The secret of Muhammads success ( part 2 ) By Ali Sina So, why has Islam succeeded? Paradoxically, Islam has succeeded because it is a big lie. Adolf Hitler, in his Mein Kampf, (1925) wrote: “The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one”. If anyone should have known the power of the big lie and that the bigger the lie the more believable it sounds, it was Hitler. Another good statement is that of George Orwell, author of Politics and the English Language. He wrote: “Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”[1] Why big lies are so convincing? The logic behind it is that an average normal person generally does not dare to tell a big lie. He fears that it would not be believed and that he would be derided. And, since everyone has heard or has said a few white lies, most people generally recognize them when they hear one. The big lies are so outlandish that they often startle the listener. Most people are not equipped to process them adequately. When the lie is colossal, the average person is left to wonder how anyone can have the audacity, the impudence to say such a thing. You are left with the difficult decision between two extremes: The person, who is saying this, must be either insane, a charlatan or he must be telling the truth. Now, what if for any reason, such as your reverence for this person, his charisma, or your commitment to him, you can’t bear the thought of repudiating him and accept that maybe he’s insane, a quack? Then you force yourself to believe in whatever he tells you even if what he says makes no sense at all. The big lie offsets the scale of our commonsense. This is like loading a scale that is made to weigh kilos with tons. It stops showing the correct weight. The indicator may even stop at zero. Hence, Hitler was right. The big lie is often believed better than a small one. When Muhammad recounted his tale of ascending to the seventh heaven, Abu Bakr was at first taken aback. He did not know what to make of this. This sounded utterly mad. He had two choices. He had to either admit that his friend, whom he respected so much and by following him he had endured ridicule, was a crackpot and leave him or force himself to believe in his fantastical tales and whatever else he might say. There was no middle ground for him. Ibn Ishaq says when Muhammad made his vision known, “many Muslims gave up their faiths. Some people went to Abu Bakr and said, ‘What do you think of your friend? He alleges that he went to Jerusalem last night and prayed there, and came back to Mecca !’ He replied that they were lying about the apostle, but they said that he was in the mosque at that very moment, telling people about it. Abu Bakr said, ‘If he says so, then it is true. And what is so surprising in that? He tells me that communication from Allâh, from heaven to earth, come to him in an hour of a day or night, and I believe him. That is more extraordinary than that at which you boggle!’”[2] The logic is flawless. Basically what Abu Bakr was saying is that once you give up your rational faculty and believe in an absurdity, you might as well believe in anything. Once you let yourself to be fooled, then you should be prepared to be fooled ad infinitum because there is no end to foolishness. How many people would let a 54 year old man sleep with their 9 year old daughter? This requires extreme foolishness. This much foolishness is only possible through blind faith. We must also remember that Abu Bakr, by now had spent most of his wealth for Muhammad and his cause. This man had a lot at stake. At this stage, he had no other choice but to go along with whatever his friend told him. Admitting that he had been conned was too painful a thought to bear. How could he explain this to his wife? What could he say to the wise men of Mecca who had laughed at him and told him he is a fool? The doors of going back for Abu Bakr were shut. All he could do was to dig in deeper and blindly follow Muhammad to wherever he took him. He had to silence his conscience and believe in anything his prophet fancied. When you put your entire faith on someone and sacrifice so much for him, you give up your independence and become putty in his hand. This is what cult leaders want from their devotees. Only this kind of devotion satiates their narcissistic craving. Abu Bakr had a hard time believing in Muhammad’s tale of ascension to heaven and yet in the end he had no choice but to believe because renouncing him meant admitting that he has been a fool and that was a painful experience. Denouncing the person, whom you have come to accept as the messenger of God and believe in, is not an easy task. It is indeed a heroic decision, one well beyond the range of any feebleminded believer. The more you have given up your freedom, and the more you have sacrificed for this person and his cause, the more difficult it is to leave him. How would you face your friends and tell them you have been duped? How would you come to terms with your own conscience for all the years and money you have wasted on him? What the average and normal person does not understand is that the fabricators of the big lies are not an average and normal but psychopaths. However, it is not easy to spot them. The narcissists often look not just smart, but geniuses. They are charming, delightful, amiable, intelligent and charismatic. Psychopathology has nothing to do with intelligence. What the psychopath narcissist lacks is conscience. It is the combination of a superior intellect and lack of conscience that makes him extremely dangerous. Hitler is a worthy example. A low witted psychopath that holds you at gunpoint to rob you is far less dangerous than the smart psychopath that seduces millions of people with grandiose talks and empty promises. Hitler, Stalin and many other historys despotic leaders were also insane. Yet few suspected their insanity. Those who did could not whisper it to others. The superior wisdom of the despotic leader is the invisible cloak of the emperor. Everyone sees it and praises it. Those who are not in the immediate circle, become convinced by the conviction of others. Thus the big lie is perpetuated and no criticism of it is tolerated.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 05:28:13 +0000
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