Boreal

An Eternal Teenager and a Father Figure

ABBA captured the essence of the mature gods of antiquity with the line "The gods may throw the dice their minds as cold as ice and someone way down here loses someone dear" from The Winner Takes It All.

The mature three of the Holy Trinity – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – have little in common with the mature gods of Greek mythology. If someone has to die down here, it is usually for an undisclosed higher purpose. They take no pleasure in it.

The mature three of the Trinity also don't gamble on the human race, instigating titanic life and death struggles for their amusement then championing their favorite warriors as their predecessors did, during the Trojan Wars for example.

The Holy Trinity does not play favourites. They are, to use a term appropriated by the Catholic Church, ecumenical, all races and ethnic groups are welcome to worship them, God the Son in particular. This was not the case for the original incarnation of the one-god-fits-all model imagined by the Jews and appropriated and adapted by Christians and Muslims, both claiming an improvement over the original.

The god of the Bible did away with all pretenders to omnipotence, male and female. However, like the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses He would replace He was not above playing favorites. In the Bible, his pet people are the Jews, the so-called Chosen Peoples; in the Koran it is the Arabs.

The god of the Old Testament often exhibits behavior associated with childhood such as petulance, impatience, short attention span, a need to be praised, unthinking cruelty, sadism… All serious character flaws in adults which should have diminished, if not totally disappeared as they got older.

In the Islamic rethinking of the Jewish god – unlike the remodeled god of the Christians – Allah appears to have gotten stuck somewhere on an lower echelons of Maslow's hierarchy of needs where you find preoccupations of adolescence.

The Koran is not so much a philosophy as a set of rules. The rule maker exhibits the same adolescent certainty in having absolute knowledge of the world around him and an adolescent intolerance of others who won’t play the game by his rules.

Where the adolescent, the child in Allah is most evident is in the Marcel Marceau-like charades He demands from people to whom He has granted a favour; example Zachariah to whom He has granted a son.

3:38 Thereupon, Zachariah prayed to his Lord saying: “Lord grant me from Your Bounty fine descendants. Indeed You hear every prayer!”

3:39 Then the angels called him while he was at prayer in the sanctuary, saying: “Allah bids you rejoice in John, confirming a word (Jesus) from Allah, a master, chaste and a Prophet and one of the righteous.”

3:40 He said: “Lord, how will I have a son, seeing I have been overtaken by old age and my wife is barren?” “This is how Allah does whatever He pleases,“ He replied.

3:41 He said; “Lord give me a sign.” Allah said: “Your sign is that you will not speak to anybody for three days, except by signs; and remember your Lord often and give praise evening and morning.”

In the Koran, a child's unthinking cruelty becomes a deliberate act of destruction which seems to give the perpetrator a great deal of satisfaction. Even in revelations about the cities He has destroyed, you can hear the boy in Allah talking and exulting in His annihilation of the men, women and children they sheltered.

During a normal day i.e. morning or afternoon, even in the Prophet’s time, children played and adults worked, or were busy with more important things, from making love to making war. Yet, it is people at play, children, whom Allah brags about killing in revelation 7:98; and like children might say or do, He schemed to make their obliteration come about.

7:97 Did the people of the cities feel assured that Our punishment would not come upon them at night while they were sleeping?

7:98 Or did the people of the cities feel assured that Our punishment would not come upon them during the day while they were playing?

7:99 Or did they feel secure against Allah’s Scheming? For none feels secure from Allah’s Scheming save the losing people.

An omnipotent, omnipresent god does not need to scheme to get His way, but a child, an adolescent often does.

Playing at Adult Relationships

If God had chosen not to spend an eternity without indulging in that anger soothing ultimately relaxing activity that is being intimate with someone you care for, would His choice of partners have been the same as that of His Messenger?

Older men's preference for whom they chose to be intimate with and why (for more than sex for example) can be an indication of their emotional growth. A discussion between God's Messenger and a travelling companion may be an indication that the Prophet's behavior, even when it came to sexual relationships was that of an adolescent. Remember as you read the following, that the Prophet was in his fifties.

Narrated Jabir bin Abdullah:

I was with the Prophet in a Ghazwa (Military Expedition) and my camel was slow and exhausted. The Prophet came up to me and said, "O Jabir."

I replied, "Yes?"

He said, "What is the matter with you?"

I replied, "My camel is slow and tired, so I am left behind."

So, he got down and poked the camel with his stick and then ordered me to ride. I rode the camel and it became so fast that I had to hold it from going ahead of Allah's Apostle.

He then asked me, have you got married?"

I replied in the affirmative.

He asked, "A virgin or a matron?"

I replied, "I married a matron."

The Prophet said, "Why have you not married a virgin, so that you may play with her and she may play with you?"

Jabir replied, "I have sisters (young in age) so I liked to marry a matron who could collect them all and comb their hair and look after them."

Bukhari 34.310

Is Allah the Father Muhammad Never Knew?

Can an adolescent having never known a father also be a father-figure, and if so, what type of father-figure would an orphan imagine he would be? Reading the Koran you can literally feel a father's love for his son as in revelations 33:56-57 where Allah blesses His Messenger and issues a stern warning to anyone who would harm him.

33:56 Allah and His angels bless the Prophet. O believers, bless him and greet him graciously, too.

33:57 Those who cause Allah and His Messenger any injury, Allah has cursed them in this life and the life to come and has prepared for them a demeaning punishment.

Does Allah's relationship with His Messenger not remind you of another God-Son relationship?

The Prophet Muhammad never knew his father who died before he was born. His mother passed away when he was six or seven years old.

When you read the Koran, especially the verses where Allah expresses his love for His Messenger and where He threatens to do serious damage to anyone who would harm him, or cause him distress, you can’t help thinking that Allah was also the father Muhammad, as a child, never had, the father that a fatherless child might imagine.

In his last public appearance, a short time before he died, God's Messenger asked the thousands who had come to hear what would be his last sermon, if he had done a good job.

The crowd shouted in unison: “We bear witness that you have conveyed the trust and discharged your ministry and looked to our welfare.”

He then lifted his forefinger towards the sky and then pointing towards the people then to his father in heaven asked Him to bear witness three times: “O Lord: Bear Thou witness unto it”.

Did Muhammad in making the Koran known to mankind want to please Allah the way a child wishes to ingratiate himself to his father and in return get the love and approbation that comes from being a good son? Did he imagine the wisdom that his equally imaginary Father wanted his son to transmit? Did he imagine the love of a father he never had? If you believe, then the answer is obvious.

Bernard Payeur