The Mohammed Code: Why a Desert Prophet Wants You Dead (4 page)

My computer file of research materials on Islam kept growing. And I was tapped more than 20 times to go on national radio as an expert commentator on Islam’s nuclear capabilities, on the Iraq War of 2003, on the jihadist bombings in London and Madrid in 2004 and 2005, on the Moslem riots in France in 2005, on America’s showdown with Iran in 2006, on the hanging of Saddam Hussein, on Iran’s messianic Islamic beliefs and on a string of other events in which militant Islam fought—or defended itself from—the West. But I didn’t have the answers to a trio of basic questions—what’s the organizing key to the history of militant Islam? What’s the story of its foundation and rise? And why has Islam outdone every other form of colonialism and imperialism on the planet?

For four years, I hunted for the key that would unlock Osama’s use of historical allusions. Then I finally found it. The key was hidden in plain sight. And it unlocked everything from the mystery of militant Islam’s use of sex on earth and obsession with sex in heaven to its picture of a New World Order for which the pious have struggled for more than a thousand years and for which they must continue to battle this year and next. This hidden key also hinted at what militant Islam might do in the coming months, and how those efforts, if they succeed, will utterly change your life and mine. It was the Mohammed Code—the story of the life of Mohammed.

More specifically, the key to understanding the mind of Osama bin Laden and of militant Moslems from Iran to Indonesia and from Trinidad to Dearborn, Michigan, lay in something I’d avoided studying for nearly 40 years because I did not want my biases to get in the way of clear thinking. The key was in Mohammed’s extremely clever use of Jews.

But before we get to Mohammed’s story—and the vital role the Jews played in his life-- let’s take a minute out to examine power flows that Mohammed harnessed in remarkable ways. The forces of history.

"The history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here." Carlyle
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"Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time." Sidney Smith
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"Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men." Benjamin Disraeli

"National historical memory -- or amnesia -- can have concrete political consequences. ...As long as [the] young...have positive feelings toward a murderous dictator who institutionalized terror throughout their country, they are unlikely to mobilize behind calls for greater justice, human rights, or transparency -- factors critical to .. transformation into a modern democratic society."

Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber

on 21st century Russian youths' idealization of Josef Stalin
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Ruth Benedict, one of the founding mothers of anthropology, says that every culture has a personality. Every culture suppresses some emotions and favors others.
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In her classic book
Patterns of Culture
she shows how the Dobu of Southeastern New Guinea in the early 20
^th
century did everything in their power to make their children—and their adults-- aggressive and violent. To the Dobu, says Benedict, “All existence is cut-throat competition, and every advantage is gained at the expense of a defeated rival.”
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To make matters worse, the Dobu idealize those who make sure that, “This competition... is secret and treacherous."
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When a Dobu has a problem, he handles his frustration by picking out a victim and “projecting his misery upon him”. He soothes his woes by dishing out punishment.

To the Zunis in the Colorado region of New Mexico, on the other hand, says Benedict the ideal human is “incorrigibly mild...[free] from any forms of social exploitation or of social sadism."
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As Benedict and her friend, lover
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, and fellow anthropologist Margaret Mead illustrated with many another example, some cultures encourage rage and some encourage sensitivity.
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Some encourage the brutal and some encourage the gentle.

How likely is it that these differences in culture come from the personality of a demanding or a relaxed founder? Can one tribe’s sin be another’s pleasure because each tribe carries the marks of a different founder’s obsessions? Can some founders be better than others at remaking a people totally…remaking them so powerfully that the stamp of the founder remains alive long after the founder has gone to his grave? If a founder wants to rule his people for thousands of years after his death, how would he go about it? And if some founders are more effective than others, how does Mohammed rank in the competition to outdo the forces of death and change?

Ruth Benedict’s work in her book Patterns of Culture
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hints that indeed a culture can be a reflection of its founder's personality
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. If the founder is a frowning, angry man, the culture he establishes may impose frowns and fury for centuries to come. If the founder is a man of smiles and delight, the culture he molds is more likely to encourage youngsters and adults to smile and enjoy life. Plato is even more explicit than Benedict. He doesn’t just hint that the character of a society is determined by the personality type of the men who lead it. Plato is outright convinced that the personality of the leader stamps itself on the society he leads. An ignorant leader can make a good people evil, he says. And a wise, intelligent leader can make an ordinary group of followers good.
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Plato and Benedict would have been pleased to know that studies of monkeys have born them out. The impact of a leader on the personality of a group seems built into our instinctual base, our animal roots. In troops of Japanese macaques, an innovative leader can spread new practices through the group in hours. But a conservative monkey leader, a dictatorial defender of the traditions he’s inherited or created, can force his group to reject opportunities that glitter with potential. In the Minoo Valley near Osaka, Japan, for example, a dominant male monkey, a macaque, came up with a radical innovation…eating wheat. His new breakthrough spread rapidly to the dominant adult females in his entourage—the influential lady aristocrats who hung out in his hallowed presence. From there it moved to the infants who played around those dominant females’ feet. Wheat-eating then spread to the lower-class playmates of the privileged kids and to the mothers of those they played with. Within four hours, wheat eating had permeated the entire troop.
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Innovations spreading from the bottom up, on the other hand, could take years to get to the top…if they ever got anywhere at all.
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All this is in a group with an open-minded leader.

But what happens in macaque troops if the leader snarls at new practices? In Takagoyama, Japan, experimenters handed persimmons—high-energy treats-- to lower class males and to youngsters who had been shoved out to the boundaries of the troop. These macaques knew how good persimmons were. They stole them whenever possible from local farming gardens. But the leader punished every group member who dared accept this lush food directly from the hands of the experimenters. And he meted out his punishment violently. His severity was highly effective. In a time so short that the researchers called it “sudden”, none of the monkeys would touch a persimmon offered by a human being.
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In Takasakiyama, Japan, another macaque leader, Jupiter, laid down a cultural pattern that encouraged bullying, beating, and humiliating females. But when Jupiter grew old and died, the new leader—Titan--abolished this extreme emphasis on anti-female aggression. He also shifted the times, destinations, and other ways of wandering—the “pattern of nomadism”--of the group and even changed the time of day the troop ate.
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The impact of a macaque leader on the culture of his troop was so obvious in these studies that the Japanese researchers were forced to use a word that was considered taboo among animal researchers back in the 1950s and 1960s, when these meticulous observations were made. Leadership, the Japanese experimenters said, made a huge difference. And one factor in the leader’s “influence”, wrote the researchers, was the top monkey’s “so-called ‘personality’”.
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When the stamp a leader puts on a group outlasts him, especially when it outlasts him for generations, it takes on a form that goes far beyond what Japan’s macaque-investigators observed. It shifts into a pattern that b
iology demigod Ernst Mayer put on the scientific map, a pattern that appears at numerous levels in the world of living things. In genetics and population biology, Mayr calls it “the founder effect”
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. A group of founders goes off to start its own group and stamps its peculiar genetic limitations and gifts—its unique genetic character—on the entire population it founds.
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In the world of human culture, the founder effect would theoretically mean that the personality of a founding father can be as central to the emotional twists he passes on as are his pronouncements, his ideas. But does the founder effect really apply to human societies? How often is the personality of a culture determined by the personality of its founder? Experts in organizational culture like MIT’s Edgar H. Schein and like the 170 scholars who participated in the ten-year-long GLOBE study of leadership in 62 worldwide cultures say that the answer is very often indeed.
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One of those who proves their point is Shaka Zulu. In 1781
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, there were a mere 1,500 Zulus
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, and they weren't particularly warlike. Far from it. Their occasional battles were lackluster affairs.
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They and their enemies stood on either side of a barrier like a stream, insulted each other, and occasionally tossed a spear until, finally, someone was injured. Then the tribe that inflicted the wound declared itself victorious
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, and everyone went home. When pitted against a dead serious militant enemy, the Zulus lost. Every time!