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Understanding Muhammad | 
 enlarge | Author: Ali Sina
Publisher: Felibri.com
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 31628
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 280
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0980994802
EAN: 9780980994803
ASIN: 0980994802
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
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Product Description
Why are some Muslims intolerant, violent and supremacist? Why do they bully? What spurs them to riot and murder over the silliest things? To understand Muslims, one must understand their prophet. This psychobiography seeks to unveil the mystery of the prophet of Islam. Historians tell us Muhammad used to withdraw to a cave, spending days wrapped in his thoughts. He heard bells ringing and had ghostly visions. He thought he was demon possessed, until his wife reassured him he had become a prophet. Convinced of his status, he was intolerant of those who rejected him, assassinated those who criticized him, raided, looted, and massacred entire populations. He reduced thousands to slavery, raped, and allowed his men to rape female captives. All of this, he did with a clear conscience and a sense of entitlement. He was magnanimous toward those who admired him, but vengeful toward those who did not. He believed he was the most perfect human creation and the universe's raison d'etre. Muhammad was no ordinary man. This book ventures beyond the stories. Focusing on the "why" rather than the "what," it unravels the mystique of one of the most enigmatic and influential men in history. Islam is Muhammadanism. Muslims worship and emulate Muhammad. Only by understanding him can one know what makes them tick. Understanding Muhammad begins with a brief history of his life. Muhammad had a loveless childhood. He then passed to the care of relatives who took pity on him and spoiled him. As the result he developed narcissistic personality disorder, a trait that made him a megalomaniac bereft of conscience. Muhammad believed in his own cause. Even when he lied, he felt entitled and justified to do so. Thanks to another mental illness, namely temporal lobe epilepsy, the prophet of Islam had vivid hallucinations he interpreted as mystical and divine intimations. He also suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, causing his fixations on numbers, rituals and stringent rules. In the addition, he suffered from acromegaly, a disease caused by excessive production of a growth hormone resulting in large bones and odd facial features. The combination of his psychological disorders and his unusual physiognomy made him a phenomenon that set him apart from ordinary people. His uneducated followers interpreted his differences as signs of his prophethood. Like devotees of all cults, they rose to champion his cause with dedication. By defying death and butchering others they made Islam the world's second largest religion, now the biggest threat to world peace. The author argues that Islam is incompatible with democracy and human rights, and the only way to avert the clash between barbarity and civilization, and a world disaster, is to expose its fallacy and demystify it. "Muslims must be weaned from Islam for humanity to live in peace," says Ali Sina.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Muhammad and his fake ... July 19, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
All people who are ill do not produce ill thoughts and do not do acts of evil. Only some people who are ill do. Muhammad was probably one of those,
his illness used as an instrument by others, who then profited.
Should be read by all muslims espesially, all over the world, and the sooner the better. Together with christians, but not neccesarily at the same place or in the same room.
Muslims should now allow Muhammad to be put at risk of beeing "de-troned", like alle other leaders are or will be, once light is forcused on them. All great leaders seems in a way to benefit from this,
making their descisionmaking more understanable, why not scritunize the prophet,to the benefit of all muslims?
Ali Sina has done a good work and a good book here. To learn a lot from, understanding the unfolding drama becomes more and more important every day, every hour - counts.
The last book you will need to read about Islam July 7, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Had I not taken the advice of several of the above reviewers, perhaps I would have passed up this rational and unrefuted psychological examination of Mohammad and the true explanation of what (and why) muslims think and act as they do. I've never read anything as compelling with the potential of freeing enslaved minds as well as shaking up Islamic apologists.
I'll never view another news story, read another account of Islamic culture or history without appreciating and applying what I have learned. Muslims will continue to threaten Ali Sina with hell. Nothing in this work dissuades a person from a belief in God but I imagine readers will never again be able to keep a serious face when someone says Mohammad's Allah is God Almighty, creator of the universe. No question Islam is a house of cards and will soon collapse.
Buy the book, buy it new, I imagine his security costs are high. You'll benefit by acquiring one more degree of understanding above these cultists that may in time be used to help them and all of civilization.
The simple, yet hard-to-swallow truth about Islam June 28, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Few people know Islam well like Ali Sina - and even less match his courage in taking such a firm stand against it.
He is one of the few to critically analyze the root of Islam through the means of rational thinking and modern storiography - without the relativist curtain and the will of appeasing foreign cultures that is so widespread among many Western intellectuals. He is certainly the first to take the next step and analyze the psyche and mindset of its founder through the lens of modern psychology.
The picture he draws is extremely disturbing - but sadly, everything that Sina argues is soundly foolproof, reliably quoted from mainstream Islamic theology.
This is both the strength and the weak point of this book: many people who are not accustomed to the main points of the critic of Islam will be surprised by the harshness of words against Islam's doctrine and its founder, that is why I recommend this book only to those who are already familiar with the doctrine of Islam beyond its facade of Taqiya and political correctness.
If you are a Muslim don't bother: you might even change your mind about being one after reading it.
Unique biography of Muhammad June 26, 2008
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
There are many biographies of Muhammad and they all look the same. Even if we compare Muhammad's biography from his first biographer Ibn Ishaq, with, say, the one from Robert Spencer (The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion), we will not find many differencies. Basically Ishaq views Muhammad's murders, genocides and debaucheries as holy acts of Allah's Apostle worthy of emulation, while Spencer sees them as contemptible, but the content of both books is basically the same.
Ali Sina writes about Muhammad from different and so far largely unexplored point of view. After recapitulation of Muhammad's life written by critical pen of ex-muslim he examines Muhammad from point of view of modern psychology, psychiatry and psychopathology. He discovers Muhammad as a cult leader of the same kind as Adolf Hitler, Josif Stalin or Jim Jones. He is quoting from psychiatric textbooks and descriptions of different cults and compares described psychopathology with Muhammad's behaviour in different situations and shows that his personality fits the profile of mentally disturbed person and cult leader like a hand in a glove.
Classical martial wisdom says: know your enemy. For a practicing muslim Muhammad is a perfect model of conduct worthy od emulation in every aspect. Therefore his personality is the key to understanding of thinking of Muslims and of danger that those who really follow their prophet are posing to us - and also of unstable situation of those muslims who are living with idyllic fantasies of him. Ali Sina's book is unique and propably the best available tool which allows us to get such understanding.
Prophetic Analysis June 22, 2008
13 out of 21 found this review helpful
Prophetic Analysis from staringattheview.blogspot.com
Imagine that three individuals were each commissioned to prepare the psychological profile of a self-appointed religious prophet who founded a tightly-knit community in Arizona in the mid-1800's.
The prophet, soon after the death of his wife of 25 years, began having dreams about the six-year-old daughter of his best friend and persuaded the friend that God had told him to marry her. He later used the same God-told-me-so line to convince his adopted son to divorce his attractive wife so he could marry her as well. The community was polygamous, but the prophet was the only man who could have as many women as he wanted.
The community had few financial resources, so the prophet developed the idea of robbing stagecoaches and trains that passed through the area. Slavery was legal within the community, and the people who were not killed on these raids were used and sold as slaves. Male members of the community had full sexual access to the female slaves.
The prophet's ambitions were much larger than the few hundred converts he garnered his first few years. He fully expected all the people of the area to accept his prophethood and join the community. When some refused, he turned viciously against them. Eight hundred men were killed in one day, and the rest were driven to outlying regions. When he realized that his people did not have the agricultural and industrial resources to provide for the needs of the community, he came up with a new strategy. He again attacked the people he had recently driven away, this time allowing them to live in exchange for giving him fifty percent of their produce. Shortly before his death, he stated a new ruling that they were to be driven completely from Arizona and never allowed to return.
As often happens with religious and political leaders who see themselves as chosen vessels, the prophet became more intolerant to criticism as he grew older and more powerful. Stories of the murder and assassination of his critics became increasingly common. One of his disciples bragged that he had come across a one-eyed sheep rancher who said he would never join the prophet's group. The disciple waited until the rancher fell asleep, and then thrust a sharpened stick into the rancher's good eye so hard it came out the back of his neck. The disciple next captured an associate of the rancher, tied his thumbs together, and led him to the prophet. The prophet laughed so hard at the sight, according to the disciple, that, "You could see his back teeth". The prophet blessed the disciple when he heard how he had killed the one-eyed rancher.
About the same time a 100-year old poet wrote lines critical of the prophet and his followers. In reference to the many regulations the prophet had established for the community, the poet noted, "You follow someone who divides everything into `This is allowed' and `That is forbidden'." As soon as the prophet heard this, he sent someone to assassinate the old poet.
A second poet, the mother of five children, was courageous enough to criticize the murder of the old man. She wrote, "I despise you people....you who obey a stranger and expect good things from him after he killed all your leaders." The prophet, realizing he was the "stranger" she was writing about, sent one of his followers to kill her. She was murdered in her bed that night with her nursing child lying by her side. Her murderer, perhaps touched with remorse by the heinousness of his crime, asked the prophet if anything bad would happen to him. The prophet replied that her death was of no more significance than two goats butting their heads together in the back yard.
Some time after the prophet's death, it was discovered that the Arizona desert underneath his followers' feet contained the world's largest diamond resources. Community members became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and began to use their new-found riches to extend the prophet's vision that the entire world come under the influence of his teachings and principles.
Now back to the first sentence, where "three individuals" are each commissioned to write a profile of the prophet. The first is a university professor who is an expert in the teachings of the prophet even though he has not joined the prophet's community. He was recently given 25 million dollars by that community to establish a university department where the teachings of the prophet are examined. He is careful to only teach a version of community history appoved by his sponsors. His students rarely learn incidents such as the deaths of the poets and the role of the community in the slave trade as noted above. They know nothing about the world-wide political aspirations of the group.
The second individual is a fully-committed member of the community. She has been taught since her birth that the life of the prophet is the perfect model for all humankind to follow. She doesn't even know many of the details of that life, such as his treatment of the exiles who did not accept his message. She only knows what she was taught, one side of the story, and is not interested in learning more.
The third person is an ex-member of the community. He was born and raised within it, similar to individual number two, but at a certain stage began to question the things he had always been ordered to simply believe. His questioning led to doubt, and the doubt resulted in his leaving the community. He now sees himself as free, but his former associates, including individual number two above, view him as a traitor. Even the university professor, individual number one, despises him because he is not sufficiently "academically trained", according to the professor, to critically examine the community of which he was once a part.
Which of these three individuals might give the most objective profile of the prophet's life? If your answer is individual number three, I recommend this book by Ali Sina.
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