Cultural relativism comes to the defence of Mohammed’s wahi

Wahi: The Supernatural Basis of Islam

Part IV - Cultural relativism comes to the defence of Mohammed’s wahi
Dr. Koenraad ELST

[Editor's Note: Kashmir Herald is honored to have Dr. Koenraad ELST write a series of articles exclusively for Kashmir Herald. His series of 5 exclusive articles on "The Supernatural Basis of Islam" will be published exclusively here on Kashmir Herald.]

There is a school in psychiatry, now well past its prime but quite strong in the 1960s and 70s, which rejects the whole notion that we can arrive at a diagnosis of mental disturbance for people from other climes and cultures. If you tell that crowd about a psychopathological diagnosis of a 7^th-century Arab, they will dismiss it as cultural imperialism, as projection of modern notions onto radically different pre-modern cultures. In non-specialist circles, this cultural relativism is now probably stronger than ever before: postmodern intellectuals refuse to be “judgmental” about characters from other cultures, including the Prophet of Islam.

Thus, it is argued that more or less controlled and ritualized forms of ghost-possession were an established part of many cultures since thousands of years. This way, Mohammed’s Quranic trance (wahi) could be justified as a form of Shamanic contact with the spirit world. To be sure, classifying Mohammed as a kind of Shamanic medium would still undermine his claim to a unique status as the final prophet, but it does sound better than labels like “hallucination” or “sensory delusion”. Georg Feuerstein (Holy Madness, Arkana Books 1992, a book on the interface between religion and altered mental conditions, p.15) does Mohammed the honour of describing him as a “mystic”.

And yet, the relativistic position is refuted by spokesmen of those premodern cultures themselves. It is simply not true that where we see pathological symptoms, the ancients merely saw a state of divine intervention. Some of the terms still in common use as names of specific psychopathological syndromes, such as mania and paranoia, originate with the ancient Greeks. Manuals of Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine already try to classify and treat mental problems. Indeed, it is hard to find any culture which doesn’t have a notion of madness. In this particular case, we cannot say that the 7^th-century Arabs already had an embryonic knowledge of psychiatry, but at least they were clearly of the view that there was something wrong with Mohammed’s mind.

In our latest article, we saw that Mohammed himself initially evinced a healthy skepticism vis-à-vis the visions and revelations which he had started receiving from AD 610 onwards. It was mainly his first wife Khadija who helped him in getting accustomed to this recurring psychic phenomenon and in accepting his status of prophet. Meanwhile, most of his townsfolk in Mecca remained unconvinced. It is not modern neo-colonial Western psychologists who imposed this skepticism on them, it is clearly they themselves who, within the framework of their own culture, saw sufficient reason to reject Mohammed’s belief in his status of recipient of divine revelation.

The Quran itself gives more than a dozen instances where Mohammed, or the “voice” he heard, puts him on guard against the Meccans’ view that his revelations are merely the effect of ghost-possession. This is very explicit in the ten verses 15:6, 23:70/72, 34:8, 34:46/45, 37:36/35, 44:14/13, 52:29, 68:2, 68:51, 81:22. Thus: “They say; ‘He suffers of ghost-possession’? No, he came to them with truth but most of them abhor truth.” (23:70/72)

To this list, Mohammed himself adds several references to Biblical prophets likewise accused of ghost-possession: earlier prophets in general 51:52, Noah 23:25, Moses 26:27/26 and 51:39. It is to be noted that the Bible nowhere mentions such an allegation against Noah, Moses or most other prophets (the one exception being Hosea 9:7, a prophet apparently unknown to Mohammed: “They call the man of the spirit a madman: so great is their guilt that their resistance is likewise great”). Undoubtedly, Mohammed, whose knowledge of the Bible was only sketchy, was projecting his own plight onto them.

To be sure, the Arabs were not modern psychiatrists, they had no clear-cut diagnosis though they were in no doubt that something was wrong. In a few instances, they give the alternative explanation that Mohammed was an ambitious but fanciful poet who had merely invented it all: 21:5, 36:69, 37:36/35, 52:30, e.g.: “But no, they say: ‘A web of dreams. He must have invented them. He must be a poet.’” (21:5) They also opined that he was “enchanted”: 17:47/50, 25:8/9. Mohammed counters this by calling the unbelievers themselves enchanted (23:89/91), but mostly, we again see Mohammed defending himself with the plea that the same allegation had been made against earlier prophets: Moses 17:107/108, Shu’aib 26:185, Salih 26:153.

The argument that “I am a prophet but am not acknowledged as such by my narrow-minded contemporaries, just as the ancient prophets were not given due recognition either” somehow manages to make non-recognition into an indication of genuine prophethood. Ordinary people would start doubting themselves when confronted with general skepticism of their beliefs. But not Mohammed, whose reasoning went like this: because I have these revelations from above, because I have the exceptional status of prophet, people reject me or laugh at me, but far from shaking my belief in the divine origin of these visions, this merely proves the weightiness and genuineness of my prophetic mission, for it puts me up there is the top league with prophets like Noah and Moses. For people of the scientific temper, this subjective and self-centred rationalization of the negative feedback that Mohammed encountered, can be put aside as just that: a fallacious rationalization of an irrational belief.

[Born in Leuven, in the year 1959, Koenraad Elst grew up in the Catholic Community in Belgium. He was active for some years in what is known as the new Age movement, before studying at the famed Catholic University of Leuven (KUL). He graduated in Chinese Studies, Indo-Iranian Studies and Philosophy. He earned his doctorate magna cum laude with a dissertation on the politics of Hindu Revivalism.

He took courses in Indian philosophy at the Benares Hindu University (BHU), and interviewed many Indian leaders and thinkers during his stay in India between 1988 and 1992. He has published in Dutch about language policy issues, contemporary politics, history of science and Oriental philosophies; in English about the Ayodhya issue and about the general religio-political situation in India.

A few of his latest books are:

Who Is a Hindu? (2002)
Ayodhya: The Case against the Temple (2002)
The Saffron Swastika: The Notion of 'Hindu Fascism' (2001)
Decolonizing the Hindu Mind (2001)
Gandhi and Godse (2001)
Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam,
Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid, and
Ayodhya and After.

While doing research in Indian philosophy at Benares Hindu University, he started taking an interest in the ongoing Rushdie and Ayodhya controversies and the larger debate on secularism. He published several books on the historical Ayodhya file. He is currently working as a free-lance scholar and columnist.]