Freudian analysis of the Prophet Muhammad’s historical life and his early community

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the life of the Prophet Muhammad through a Freudian analysis. Although Sigmund Freud’s study of Islam is considered inaccurate in portraying Islam as a simplified repetition of Judaism, his psychoanalytic approach is useful to study the historical development of the Prophet’s life and his early community. By closely reading Ibn Ishaq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh (The Biography of the Prophet) and related library sources, this study sheds a new light on the changes and transformations of Muhammad’s personality and responses to historical events. This approach differs from previous scholarship that relied more on chronological narration and transmission or spiritual-philosophical reflections. Through Freudian psychoanalysis that he employed in Moses and Monotheism, this study analyzes the development of Muhammad’s characters, approaches, and reactions to historical occurrences as recorded in Ibn Ishaq’s biography of the Prophet Muhammad. This study demonstrates that the driving force of the Prophet’s responses to historical realities is not the feeling of guilt as Freud suggests, but a traumatic experience that leads to a series of changing characters and reactions to different sociological, religious, and psychological contexts. This finding not only challenges the relevance of the Freudian approach in the study of Islam but also revisits traditional narratives of the Prophet Muhammad.

Keywords

• Muhammad
• Freud
• Sirah
• Quraysh
• Prophet
• Freudian Psychoanalysis