Owen Berkeley-Hill

“ That this child can have been named Ibrahim (Abraham) seems to point to the fact that the mind of Mohammed still retained memories of the terrible father who would have sacrificed his son, (Isaac) . But the little Ibrahim was doomed, like his brothers, to a short life, and at the age of fifteen months we find him lying in a palm-grove near the house of his nurse dying. We see too the aged Prophet struggling to prevent his tremendous sorrow from bursting into expression, for had he not himself forbade his followers from wailing aloud? ”

“ It has been shown that the desire for children, but more especially male children, which is a characteristic of all races the world over, is not motivated solely by the instinct of reproduction but also by the desire of the parent, and that generally the male parent, to possess a natural and obvious means to avenge himself of the wrongs done to him by his own father. ”

“ Abd-ullah was one of the most beautiful and refined youths of his time, and his name, Abd-ullah "Servant of God", was not an uncommon one among ante-Mohammedan Arabs. His family belonged to the most ancient and illustrious tribe of the Corcish, whose strength and influence had been established by his ancestor, at the fourth remove, the famous Cossai, Abd-ullah's father, Abd-ul-Muttalib, held the coveted office of entertaining all pilgrims to Mecca, a position which carried with it great power and influence. ”

“ From hardly any other source could there spring those wild torrents of emotion that enable men, "utterly lost to every call of honour, or patrio- tism, or family affection, whose only occupation is eating, and whose only recreation is woman, to thrill with excitement at the summons of the faith, and meet death with a contempt the Red Indian could only envy". ”

“ Besides the desire to have a son to enable a man to overcome his father, it seems not improbable there exists along with this desire another, a sort of corrollary to it, namely, to have a son to perform expiatory rites for the peace of his soul, in short, someone who will pray the gods to forgive the father for what the father did to his own father, and so to palliate the guilt-complex in which the generations are co-partners, In the ancestor worship of the Chinese and in the Hindu ceremony of Sraddha we meet with the apotheosis of the expression of this unconscious wish. ”

“ As Abraham points out, [7] the father is for the child the personification of power and greatness, so that, if at any time a child experiences feelings of hostility against his father, the son tends in phantasy to raise the paternal authority to the level of sovereignty so that in the end he himself becomes as it were the son of an imaginary king, and the real father recedes into the position of a sort of foster-father. Thus springs into being that very common phantasy of youth in which the boy fancies; himself to be a prince. ”

“ Among the insane we frequently meet with delusions of noble birth which take their origin in ideas of hostility against the father. The same thing is to be found in myths and fairy tales; wherein the hero is brought up by lowly parents, but later comes into those princely rights to which he was from the first entitled by the nobility of his birth. In fairy stories of this sort the age-long conflict between father and son finds expression under all sorts of disguises. ”

“ But the God of Islam was to be a more compelling and authoritative God than Jehovah. As the Jew surrendered his birthright if he imparted his faith to other peoples, so the Muslim was to surrender his if he did not spread his faith wherever and however he might. ”

“ In this aspect of Islam doubtless lies the secret of its tremen- dous power, for although it appears to make its appeal to man's conscious feeling for religion, in reality Islam stirs up the deeply- buried and unconscious complex against the father, which is an attribute that pervades the minds of all men. ”

“ We have now seen how the case of Mohammed illustrates that the most intense desire to transcend the paternal authority cannot escape from the feeling that all authority whatsoever can be dispen- sed with. On the contrary, the phantasy that desires the abrogation of the father's omnipotence conceives simultaneously the existence of a still more tremendous power, and creates a fresh "father", either human or superhuman, in whom to repose these gigantic attributes. ”

“ For Amenhotep the roots of his venge fulness [3] Jay in the beautiful and gifted Asiatic princess, Teje; while the incestuous love of Mohammed was directed towards the gentle Amina, daughter of Khuweilid, whose very name “Amina”, “the Faithful”, is daily in the mouth of every Muslim throughout the world.
In the case of Mohammed the “Father-complex” was of a rather peculiar kind since, being born a posthumous child, he never knew his father. The place of the father was taken by his grandfather, hence for Mohammed there was strictly speaking a "grandfather-", rather than a "father-complex". ”

“ In his rules regarding Divorce, in spite of the provision insisted on for divorced women, Mohammed has always been regarded by most of his Christian biographers as a monster of licence: "Ye may divorce your wives twice; and then either retain them with humanity or dismiss them with kindness." "But if a husband divorce her a third time, she shall not be lawful for him again, until she marry another husband" (Koran, Chapter II) . ”

“ Many tpaditions are recorded of the sympathetic attachment of Mohammed and Khadijah, the one for the other, and all point to the deference Mohammed always paid to her and how he in- variably sought her advice and encouragement. At that great crisis of his life when he believed that he had received his first message from God by the mouth of the angel Gabriel, trembling and agitated, he tottered to Khadijah and told her of his vision and agony of mind. "Fear not", exclaimed Khadijah, "for joyful tidings dost thou bring. I will henceforth regard thee as the prophet of our nation. ”

“ As Amenhotep cast out Amon, the god of his father, and transferred his reverence to Aton on whom he conferred a might and majesty hitherto unknown to the gods of Egypt, so Mohammed cast out the gods of his father, Al-lat, Al-Uzza and Manah, who were worshipped as angels under femalenames, and preached the worship of the Jevohah of the Hebrews, modified to fit the demands of his phantasy. Thus:
"They do not call besides Him on any thing but inanimate objects, and they do not call on any thing but a devil devoid of all good," (Koran, Chapter IV, v. 117) and again ”

“ Finally Mary is placed by Mohammed among the four perfect women of the world — the other three being Miriam (Mary) the sister of Moses, Khadijah his wife, and Fatima his eldest daughter by Khadijah.
The guardianship of Abd-ul-Muttalib lasted only two years. At his death the charge of the orphan Mohammed was taken over by his uncle Abu Talib, elder brother of Mohammed's father. Abu Talib was no less zealous in his devotion to the child than his father had been. He made him sleep by his bed, eat by his side and go with him whenever he walked abroad. ”

“ This tendency to attack the authority of the father in the realm of religion and politics, as exemplified in the lives of Amenhotep and Mohammed, is not confined to individuals who show no other manifestation of mental derangement, but is now recognised to be a notable symptom of certain varieties of psychoneurosis. ”

“ When however the individual man is deprived by circumstances of male offspring, we may occasionally observe him to tum elsewhither in search of the means to gratify his vengefulness, and as such seekers both Amenhotep and Mohammed are examples. ”

“ Thus, in spite of the repeated insistence on reverence for all in authority made by him, Mohammed cannot escape from the charge that he taught his followers, directly or implicitly, to be- lieve that they should fight for their faith, that they should assert themselves as the favoured people, and that it is wrong for them to endure if they can help it, a direct and visible assertion ol infidel superiority. Hence the adherents of no religious system are so prone as the Mohammedans to sudden outbur.sts of frenzy against the very authority they are adjured to revere and obey. ”

“ This intense desire to beget sons has doubtless played a great part in the institution of polygamy, and, conceivably, a still greater one as regards polyandry, especially polyandry of the type practised by the Todas of India, where the brothers of a family unite as husbands of one woman 80 that among the Todas, in asking a man if he is married, one says, “Is there a son?” ”

“ It is recorded of the old man that he became greatly attached to his grandchild, and permitted him to take liberties that aroused the jealousy of his sons, who would attempt to drive the child away. "Let my little son alone", the old man would say, making room for him on the rug on which he sat. Mohammed soon began to feel and appreciate the bereavement he had suffered in the loss of both his parents and became, it is recorded, a pensive and meditative child. ”

“ Allah has not sent for them any authority. They follow naught but conjecture and the low desires which (their) souls incline to; and certainly the guidance has come to them from their Lord.
"Or shall man have what he wishes?" (Koran, Chapter LIII, v. 19-24) .
But in spite of the strength of the revolutionary tendencies of Amenhotep and Mohammed, we can observe in both a willingness to compromise on certain points, an attitude of mind that [4] is frequently a feature of the behaviour of psychoneurotics. ”

“ I. ↑ Another most significant feature in the determination of the vengefulness of Amenhotep and Mohammed, was the absence of male offspring to both of them. Since modern psychology began to throw light on the dark places of the unconscious life of mankind, few more notable discoveries have been made than those dealing with the ebb and flow of the eternal struggle between father and son, the fall and rise of ever-succeeding generations. ”

“ Thus in the case of Zeinab bint Jahsh, the incestuous "daughter-complex" was doubly repreA SHORT STUDY OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF MOHAMMED 47
seated, for she not only bore the same name as one of Moham- med's own daughters, but was the wife of his adopted son to whom he was so attached that he regarded him as his own son and had bidden him to call himself, Zeid bin Mohammed, that is, Zeid the son of Mohammed.
It is now well known that unconscious incestuous impulses often seek gratification through marriage with persons bearing the same name as the object of the incestuous affection. ”

“ So it comes about that after thirteen cen- turies we may observe an Asiatic, apathetic to a degree no ordinary European can comprehend, start up a hero, if appealed to in the name of Mohammed, fling away life with a glad laugh of exul- tation or risk a throne to defend a guest! ”