Why Defend the Prophet?

[qatarperegrine]

Texas A&M's Cultural Exchange Club flew in a guest speaker last night to address the question "Why Defend the Prophet?" The speaker was Abdul-Rahman Thakir Hamed, MD, a clinical psychologist from Dubai.

On the whole, I was disappointed in the talk. I went because I wanted to hear someone discuss that topic, but instead Dr. Thankir gave a very loosely organized talk on his particular interpretation of Quranic psychology (in which he has a doctorate). I took four pages of notes so that I could post an outline of his talk, but to be brutally honest it was too vaguely organized to outline. So here, in an unorganized fashion, are some of his more interesting comments.

• Dr. Thakir felt that the word "defend" was too negative and reactive. He also felt strongly that "The Prophet doesn't need anyone to defend him," and that for a Muslim to feel that he/she is defending the prophet is akin to a "weak soldier claiming to defend a huge castle." Thus he chose to bypass defending Muhammad's honor and instead focus his remarks on why we misunderstand each other. (Only he didn't really do that, either.)


• A large part of the lecture was spent on very strange diagrams, like this one of "ideal thinking methodology":
  
  He used these to illustrate the fact that most people are primarily reactive -- acting on primitive reflexes -- and don't demonstrate wisdom, because we bypass the "humanity" box of the diagram. We should instead be mindful, like Caliph 'Ali, who once refrained from killing a man in battle because the man had just urinated on him, and he realized that if he killed the man after that it would be for his own honor and not for Allah.


• What differentiates people from one another is the "manual" we follow, i.e. the external or internal authority that tells us right from wrong. One the one hand, he said it's not bad that different cultures have different manuals. (He cited the Quranic verse that says that God created us in different nations that we may come to know one another.) On the other hand, the existence of many manuals causes confusion. He suggested that, in the first 800 years of Islam, only four people got schizophrenia and there was hardly any depression, anxiety or suicidality. This was because everyone followed the same manual of human nature, which was authored by God. These days libraries are full of books with competing understandings of human nature (e.g. Freud, Sartre), and as a result people get confused about their identity and get schizophrenia. (I will refrain from describing his digression into the APA's removal of homosexuality from the DSM in 1973 and how we are one short step away from societal acceptance of bestiality. Senator Santorum would have felt quite at home.)


• He also talked about the importance of "unconditioned emotional acceptance" and said that both sides need to be more flexible and more accepting of one another. He condemned a "whoever is not for me is against me" attitude that causes people to treat others as enemies simply because they are different.


• My favorite of his points was that, because we all operate on different manuals (the Qur'an, the U.S. Constitution, our own opinions), we have different definitions of key terms. Everyone, East or West, says that human rights and freedom are important, but what does that mean? For example, does freedom include the freedom to ignore traffic lights, or to cast aspersions on people's mothers' sex lives? We also operate on different logic systems.


• Dr. Thakir said that the publication of the Danish cartoons was not in itself a problem; it was simply a symptom of an underlying problem. He doesn't blame the West for inflammatory cartoons, because he says that "if Muslims were good marketers of the Prophet, it wouldn't be possible for people to draw those cartoons." The important thing is therefore not to defend the Prophet, but to live life as such a good Muslim that those around you will respect what you stand for.