A God Who Hates (7 page)

BEFORE WE CAN
expose the true nature of an ogre, we have to examine the need that produced it, we have to explore, even if only briefly, the environmental circumstances which participated in its creation. When one examines the social, political, and economic situation of the Arabs before Islam that paved the way for its emergence, one can more easily understand the nature of God in Islam.

The people of that era were enveloped in fear, the fear of the unknown. The nature of arid desert life, which made predicting the next moment well nigh impossible, caused people who lived this life to fear what the next moment would bring. Of all human emotions, fear of the unknown is one of the most destructive to one’s intellectual and mental capacities. Those who experience this destructive emotion feel an urgent need for security, and are unable to live in the moment, because they are so afraid to face the unknowns they fear.

In the Arabian Desert people did not feel secure for so much as a single day. Raiding was the only way to stay alive and force was the law that governed this means of survival. Consequently, strong tribes raided and plundered their weaker neighbors.

The Arabs became famous for their linguistic knowledge and their ability to express themselves. Anyone who reads the poems, stories, and other works of literature written in that atmosphere charged with the fear of the unknown will realize the extent of that fear and the destructive influence it had on their productivity and creativity. They excelled only in boasting of their courage and daring. But this boasting of theirs was nothing more than a psychological defense mechanism of the kind which evolves in the unconscious to overcome the fear that has taken control of the conscious mind. When a person is fearful he hones his sword, and so the swords of the Arabs were keen, well-honed, and plentiful, both in reality and in their imagination, to the point of taking over every aspect of their lives.

It was in this environment charged with fear that Islam was born. It emerged as a natural response to the psychological need of the people of the Arabian Desert—that need which sought a greater power than that of the fear whose hostage they had become. And so they created an ogre inspired by their fear-ridden imagination, an ogre bigger than their fear, which had the power to enable them to confront everything that frightened them.

They gave this ogre complete power and allowed the ogre to use this to defy all the sources of their fear. They created this ogre, and then allowed it to create them. They grew to resemble it, then internalized it until they merged with it. To protect their ogre, they surrounded it with an iron fence and threatened to slit the throat of anyone who approached it. No one has been able to approach it since, on pain of death.

Ogres seemed to exist in every story I heard while I was growing up. I remember that when we were young and used to gather around my grandmother every evening, she would often tell us the story of the beautiful young girl who lived alone in a deserted cavern where she was visited every evening by a large ogre that used to bellow outside the cave: “Give me your hand so that I can suck the blood out of it or I’ll break it in half!” And the young girl would stretch out her hand through the entrance to the cave and it would suck as much blood as sufficed for its evening meal then leave her, only to come back the next day.

Ever since the day I escaped the clutches of our village ogre I have asked myself why my grandmother was so fond of that story that never seemed to have an ending, the ogre returning every day to prey on the young girl. Perhaps it represented life with my grandfather? Was that beautiful young girl a symbolic representation of my grandmother in the realms of her unconscious?

I can still remember the terror that gripped me when I heard that story. In an attempt to overcome my fears I used to imagine that my father, too, was a big ogre capable of defying the ogre that sucked the hand of the beautiful girl in my grandmother’s story. I regarded my father as the only force capable of protecting me, and it was inevitable that I should imagine him as being stronger than the ogre in my grandmother’s story, in order to ensure that he would be able to protect me should the ogre come to my room and ask to suck my hand. In my conscious and unconscious mind I had created another ogre, bigger than the one that threatened me, just to guarantee that I would be safe.

The inhabitants of the Arabian Desert could adapt to their fears only by resorting to the same psychological protective mechanism I had used. They proceeded to create an ogre bigger than their fears and capable of vanquishing every source of fear.

The inhabitants of the Arabian Desert bestowed on their new god ninety-nine attributes. Each beautiful attribute was borrowed from the books of the religions that preceded Islam, so as to establish his divine power, while the other attributes were bestowed upon him in order to distinguish him from other gods. His repugnant qualities are not to be found in other gods, while his good qualities were identical with those that preceding gods had displayed.

“The Harmer” is one of the attributes they have given to the God of Islam. Is it reasonable that God should cause harm? Yet this is an attribute which Muslims bestow on their god and take pride in, just as they take pride in describing him as “The Merciful” and “The Patient.” “The Subduer,” “The Compel-ler,” “The Imperious,” “The Humiliator,” “The Nourisher,” “The Bringer of Death,” “The Most High,” “The Avenger,” “The Protector”—all these are attributes they bestowed upon their ogre and subsequently internalized in an attempt to merge with their ideal.

Whenever I discuss the legitimacy and morality of these names with erudite Muslims I hear nothing but shouts and screams that within minutes turn the dialogue into a futile quarrel. They cannot confront the negativism of these attributes other than by a desperate attempt to justify them, but when they do this they make things worse. Muslims justify portraying God as “The Harmer” because they believe such a portrayal is necessary in order to strike fear into people’s hearts and prevent them from disobeying God’s commands. They say: “When a person believes in God’s ability to harm he will take care not to disobey him, so as to avoid being harmed by him.”

I once tried to find common ground on this very point with a Muslim reader from London, an Oxford University graduate with whom I conducted an extensive e-mail correspondence. She wrote to me on one occasion: “Can you deny that God is capable of causing harm? Could he not destroy the universe if he wanted to?” She continued: “What’s wrong with proclaiming his destructive powers? Isn’t this necessary in order to prevent people from crossing the line and disobeying his commands?”

I replied: “A father has the ability to harm his child when he disobeys him, but does he do so? Is that the proper way to educate our children not to overstep the boundaries we set for them?”

The Oxford graduate responded: “There’s no comparison! The difference between God’s power and that of a human being is much greater than the difference between a father’s and his son’s.”

I replied: “But shouldn’t God’s wisdom, mercy, and love far surpass the wisdom, mercy, and love of a father?”

The exchange turned into a fruitless quarrel at the end of which I heard only the e-mailed shouts of the Oxford graduate as she described me as a misguided unbeliever and apostate deserving only of being put to death.

When you teach a child the attributes of God and tell him that he is an avenger, a compeller, imperious, one who subdues, as well as one who nourishes, what have you done to him? You have helped create a vengeful, tyrannical, and overbearing person who also nourishes, but at what cost? For people see their God as their ideal, and strive both consciously and unconsciously to internalize him and merge with him. When we convince them that God is vengeful we justify their becoming vengeful, too. Human nature strives for union with its ideal, so what do you think happens when that ideal is God Himself?

Arguing with Muslims becomes more complicated when they try to persuade you that their God is also merciful, patient, and forbearing. I asked a Muslim doctor who specializes in psychiatry: “How can you persuade your son that God is simultaneously merciful and vengeful? Doesn’t teaching this type of religious lesson contain a contradiction which splits the child’s personality and makes him feel more lost and confused?”

He replied: “No. I teach him that God is merciful with believers and vengeful toward unbelievers. I don’t see any contradiction in this.”

I asked again: “How do you teach your son to tell the difference between believers and unbelievers so that he’ll know with whom to be merciful and toward whom to be vengeful?”

He said, beaming: “A believer is one who believes in God, his Prophet, and the Day of Judgment and so forth.”

I inquired: “So when your son hijacks a civilian plane full of passengers, hurtles into a tower, and kills three thousand ‘unbelievers’ he won’t be doing anything outside the boundaries of what his God and ideal would do? Is that the way to distinguish between believers and unbelievers?”

The conversation ended with shouts and screams and turned into a futile argument that led only to my being accused of blas-phemy, apostasy, and sympathy for the enemies of God and his Prophet!

When one lives in an environment beset by the unknown and has difficulty in predicting what the next moment will bring, one is surrounded by fear which eventually results in an inability to act. Islam came into being as a response to this fear. Since people in that environment feared the unknown, Islam fought against probing the depths of anything unknown. Islam dealt with the problem by avoiding the source of the fear, not by preparing to tackle it. The Muslim is a frightened man, and the only way he can deal with his fear is to keep away from what causes it. Everything he distrusts frightens him, and everything he fears he avoids. His education has made him suspicious of everything unfamiliar to him, and this same education has deprived him of his ability to discover the truth about the things he distrusts.

The main source of fear in the environment in which Islam emerged was the unknown. Since every new thing was by defi-nition a variety of the unknown, Islam refused to approach anything new and withdrew into the familiar reality of its own world. Islam, in its teachings, mode of thinking, and way of life, is still captive in a prison whose doors have not opened for fourteen centuries. It is exactly like a man who lives in a hut in the middle of a wood. The hut is Islam and the wood is the unknown. To avoid his fear of the unknown the man has locked all ways in and out of his hut and refuses to go out into the wood. The Muslim treats the world around him in the same way that the man who lives in the hut does. He is afraid of the world around him. His education has not encouraged him to equip himself with the skills necessary for confronting his apprehensions or probing the depths of that world. On the contrary, this education has taught him to fear his surroundings, convinced him to mistrust them, and warned him of the evil that that world holds in store for him.

The relationship between Islam and its adherents on the one hand and the rest of the world, as exemplified by all other religions on the other, is still founded upon fear and mistrust. To a great extent this relationship still resembles and reflects the relationship between the nomadic Bedouin and his desert environment. It is a relationship founded on fear and mistrust. No relationship rooted in fear and mistrust can be sound or healthy, nor can it guarantee the rights of both parties.

In order to safeguard itself from the outside world that threatens its existence and its very being, Islam has made itself inaccessible to the influences of that world. It has surrounded its adherents with an impregnable barrier and locked them inside. It has fought against every innovation, doubting its appropriateness and legality. Its relationship with the world that surrounded it has been characterized by aggression rather than by mutuality and reciprocity. No notable change has taken place inside Islam since the moment it came into being. The only changes that came to Islam came from outside the borders of the authority that the Muslim world has managed to impose on itself

In the early 1960s, one of the Christian families in our neighborhood bought a television. I remember how the local people talked about them, accusing the head of the family of depravity, and how they planned to pressure them into leaving the neighborhood, fearing for the welfare and morals of their own children and teenagers. The spread of television was very slow, but sure. Today I do not believe that there is a Muslim or Western television program that a Saudi sheikh does not relish watching. And the satellite dishes that transmit the programs from all over the world have stormed the prison Islam created for itself and thoroughly invaded it. The Internet did not encounter the same difficulties as television did, and its invasion was swifter and more influential. Consequently those interested in changing the Islamic world realized that they could use this tool to bring about the abrupt collapse of the impregnable wall surrounding Islam within less than a decade.