Muhammad and the Islamic Community

Review of Subhash C. Inamdar, Muhammad and the Rise of Islam: The Creation of Group Identity. Madison, Connecticut: Psychosocial Press, 2001. ISBN 1887841288, pp. xix + 266, $40.00.

Subhash Inamdar has written an informative and a very suggestive book about Muhammad and the rise of Islam. His narrative serves as an example of how psychobiography (Muhammad’s personal life) and group psychohistory (the creation of the entire Islamic community, or umma) can be successfully wedded together. The author is a professor at New York University School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry. In the book’s preface he informs the readers that he was born in the port city of Mombasa, Kenya, where Africa collided with the seafaring Indian, Arab, and European worlds. It becomes clear that he has been

Page 66

exposed to many cross-cultural winds that enabled him to examine both lovingly and critically the early rise of Islam as a culture that succeeds in providing a sense of well-being to its members.

Nevertheless, the reader, who by now anticipates an exciting portrayal of Muhammad as a creator of a group identity, needs to be patient. There are academic dues to be paid by plodding through Part I: The Formation of a Group and Group Identity as well as through Part II: Psychoanalytic and Sociological Perspectives. It is all written in the style of a doctoral dissertation in the behavioral sciences. These chapters provide an excellent summary and integration of the contributions of psychology, sociology, and anthropology to the fields of individual growth and group formation. For a narrative that is burdened with social science jargon, it is written quite clearly and is of value to teachers and researchers. Moreover, it can serve as a somewhat abstract introduction to any group story, not just that of Islam. But in the meantime, Muhammad and Islam need to wait for the readers to be properly educated in the social sciences so as to be better able to appreciate the history of the new Islamic group when they finally come to read it. The social scientist is not likely to complain about the book’s division. The general reader, however, might possibly have benefited more if, instead of the lengthy social science prolegomena, the author would have delved right away into the rise of Islam and inject more social science insights into the story to illuminate specific events as they occur. In fairness to the author it should be acknowledged that he has done some of that, especially with regard to the theoretical contributions of Erik Erikson. What is more, both Part III: The World Before Islam and the Birth of a Prophet and Part IV: The Rise of Islam, make for a suspenseful reading that compensates for the earlier more laborious reading of the theoretical sections. One could easily sense that the last two sections of the book were written by someone who knows this world from the inside and whose vivid outlook was enriched by cross-cultural perspectives.

Inamdar provides the readers with a lucid description of the diversity of pre-Islamic Arabia. There were geographic and climatic differences, tribal and ethnic divisions, different spoken dialects, and there was a contrast between city dwellers and groups leading nomadic life that prompted both economic cooperation and competition. There were also the threats from surrounding empires that operated on a politico-military scale far larger than that of the limited Arab tribal framework. What is more, the major polytheistic cults among the Arab tribes and clans felt an increasing challenge posed by the universalist religions, mainly Christianity and Judaism. In the seventh century it all added up to a rising cultural, economic, and military challenge for the divided tribes and clans of Arabia. An adequate solution for this mounting challenge required nothing less than the creation of a new group identity.

Muhammad stumbled into this psychohistorical calling through a series of “revelations.” His somewhat precarious life circumstances of being orphaned and of lacking adequate clan support to insure his physical safety in the face of clashes or feuds served as springboards for his creative compensations. His firsthand experience of vulnerability to and dependence on the actions of the group reinforced his predilection to seek creative group solutions for problems which he experienced individually. But in and by itself, being in a precarious situation does not guarantee the generation of creative solutions. An added impulse is necessary to turn a person into such a unique individual as Muhammad was. It manifested itself through “revelations” that signaled his own dawning recognition that he was charged with the prophetic task of forging a new identity not only for himself but for the yet to be united Arabs.

Muhammad’s father died before he was born. His mother died when he was six years old and his grandfather died when he was eight years old. Consequently Muhammad’s physical and emotional needs as a child had to be taken care of by his extended family on which he had to depend for basic security. The extended family came through for him. But he was aware of his vulnerability. This experience taught him the pitfalls of insecurity and the vital importance of the larger group for providing security. At age 25 he married the 40-year-old Khadija, a merchant woman, who was a constant, and probably motherly, source of strength for him at a crucial point in his life. She trusted in his revelations even as he had doubts and wondered whether he was insane. With her support he persisted in his struggles to create a new group identity for the Arabs before they became united by Islam.

Permeating Inamdar’s discussions of the rise of a new Islamic identity are three central principles of group formation. The first is that the representational world of a group should tie the individual identities of its members to the larger group

Page 67

identity. The second is that the representational worlds of either a small child or the group at large must satisfy basic physiological needs, safety and security needs, and the need for basic trust or a sense of justice. Following Erikson’s notion of the importance of social institutions that would tend to these needs, Inamdar identified them as a free economy, police and army, and a legal system, respectively. The third principle, following Freud, was that an effective leadership model that successfully binds individual members to their group includes both the vertical identification with a leader/father figure and the horizontal or brotherly identification with fellow group members.

The author attributed Islam’s rapid spread and durability to Muhammad’s intuitive adherence to these basic principles of group formation. Having internalized the traditional representational world of his clan in pre-Islamic Arabia, Muhammad now transformed it. He advanced the notion of an umma, a single community whose political power was converted into a religious authority. It had a small beginning in Medina but it had an almost limitless growth potential. Divine grace was now symbolized by the worshipers themselves. Under an overall religious umbrella, a moral and financial solidarity was established that propped up military enterprises. Eventually these enterprises gave rise to an empire whose success was regarded as a validation of the universalist religion of Islam. By tracing Islam back to the truly original religion of Abraham the Patriarch as well as of Moses, and by identifying Islam as the original and true version of monotheism compared to the Jewish and Christian false versions, Muhammad made Islam independent of Judaism and Christianity and fully capable of responding to the challenge that universalist religions posed to the pre-Islamic polytheistic culture. In essence he provided a representational world of the Islamic group that transcended tribal limits, geographic borders, or language barriers. This new representational world of a would-be huge religious and political group confirmed as well as transcended the individual identities of its members.

Muhammad also was attuned to the duty of the group to satisfy basic physical and emotional needs of its members. Both power and justice were needed for that purpose. Power was provided by a metamorphosis of the old tribal razzias, or raids, into jihad, or striving, as the expanding umma was to fight the unbelievers. Growing Arab armies provided more power and economic largess. Equitable distribution of loot provided justice. Furthermore, embracing Islam provided safety and security from tribal blood feuds. A central mechanism for peaceful arbitration of conflicts was established with Muhammad at its head. Only he was “God’s messenger,” and through various steps he dissociated himself from any links that would imply favoritism toward any particular tribe or clan. To insure justice and a sense of trust, the payment to support the poor and the needs of the general community was included as one of the five Pillars of Islam. Somehow Muhammad understood that in order to ensure a project one must fund it! He therefore enshrined it in the religious law.

Lastly, Muhammad had an intuitive grasp of the special role of the leader. He took care to remain a unique and unrivalled messenger of God so as to serve as an undiluted focus for identification. He reinforced the perception that he represents the umma at large and not any specific subgroup. Vertical identification with the leader was therefore facilitated. Moreover, the major idea of the new Islamic community with which he came to be identified could now even substitute for his active leadership role. Muhammad may have opted for just such a substitution when he chose not to name a successor. As for the horizontal identification of members of the umma with each other, Muhammad reinforced it by special acts such as instituting a pact of brotherhood between the “Helpers” group and the “Emigrants” group in Medina. By and large, though, the horizontal identification among all Muslims was strengthened by the shared representational world of their new religion and further reinforced by the sense of brotherhood that fellow jihad warriors were likely to share.

The book includes other intriguing topics such as group immortality and the promise of heavenly paradise for fallen jihad warriors. All these make reading the book truly worthwhile. The focus of the book is on Muhammad and the rise of Islam. It was not meant to deal with Islam’s subsequent decline, its current crises vis-à-vis modernity and its clash with the West. But the author was of course aware of these issues that concern both Islam and the West. The West has its own crisis as the result of industrialization and modernization. What happened in the West is that, in industrialized nations of the post-Enlightenment era with a secular and scientific worldview, major changes have taken place. Extended family, clan, religion, and kingdom have given way to nuclear family, class, and nation state, respectively. The

Page 68

author believes that the conflicts that these changes generated could wreck Europe from within. At this point one may wonder whether the author contemplates at least some Islamic solutions for the ills of the West. On one occasion and in reference to the Quranic verse (60:7), “It may be that God will establish love between you and those with whom you are at enmity,” the author made the following statement concerning this theme of reconciliation with the hated other: “The revelation that the revered founder of Islam fulfilled is the most powerful message that Islam has for a changed world of today where our capacity for mutual and assured destruction poses immeasurable risk.” This statement serves as a timely reminder that the voices of Islam are not only the voices of extremist fundamentalism and violent hatred. The ills of the West are surely there. But let us also remember that, during its Golden Age in the ninth and tenth centuries, Islam was actually the “West” of its time and fairly secular in its pursuit of science.

Page 69