Islam: Imitation of Judaism? Psychoanalytic Food for Thought (article)

When Moses received the Law at Sinai, for believers, divine will was made manifest in human discourse. (Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Moses on the Margin, 2 vols., PhD thesis, 1984) It was the most important moment for Judaism’s identity. Like a ladder song, with a new round being added with each verse, Christianity accepted the Mosaic Law but sought to climb above Judaism by adding the New Testament to proclaim Jesus the Messiah. Then Islam also accepted the Mosaic Law as well as the New Testament with Jesus as a prophet of Islam and precursor of Muhammad but then added the Prophecy of Muhammad, yielding the Koran. (Muhammad ‘Ata UrRahim, Jesus: Prophet of Is-

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lam, 1992) Islam tried to claim the Truth over Christianity and Judaism by reopening revelation with the Prophet of the Seal. Moses’ Law initiates the particular shaping of each respective group’s sacred scriptures: the Hebrew Torah, the Christian New Testament, and the Muslim Koran. Psychoanalytically, each scripture serves as a distinct self-object for the group self of the faith community.

Besides Moses, Abraham is also a figure of authority. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are referred to as “the children of Abraham” (F.E. Peters, The Children of Abraham, 1984; R. Firestone, Children of Abraham, 2001) while Judaism and Christianity have often viewed themselves as the “parents” of Islam (Rabbi Daniel Polis, “Who Owns the Soul of Jerusalem?”, <www.uahc.org/rjmag/601dp.html>, July 7, 2002). Each has an ongoing relationship in real time with each other. While Freud described authority as paternal/Oedipal, contemporary psychoanalysis understands that often the father is a stand-in for the “Early Mother” because the infant’s first power struggle in life is with the mother. (R. Abraham, “Freud’s Mother Conflict and the Formulation of the Oedipal Father,” Psychoanalytic Review 69, 1982, pp. 441-453; A. Falk, “Political Assassination and Personality Disorder,” Mind and Human Interaction, 12, 2002, pp. 1, 2-34) Man created religion in order to fill a painful void left by the inability to mourn the loss of the Early Mother. (D. Capps, Men, Religion, and Melancholia, 1997; A. Falk, A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews, 1996) While Judaism is accepted as temporally the first Abrahamic faith by Christianity, Islam rejects this through the belief (fitra in Arabic) that Abraham was never a Jew. (Sura 3:58-60) Islam’s goal is to usurp Abraham’s authority and thereby to claim the ultimate authority. This is understandable given the hurt that Muhammad must have experienced when the Jews of Medina did not accept him as Prophet. However, this belief (fitra) cannot hide the fact that in historical time as opposed to religious/mythic time, Judaism occurred first.

Let me speculate that being “first” may be the fundamental psychoanalytic reason why Judaism and Jews are so hated, why anti-Semitism is so pervasive and persistent. Judaism may be identified unconsciously with the Early Mother. At times Judaism is venerated and at times reviled. This is splitting which also occurs with the Early Mother because she is the first who is experienced intimately by the infant—both blissful eros and miserable terror. The Early Mother is the first Other. Underlying the idea of first is the concept of one. The ordinal equivalent of counting 1, 2, 3, 4 is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. First and the number one are inextricably linked semantically in the unconscious.

This connection is of no small consequence when considering the fact that the idea of monotheism (Greek, monos, alone or singular) is also grounded in the notion of oneness, i.e., one God. Oneness is the essence of the maternal symbiosis. Monotheism is obsessively preoccupied with one God. Psychoanalytically, this has signaled a reference to the unity as represented by the maternal symbiosis of mother and infant. An image held sacred by Christianity and Islam (even though graven images are forbidden) is that of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. I have named it the “maternal cameo” and it represents graphically the idea that the psychological birth of the infant equals the maternal symbiosis. (Kobrin, 2002 in press)

Space does not permit me to examine the Abrahamic familial relations in depth nor to explore how Judaism has borrowed from Islam, especially from the seventh century to the fifteenth century. (Though, regarding the latter, Judaism borrowed heavily in poetic, grammatical, and literary forms; scientific learning; architecture; and even women’s head covering from Islam. More than just a list of items, Jews and Muslims often intermarried, especially during the eighth century, resulting in mutual borrowing. “Many present-day Israeli Jews who came from Muslim countries resemble the Muslims of their countries of origin in looks, speech, food, and habits more than they do their fellow Jews from Western countries.” [Falk, Psychoanalytic History, p. 381]) My remarks are limited to an assertion that Islam is an “imitation” of Judaism—an assertion made by Thomas Patrick Hughes and Sigmund Freud.

In A Dictionary of Islam, published in 1885 in London, Hughes wrote:

Many of the doctrines and social precepts of the Qur’an are also from Judaism…. Whilst, therefore, Muhammad took little of his religious system from Christianity, he was vastly indebted to Judaism both for his historical narratives and his doctrines and precepts. Islam is nothing more nor less than Judaism plus the Apostleship of Muhammad. The teachings of Jesus form no part of his religious system. (p. 236)

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Hughes spent 20 years as a Christian missionary in Peshawar, Pakistan, composing the dictionary for scholars of comparative religion, British colonial administrators, and travelers. He disingenuously claims that it was not meant as a weapon against Islam. Furthermore, Hughes misleads the reader by claiming that Jesus plays no important role in Islam. He contradicts himself because not only is the Koran replete with verses about Jesus but his own dictionary cites them. It is a curious comment which signals his own unconscious distancing from both of the Semitic peoples and their scriptures, with Christianity coming out on top! Hughes’ Dictionary is still in print to this day, remaining a critical reference for many scholars.

In Moses and Monotheism (1939), Freud wrote: “The founding of the Mahommedan religion seems to me like an abbreviated repetition of the Jewish one, of which it emerged as an imitation [emphasis mine].” (S.E., 23, p. 92) This reference to Islam is a hapax legomenon, the only time that Islam is ever mentioned in all of Freud’s scientific writings. Lost in Strachey’s sanitized translation is not just a specific gesture to both Luther and Erasmus (F. Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache, 1975, p. 499; N. Kobrin, “Freud’s Concept of Autonomy and Strachey’s Translation,” The Annual of Psychoanalysis, 21, 1992, pp. 201-223) but that Nachahmung connotes a counterfeit or bad imitation (Capitol’s Concise Dictionary, 1978, p. 69)

Was Freud anxious when he wrote this? Did he displace his mounting fears? On the preceding page Freud pondered the haunting eternal question as to why the Jews, his people, are so hated. His reply is simple—they were the “first-born” of God. (S.E., 23, p. 91) Is it possible that Freud dreaded the maternal presence lurking behind the chosen son theme? His mother called him “mein goldener Sigi” and she made it known that he was her favorite son. Nonetheless, Freud’s anxieties about Islam were, in part, reality-based because the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was busy forming an alliance with the Nazis. (Z. Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti, 1993) In turn, they were breathing down Freud’s neck in Vienna while he labored over this very manuscript. Ultimately he was forced to flee to England for his life. His three sisters were not as fortunate as they were murdered in German concentration camps. It is a complicated psychohistorical picture.

Strikingly similar accusations of Islam as an imitation raise the issue of whether Freud had access to Hughes’ Dictionary. A cursory review of his library does not confirm an instance of source-influence (personal communication with Freud Library, London), though this does not rule out the possibility that he unconsciously drew upon a 19th-century Orientalist stereotype of Islam or was acquainted with Abraham Geiger’s Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume auf genomen? (literally, What Has Mohammed Taken [or Borrowed] from Judaism?).

What is also so startling is that during this same time frame, Helene Deutsche, one of Freud’s disciples, described a personality type which she deemed imitative, called the “as-if” personality. (H. Deutsch, “Some Forms of Emotional Disturbance and Their Relationship to Schizophrenia,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 11, 1934, pp. 301-322) The designation describes an individual who has a weak sense of self though he creates a convincing illusion of having a solid identity which masks the fact that he is dependent on others in a parasitic way in order to facilitate a temporary persona of what to do and how to be moment to moment—the tendency to imitate is pervasive and at first not noticeable. “Imitation” in this discussion certainly has a pejorative meaning.

It is as if Islam is an “as-if” religion. But is this not defensive on Freud and Hughes’ part, who represent Judaism and Christianity by proxy? Is it not a means by which Freud and Hughes could dismiss the need to have to deal with the reality of Islam in a mature manner? A way of relegating Islam to the realm of fantasy through denial? Would it not also be offensive to Muslims? Such stereotyping does not promote peaceful coexistence nor does it act as a deterrence to violence.

Perhaps Judaism and Jews have not been able to deal with their pain of watching the Holy Torah being tampered with, taken over by Islam as Muhammad “amended” it with further revelations. Could it be that even today Jews continue to feel “shadowed” by Islam because of irrational fears and unarticulated fantasies that Islam will steal even more of their identity? Such unidentified fantasies may have inadvertently caused Judaism and Jews to cling to the idea of “chosenness,” which can easily become confused with the grandiosity of being special. Poorly understood even among Jews, chosenness or “electedness” is not supposed to be an exclusionary doctrine. Anyone can convert to Judaism should he or she desire to do so, provided they study and accept the Covenant.

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Could Judaism inadvertently be pouring oil on Islamic flames of rage by inferring that it is a counterfeit imitation? By not consciously knowing its fear and dread of being overwhelmed and engulfed by Islam, Judaism resides in a psychohistorical blind spot. However, all fear is in part reality-based. Judaism’s fear becomes clearer when one considers world demographics of religious adherents. There are approximately 1.2 billion Muslims in comparison to 12 to 14 million Jews—a ratio of about 100 to 1. (www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html) The disparity in numbers suggests engulfment.

Imitation or copy can also suggest a double, almost a twin. Having a double helps and hinders. On the one hand, it protects the self from isolation and loneliness. (R. Ullman and D. Brothers, The Shattered Self, 1993) On the other, the double can be split off, projected on to the other and then attacked. A person or a group never has to learn how to contain aggression and rage because they can simply blame and attack the other. Could this be the case for Judaism and Islam who have a long-standing ambivalent, bloody relationship (as well as times of peaceful coexistence, for example, in medieval Spain and the Ottoman Empire) because they are so close in sacred Semitic languages, customs, law, and geography? They are nearly doubles in some key respects.

Islam is not without its problems, which may be detected in its globalizing tendency to lay claim to everything and everyone from the moment of Creation as mentioned above, as it asserts its legitimacy, claiming to be the first of the monotheisms. Take for example, the belief (fitra) that Abraham was a Muslim not a Jew. Another retrospective belief is that Allah created Islam at the beginning of time with Adam as the first Muslim. Yet a third claims that every human being is born Muslim but that it is only parental ignorance which has led the child away from the true religion, Islam. Even the Islamic creation of Dhimmeh, (Ar., protectorate status for the People of the Book, i.e., Jews and Christians) is patronizing. (B. Ye’or, The Dhimmi, 1985) Ironically, these beliefs begin to show how Islam differs from Judaism.

The idea of imitation itself is part of the source-influence conundrum; under other conditions, imitation is said to be the highest form of flattery. Borrowing goes on all the time, yet no group owns language nor even has exclusive rights to sacred writings.

The Five Pillars of Islam is an example of borrowing where each Pillar can be traced back to Judaism: the Arabic Shahadah, bearing witness to the oneness of God and the prophethood of Muhammad, and the Hebrew Shm’a, affirmation of faith in one God; Salat (Ar.), prayer five times a day, and Tefilah (Heb.), prayer three times a day; Tsawm (Ar.), fasting from dawn to dusk during the month of Ramadan, and Tsom (Heb.), fasting generally from sunset to sundown (both deriving from the same proto-Semitic root); Zakat (Ar.), the giving of alms, and Tsedaka (Heb.), the giving of alms (again the Arabic and Hebrew terms are cognates); and, finally, Haj (Ar.), the pilgrimage to Mecca, and Aliyah (Heb.), pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year as cited in the Bible.

Could unacknowledged indebtedness on the part of Islam to Judaism be another part of the problem? Debt is a reminder of maternal dependency. (M. Dimen, “Money, Love and Hate,” Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 4, 1994, pp. 69-100) Is Judaism asking too much of Islam to acknowledge its Judaic roots? Allow me to extend the metaphor of mother-son for the sake of argument: Should the Judaic mother demand of her Muslim son such gratitude? But gratitude can never be coerced; it must be of one’s own volition. Cast as the Early Mother and blind to it, Judaism may be looking for recognition in all the wrong places.

By way of conclusion, there is one recent development that might be food for thought: the commonality of Jewish and Islamic dietary laws known respectively as Kashrut (Heb., allowed) and Halal (Ar., lawful). At a growing number of universities, such as Mount Holyoke and Dartmouth, an effort has emerged to meet the dietary needs of Jewish and Muslim students by providing Kosher and Halal food service. While Middle East politics may be too sensitive an issue to discuss at the table, Jewish and Muslim students are sharing the same food, though reciting different blessings over it according to their respective traditions. Sitting together they make manifest the etymological meaning of companion (literally, com- or with + panis or bread), breaking bread together. Explicitly maternal, dietary laws articulate a safe frame around food that nurtures. Whoever sits at the dinner table should always be counted as a full-fledged member in a family. The fact that Islamic law allows the eating of Kashrut as Halal for its adherents is also an unconscious gesture recognizing its Jewish mother.

However, for Jews Halal does not equate with Kashrut. It is a reminder of difference and

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that the metaphor of familial relations has its limitations. In reality, Judaism is not Islam’s mother, nor is Islam Judaism’s son. As metaphors, though, they create and shape powerful unconscious wishes and fantasies in the psychodynamics of the Abrahamic family. In the end, Judaism and Islam are religious systems tied to cultures, languages, and geography that are very similar but also different. Therefore, they should not fear and dread each other the way that they do.

It is when Jews and Muslims attempt to work out their respective unconscious issues with their own parents in the public arena of inter-religious warfare that they have problems. By recognizing and containing one’s own feelings of shame, humiliation, and rage, rather than experiencing these internal persecutory feelings as veridical and equal to external reality, there exists the real possibility to avoid war. War is the misrecognition of the Other as feared when, in fact, the Other is familiar and legitimate. The language of metaphor locks-in projective identifications about family issues that belong in their respective families but, even more importantly, the rageful feelings need to be contained within the self and not projected even onto one’s own family members. (J.H. Berke et al., eds., Even Paranoids Have Enemies, 1998) Admittedly this is a tall order. However, pondering the dilemma may clear the ground to identify more islands of coexistence from which to build a more viable peace. This little table talk in Clio’s Psyche is offered as psychoanalytic food for thought. Consider it a Kosher-Halal snack.

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