strong feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Also highly suspect, is that his first marriage was not until age 25. In the society of his day, when child marriages were the norm, such a late marriage was quite unusual. This in itself might indicate a feeling of inadequacy with women. We do know that he held women in low esteem, compared them to devils and said that he had glimpsed Hell and reported that most of its inhabitants were women! This attitude could have been the result of one or more unsatisfactory relationships and would perhaps account for his deep seated antagonism towards women.
When twelve, he began to accompany caravans for his uncle in several areas of the Middle East. He probably had several, willing or unwilling, homosexual experiences on his travels. Then, as today, sexual abuse of male children in the Arabic, and now Muslim World, is the highest in the world! A youth of twelve was undoubtedly a temptation for some of the other camel drivers. The probability of homosexual experiences may be inferred by his ambivalent position on relations with his own sex. This is as expressed in his revelations regarding Heaven, as opposed to other revelations strongly condemning homosexual acts. He well knew that on long caravan trips, some drivers engaged in homosexual activity, even if preferring women when available. However, he said, as a revelation from Allah, and as written in the Koran, “When a man mounts another man, the throne of Allah shakes.”, and “Kill the one that is doing it, and kill the one that it is being done to.” Thus, from Muhammad’s admonitions, homosexuality is condemned as an abomination in the Muslim world and punishable by death even today in several Muslim countries.
However, when the Koran (Muhammad) describes Heaven, the following revelation is highly suspect. “The righteous will be served food and drink by boys, ‘pure as pearls’, dressed in green garments of fine silk and heavy brocade, adorned with bracelets of silver, and used to drinking wine.” Questions are raised; why do these mere serving boys need to be so attractive, so sumptuously dressed, adorned, and used to drinking wine? In the society of his day, it is likely that he felt obligated to portray, at least, a preference for the opposite sex. After establishing his harem, he bragged to his inner circle, his “Companions” that he serviced up to nine of his several wives and concubines every night. Was this perhaps an attempt to prove to them, others of his followers and even to him self, that he preferred women?
Additionally, his first marriage, of convenience, to a much older woman, when he was 25, and his bride 40, may have added an additional burden of guilt on his shoulders. In the Arabian society of the 7th Century, his marriage to a much older woman was a source of ridicule. Muslims describe the marriage as having been successful, as indeed it was for Muhammad, since this first marriage insured his financial security. After meeting, courting and wedding Khadija, he went in the space of less than a year, from a penniless outcast to a position of financial security. His wife’s role in the relationship may have been that of a surrogate mother. Men losing a mother at an early age often marry much older women, searching for a mother figure.
An additional burden of guilt was perhaps placed on Muhammad by his cowardly performance on the battlefield when a young man, as well as the subsequent betrayal of the kinsmen of his own tribe, the Quraysh. In his society, that of the Arabian Peninsula of the 7th Century A.D., a person betraying his own clan was anathema, a pariah!
At 40 years of age, Muhammad disassociated himself from his previous activities and patterns of behavior. He would retire to caves on Mount Hira, near his home (in Mecca), and stay for indefinite periods. It was in one of these caves that he experienced his first revelation. On returning home, he told his wife that he had been visited by the Angel Gabriel, who revealed that he, Muhammad, was the “Messenger of God”!
Several theories have been suggested as to why a well to do merchant, at 40 years of age, would abruptly launch into a mysticism leading to aberrant behavior and destruction of his own society. Attendant with this change, his personal crimes and Islamic genocide commenced, all in the name of, and justified by divine revelations from “Allah.”
Some theorists suggest that his revelations, giving justification for his crimes, since they were supposedly from Allah, were due to bouts of epilepsy, but there is no evidence to support this theory. If he had been subject to “grand mal”, or even “petite mal”, seizures, it would surely have been documented, if not by his followers, then surely by his enemies.
Others suggest that his revelations were fabricated out of a sense of inferiority, anger at the abandonment by his father, mother and grandfather, albeit by death, guilt at his own cowardice, and hatred of an uncle, who had turned him out as a coward. These factors undoubtedly influenced his behavior, but they do not explain his withdrawals to caves and his first revelations, which seemed to arrive from outside of his own fabrication. His later, and numerous, self-serving revelations are of course easily explainable. But none of the above factors explain the ferocity of his actions against his victims, such as the wholesale slaughter of the Jews of Medina, the Banu Qurayzah Massacre, in which an estimated 700 to 900 Jewish men were slaughtered, and their other family members raped and enslaved.
Another theory is that Muhammad was addicted to the use of hashish, from which the word “assassin” is derived. He may or may not have used the drug; it was known in his society but not widely used until several hundred years later.
It is more likely that Muhammad suffered from a mental illness, or a brain tumor lodged in the frontal lobe of the brain, or pressure exerted on the frontal lobe by a blow to the head. Any of these three explanations, fueled and magnified by the previously mentioned factors affecting his life, could well account for his vicious behavior.
From Muhammad’s own revelations, as set forth in the Koran and the Hadith, we know that he was a hypocrite, misogynist and megalomaniac. And, from historical accounts, we know that he was a coward, traitor to his own tribe, married for money, and was personally guilty of numerous capital crimes. Apologists of Muhammad, insist that he was "only a man of his time", and should not be judged by today's standards. This is certainly a valid consideration. However, he was judged by the standards of “his time”; by his peers, his own close relatives, and the extended family of his clan, the Quraysh, and found sadly lacking! He succeeded by killing or subjugating his critics, armed with the supposed ultimate authority that he was the Prophet of God! His lasting legacy was a religion dedicated to world conquest.
It might be supposed that a well adjusted person, secure within himself, and at peace with his own society, would, if feeling a “higher calling” from the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, establish a peaceful and benevolent religion dedicated towards the elevation of mankind towards a communion with that “God-head”. Instead, Muhammad founded Islam, an evil and parasitic religion based on the choice of submission or death! This religion, until quite recently, has been spread exclusively by the point of a sword!
Endnotes: (1) Dr. ‘bint Sharif is an ex-Muslim, a psychologist encountered through one of the many websites of ex-Muslims. Other than the text of the article she submitted to us, we know little concerning her background or qualifications. (2) Dr. ‘bint Sharif is perhaps mistaken concerning her conclusion that Muhammad was not subject to epilepsy. There are certain historical accounts in hadiths, by his own followers, that he would fall down unconscious and then prophesy upon awakening some minutes later.
