The Necessity of Atheism

diseases, no particular psychosis but a loss of mental and moral sense.

There are two types of individuals who can produce seizures such as
Mohammed was wont to evoke at will. One type is the hysterical, and the
other is that degraded individual who for the sake of collecting alms
will place a piece of soap in his mouth, enter a crowded street, fall
to the ground, and proceed to foam at the mouth and twist and contort
himself as an epileptic does. That is the charlatan, the faker, and that
brings us to the second aspect of his (Mohammed's) character.

"Outside of Arabia, Paganism was in general disrepute. The dissolute and
declining Romans were cracking lewd jokes in the very faces of their
gods, the myriad followers of Confucius, Buddha and Zoroaster were
either too remote or too helpless to matter in one way or another.
Talmudic Judaism and Oriental Christianity despised idolatry and
worshipped the same Jehovah, even though they disputed with each other,
and indeed, among themselves, concerning the various attributes, amorous
pursuits, and lineal descendants of the Godhead. Now, to one who chose
to regard himself as a prophet, Monotheism had distinct advantages over
Polytheism." (_Mohammed--R. F. Dibble._)

In the first place, it was rather confusing to attempt to obey the
behests of conflicting deities; in the second place, the different
prophets of Jehovah in Judaism and Christendom had, so far as Mohammed
knew, been uniformly successful, for he was familiar with the glorious
history of Abraham, Moses, and David, and he always held to the perverse
conception that Jesus was not crucified. However deep in the dumps
prophets may have been on occasion, they have invariably believed one
thing: victory for their particular cause would inevitably come. Neither
an unbroken series of worldly failures nor the chastisement of his god
have ever shaken the faith of a first-class prophet in himself or, as he
would doubtless prefer to say, in his Divinity. Arabia, broken,
unorganized, inglorious, idolistic Arabia, obviously lacked one Supreme
Being whose prerogative was greater than all other Supreme Beings, and
that Being, in turn, needed a messenger to exploit His supremacy. The
messengers who had served Jehovah had certainly prospered well; but
Jehovah Himself appeared to be on the decline. His Unity was steadily
disintegrating into a paradoxical Trinity. Why, therefore, not give
Allah, the leading icon in Arabia, an opportunity? Such considerations
quite probably never entered the head of Mohammed with any definiteness;
yet his behavior for the rest of his days seems to indicate that these,
or similar conceptions, were subconsciously egging him on.

Of certain facts, moreover, he was definitely aware. He may have had
little or no formal education, but his memory was retentive and
capacious, and his caravan journeys, together with the scores of
conversations he had held at the yearly fairs, as well as at Mecca, with
many cultivated strangers, had packed his mind with a mass of highly
valuable matter. In these ways he had learned both the strength and the
weakness of the Jews and Christians; their fanatical enthusiasm and
despairs; their spasmodic attempts to proselytize as well as the
widespread defection from their faiths. "Since his conception of
religion was largely personal, for he looked upon Moses, Jesus, and the
rest of the prophets as merely capable men who had founded and
promulgated religions; and since Arabia had no pre-eminent ruler, why
should he not seize the reins of power and carry on the great tradition
of prophethood? What a magnificent opportunity beckoned, and how
fortunate that he had been the first to recognize the call! By keeping
only what was best of the Arabic faith, the Kaaba and the Black Stone,
and by a judicious selection of the most feasible ideas which lay
imbedded in Jewish and Christian precepts, he might establish a code
that would supersede all others, and then might dictate to all Arabs
alike. What prophets had done, he would also do and do better."
(_Mohammed--R. F. Dibble._)

Such are the thoughts of a charlatan and _a_ demagogue. If Mohammed
actually had such ideas, we can never know; but a study of his further
actions and conquests surely shows that he must have had something of
the same trend of thought in mind.

His "fits" before the oncoming of a new Sura have been mentioned.
Eventually, he so perfected his technique that he could throw a
cataleptic fit and produce a message without any previous preparation.
He would drum up a crowd with his ludicrous snortings and puffings until
the resounding cry, "Inspiration hath descended on the Prophet!" assured
him that he had a sufficiently large audience to warrant the
out-spurting of a new Sura. While in a room that was obviously empty, he
declared that all seats were occupied by angels; he cultivated suave and
benign expression; he flattered and astounded his followers by telling
them facts which he had presumably acquired through private information;
he took the most painstaking care of his person, painting his eyes and
perfuming his entire body daily, and wearing his hair long. Ayesha, one
of the Prophet's wives, remarked that the Prophet loved three things:
women, scent and food, and that he had his heart's content of the first
two, but not of the last. In fact, Mohammed, himself, argued that these
two innocuous diversions intensified the ecstasy of his prayers. In the
Koran's description of heaven so much emphasis was put on food that a
jolly Jew objected on the grounds that such continual feasting must of
necessity be followed by a purgation. The Prophet, however, swore that
it would not even be necessary to blow the nose in Paradise, since all
bodily impurities would be carried off by a perspiration "as odoriferous
as musk."

When his wife Khadija was dying he comforted her with the assurance that
she, together with three other well-known women, the Virgin Mary,
Potiphar's wife, and "Kulthum," Moses' sister, would occupy his chamber
in Paradise.

On Mohammed's escape to Medina, a long series of holy wars began which,
like all holy wars, were characterized by extreme brutality. The Koran