Questions and Answers

Throughout the Bible, God is addressed as Father.

For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.

Isaiah 63:16

Both Christians and Jews call Him Father. Although Islam claims to worship this same God, Muslims do not acknowledge Him as Father.

Not only is Allah NOT Father, but it is also a grave sin to attribute this title to Him, according to Muslims.

“No one has the freedom, no matter how well-intentioned, to ascribe to Allah Most High such false names and attributes as ‘father’ that they themselves create. That is a very grave sin indeed. Rather Allah Most High has Himself provided all His beautiful names (al Asma al-Husnah) in the Qur’an, and ‘father’ is most certainly not one of them, and can never be one of them.”

Imran Hosein, in his article “Islam rejects the false doctrine of the fatherhood of God”

Allah has 99 names/titles but not one of them is “Father” or even close to it.

In fact, in the Quran, Allah specifically denies any such relationship. The only relationship Allah has is as SLAVEMASTER.
“Not one of the beings in the heavens and the earth but must come to (Allah) Most Gracious as a slave.” Sura 19:93 

Why does Islam deny the Fatherhood of God? What happened in the 7th-century Arabian desert? I’ll tell you what happened. Muhammad happened. I believe the trauma he experienced growing up contributed to his skewed view of what a “Father” means.

Muhammad’s father, Abdullah, died before he was even born. He grew up fatherless. From a very young age, he was passed from guardian to guardian. His own mother, Amina bint Wahab, instead of taking care of the poor little kid, leaves him to the care of a wet-nurse named Halimah.

After a while, Halimah refuses to look after the child Muhammad because she was convinced he was cursed and demon-possessed and returns him to his mother. (source: Guillaume, Alfred, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford University Press, 1955. ISBN 0-1963-6033-1; p. 72.)

Imagine such horrifying stories circulating in the neighborhood. Ask yourself what this does to a 5 year old. Imagine the rejection, shame, guilt, hurt, and bitterness he must have endured growing up. In less than 2 years, his mother dies. To become an orphan at such a young age would have been disastrously traumatizing for a poor loveless kid like Muhammad.

He never had a father figure who could nurture or guide or counsel him when he was growing up. His grandfather who had guardianship over him for a brief period also tragically passed away. Muhammad was only 8. How damaging this must have been to his fragile psyche, not only to be orphaned but also to witness death after death of those who were supposed to take care of him, especially someone in the shape of a father figure, at such a tender age.

This carried on even in Muhammad’s later years as a young adult. Waraqa, who was the cousin of Muhammad’s first wife Khadijah, took him under his wing and became that father figure Muhammad never had. Unfortunately, Waraqa also died unexpectedly. This completely devastated Muhammad and sent him spiraling into depression which led to his attempts at committing suicide!

Muhammad grew up with so much bitterness and rejection, that he would have made a fascinating subject as a patient of psychiatrists and psychologists today.

His first wife Khatijah was a strong, intelligent, wise, capable, wealthy woman who owned and managed her own business. Everything that Muhammad was not. She was 12-15 years older than him. I put it to you that Muhammad married her because she fulfilled his need for the “father figure” that he had been craving all his life. She took him in, looked after him, and cared for him. She fed him, gave him a job and a livelihood, and a purpose. It is interesting to note that Muhammad never married anyone else while Khatijah was alive. For almost 25 years, until Muhammad was around 50, she was his one and only wife. He never needed to marry anyone else because all his needs were met, particularly his life-long craving for a father figure.

In fact, there is an account in the hadith that after Muhammad first had the encounter in the cave with an unknown being, it terrified him so much that he ran back home believing he was demon-possessed. Like a scared kid running home to dad for protection, Muhammad fled home to Khatijah, who like any good “father” would do, consoled and comforted him and assured him.

It was only after she died, that Muhammad began marrying many women, accumulating multiple wives within a short period of time. Why? I believe he was looking for another “Khatijah”. He married one woman after another, desperately seeking that “father figure” he lost in Khatijah. He never found it.

I believe this is why he could never understand or accept the concept of the Fatherhood of God. Despite hearing the Jews and Christians around him teach what their Scripture clearly reveals about God, that He was a loving and gracious Father, it was a strange and unacceptable idea for Muhammad. Muhammad could never comprehend such a loving intimate relationship because of his tragic childhood and lifelong trauma. In fact, the very word “father” conjured up in him, reminders of the rejection and emotional abandonment he suffered. Muhammad named his wives as “Mother of the Believers, but there is no “Father” of the believers. It seems that the very word “father” became like a curse to him.

In Muhammad’s revelation of God, he conceived the idea that God was unknowable, distant, and incapable of a relationship with man. It was a sad reflection of the relationship he never had with his father. In fact, the god named Allah was the god of his father, Abdullah! Abdullah, who lived and died as a pagan, ironically means “servant of Allah”. Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraish were pagans who worshipped 360 idols of the kaabah. The idol named Allah was the idol that Abdullah, Muhammad’s father, was named in honor of. Thus, Allah became the god that Muhamamd chose, for the sake of the father he never knew.

The following is an excerpt from the book, “Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography Of Allah’s Prophet“by Ali Sina.

“Muhammad believed in his own cause. He was so certain of the reality of his hallucinations that he expected everyone to believe too. He made his Allah indignantly ask “What! Do you then dispute with him [Muhammad] as to
what he saw?” (Q.53:12) This is psychopathology. Why should others believe in what he saw? Isn’t it up to him to prove what he saw was real? Only a narcissist expects others to believe in his claims without asking for evidence.

Muhammad was an orphan. Spurned by his mother in his infancy and left in the care of a Bedouin couple, he had a loveless childhood. He then passed to the care of his grandfather and uncle who took pity on him and spoiled him. Not receiving love at a time he needed unconditional love and not receiving discipline when he needed to learn about boundaries, he developed narcissistic personality disorder, a trait that made him a megalomaniac bereft of conscience.

He fantasized about unlimited power, expected praise and admiration, believed he was special, and expected others to believe him and go along with his ideas and plans. He took advantage of others, was jealous, yet believed others were jealous of him, and was extremely hurt when rejected, even killing those who deserted him. He lied and deceived, feeling entitled and justified in doing so. All these are traits of narcissistic personality disorder.

Thanks to another mental illness, temporal lobe epilepsy, the prophet of Islam had vivid hallucinations he interpreted as mystical and divine intimations. When he claimed he heard voices, saw angels and other ghostly entities, he was not lying. He could not distinguish reality from fantasy. Muhammad also suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, causing his fixations on numbers, rituals and stringent rules. This explains why he lived such an austere life and why his religion is filled with so many absurd rules.

In the later years of his life Muhammad was affected by acromegaly, a disease caused by excessive production of a growth hormone, resulting in large bones, cold and fleshy hands and feet and coarse facial features such as enlarged
lips, nose and tongue. Acromegaly occurs after the age of 40 and usually kills the patient in his early 60s. It causes erectile dysfunction (impotence).

On the other hand temporal lobe hyper activism increases libido. This explains Muhammad’s sexual vagaries in his old age and why in the later years of his life he had such an insatiable craving for sex. He would visit all his 9 wives in one
night to touch and fondle them, without being satisfied. His impotence explains his insecurity, paranoia, and intense jealousy of his young wives. He ordered them to cover themselves, lest other men would cast a lusting eye on them. Today, half a billion Muslim women veil themselves, because Muhammad was impotent.

Muhammad’s illnesses explain a lot of mysteries of Islam. The combination of all these psychological disorders and his unusual physiognomy made Muhammad 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 and the survival of human civilization.”