“Founders usually have a major impact on how the group defines and solves its external problem of surviving and growing, and how it will internally organize itself and integrate its own efforts. … Since they started the group, they tend to impose their assumptions on the group and to cling to them until such time as they become unworkable or the group fails and breaks up. As new members and leaders come into the group, the founder’s assumptions and beliefs will gradually be modified, but they will always have the biggest impact on what will ultimately be the group’s culture.”
Edgar H. Schein,[241] specialist in organizational culture at MIT’s Sloan School of Management
In my book Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, I explain that a complex adaptive system, a collective intelligence, a social learning machine, operates on five rules, rules that Dr. Don Beck, the author of Spiral Dynamics[242] calls “the Bloom Pentad.” Those five rules of complex adaptive systems, those five rules of mass mind, underlay 7th century social systems like the one the Persian Empire had evolved to the north of the Muslims, like the one the Roman Empire had evolved to the Muslims’ West, like the one the Chinese Empire had evolved to the Muslims’ East, and like the one that Mohammed was attempting to build in Medina.
The five elements that keep a mass mind—a learning machine, a group IQ, an Emergent Collective Intelligence—up and running are:
1. Conformity enforcers
2. Diversity generators
3. Resource shifters
4. Inner Judges (like the self-destruct mechanisms we’ve peered at earlier in this book)
5. And Intergroup Tournaments.
Shame, guilt, and punishment are three leading conformity enforcers. They nudge us into in line and keep us on the same page. And they’re vital to holding a social superorganism together. Diversity generators like squabbles, eccentricities, the arts, pop culture, and personal dreams give the superorganism options, alternative ways of dealing with its problems. They also give the superorganism its butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, and kings—the differentiated components of a superorganism: the feet, legs, hands, shoulders and head a superorganism needs if it’s to succeed.
In complexity theory, if the conformity enforcers of a superorganism’s mass mind paralyze its diversity generators, a society will bind up like Oz’s Tin Man after a rainstorm. The social learning machine will lose its flexibility, its ability to respond to sudden risks and to unexpected opportunities. Theory says that an overdose of conformity enforcement will slowly but surely paralyze a mass mind and put the superorganism it controls out of business. Or, even more likely, thanks to the pecking order and to intergroup tournaments, other groups will eat the conformity-bound social beast’s socks, driving it to the bottom of the pecking order, beating it in peaceful competition, whomping it in war, and swallowing the remains of the defeated superorganism whole. The winning social creature will digest the shredded scraps of its conformity-crippled opponent—its riches and its remaining inhabitants—depositing these leftovers of battle into its own flesh, and will eradicate nearly every trace of the failed society’s existence. So says complexity theory.
Not only does this make sense, but it’s supported by the work of authoritative complex adaptive systems researchers like the Santa Fe Institute’s Stuart Kauffman, who calls conformity-enforced paralysis “the Stalinist regime.”[243] We all know what happened to the Leninist-Stalinist system Russia adopted in 1917 and refined in 1934[244]. In 1989, after 62 years of the Leninist-Stalinist experiment, the USSR and its symbol, the Berlin Wall fell[245]. Russia and its former satellites decided to try a different approach—a free-market system with a semblance of democracy. The system with an overdose of conformity-enforcement collapsed.
Early Islam poses a puzzle. Why? Because it has proven that a Stalinist Regime is not always a failure. It has demonstrated that an overdose of conformity enforcement is not always a poison. But why? How and when does a ruthless insistence on conformity work? How and when does it give a society an edge over other cultures, including cultures that give more freedom to their diversity generators—their dissidents, their creators, their deviants, their bohemians, their innovators, their heretics, their humorists, their artists, and their rebels?
Could it be that ruthless conformity is a winning strategy when a new meme produces a military culture, an imperialistic culture, what Raymond Kelly calls “an expansionist”[246] culture, a culture that specializes in conquest? Military victory requires heavy-duty conformity enforcement. It requires discipline, obedience, and daily practice at working in synch with your fellow fighters. When men make choreographed muscular movements together over and over again, it gives them an enduring bond. It pulls them together tightly as superorganismic cells. The historian William McNeill, in his book Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History,[247] calls this generation of social glue “muscular bonding.”
Islam’s five group-prayers a day are among Mohammed’s cleverest meme-hooks, his most innovative conformity enforcers. They are also one of the Five Pillars of Islam.[248] Five times a day, thirty-five times a week, 1,825 times a year, men are required to gather in ranks and to show their absolute submission to Mohammed’s revelations. “Submission,” is one of the key meanings of the word “Islam.”[249] The faithful spread their prayer rugs, get down on their knees, press their foreheads to the ground, and bow in unison to just one place, Mecca,[250] following a central timetable whose orders circle the globe. Could these be practice sessions for the synchronized movements of soldiers in battle, soldiers all focused on one central goal? Could they train men who may never meet each other to operate in unison? Could they prepare men for the massively parallel processed coordination of peace and war, including modern urban guerrilla war, war with no central commander but with the centering and guidance of a powerful meme team, the form of warfare that revealed itself in the Islamic “terrorism” of the early 21st century?
Here’s a clue that the answer may be yes. Your prayers are most acceptable to Allah if you gather in a prayer group called a jama’ah,[251] a unity,[252] a community, or a party, a form of organization that shows up often in terrorist groups like the New-York-and-Pakistan-based Jamaat-ul-Fuqra[253] and the Asian-Pacific Jemaah Islamiyah[254].
In many other societies, ritual is practice for vital social activities. It is a key conformity enforcer. Polynesian men, for example, perform dance rituals in which they make movements that ape the coordinated paddling they have to do when taking their sleek boats out on the open sea to fish.[255] Anthropologist Mary Douglas believes that almost all the rituals of religion are exercises for the social habits that keep a culture together[256]—like the practice for obedience to bureaucratic authority she feels underlies Catholic ritual. Is the idea that Islamic prayer rituals, too, may prepare men for coordination in peace and war racist paranoia? Let’s take a look at Islam’s story and see.
***
When we left off many pages ago, the year was 624 AD. Only two years had passed since Mohammed had fled Mecca in fear for his life. Now, he’d trounced Mecca in a bloody victory at the Battle of Badr and had added insult to injury by dumping the bodies of some of Mecca’s most distinguished citizens in a well. He’d taken a big risk and had made the sort of “screw you” pecking order gesture that can get you and your group obliterated.
So making the right decisions about how to assemble Mohammed’s embryonic superorganism would be vital to Islam’s survival. Among the questions ahead of Mohammed and his God were these: to what extent would Islam use persuasion and to what extent would it use coercion as it assembled the first community of Islam? To what extent would it use words and to what extent would it use weapons? To what extent would it use fear and to what extent would it use passion, pleasure, stimulation, and imagination? To what extent would it use conformity enforcers and to what extent would it use diversity generators? What collective personality would Mohammed and his God, Allah, create? And how would they go about it?
When the Prophet was still glorying in his victory at the Battle of Badr, he made a decision that would stain Islam for generations to come. He chose the face of fierceness. He picked the path of military dictatorship. He picked the path of totalitarianism. Like Shaka Zulu, he chose to kill the opposition.
Mohammed’s first step when he set out on the return trip from Badr to Medina, the town of a thousand where he and his followers were holed up, was a meme-campaign, a pecking order propaganda offensive. He sent two messengers ahead of him, messengers “to bring the good news of victory granted to him by God and the killing of” [257] of many a Meccan. To increase the pecking-order punch of this bulletin, the couriers listed the names of the distinguished Meccans they had killed.[258]
A poet in the audience—Ka’b—heard these names and was horrified. According to Ibn Ishaq, Mohammed’s first biographer, Ka’b said, “Is this true? Did Muhammad actually kill these… men?” [259] “Those were the nobles of Arabia, the kings of mankind. By God, if Muhammad has vanquished these people, the interior of the earth is a better dwelling than the top of it.”[260] Recounts Ibn Ishaq, the alarmed rhymer “left the town and went to Mecca”[261] 280 miles away. When he arrived, Ka’b recited “verses in which he bewailed the Quraysh who were thrown into the pit after having been slain at Badr.” [262] One of Ka’b’s verses read,
Badr’s mill ground out the blood of its people
At events like Badr you should weep and cry.
…How many noble, handsome men,
The refuge of the homeless were slain
Liberal when the stars gave no rain.[263]
How many benefactors of Arab society had Mohammed killed and tossed into a pit as if they were garbage?
In Mohammed’s eyes, these verses and Ka’b’s trip to Mecca made the poet an enemy of God, one “who has hurt Allah and His Apostle.”[264] “Who,” he asked, “will rid me of”[265] the offending bard?
Two potential assassins stepped forward, but they were not just run-of-the-mill killers. One considered himself the poet’s brother. [266] The other was his foster brother.[267] Neither shuddered at the idea of hacking a close family member to death. The only thing bothering them was whether they’d be forced to commit a Muslim sin. “O apostle of God,” said one of the volunteers, “we shall have to tell lies.”[268] Mohammed answered with a cold-hearted line he would use more than once as he rose in power: “Say what you like. You are absolved in the matter.”[269] Dishonesty was permissible when it came to protecting “the religion of truth”[270]. One face of the new culture’s personality had just been revealed. One of its core memes had just been set in place. Lie to an enemy of God.
The two killers went to their brother the poet’s house in the middle of the night and stood outside shouting to him to come out[271]. The poet woke suddenly, “jumping up in the bedsheet.”[272] His wife was terrified. Don’t worry. It’s just my brother and my foster brother, said the poet.[273] This didn’t calm his spouse, who swore that the voices outside were dripping with blood.[274] But Ka’b, the poet, spoke the words of a noble soul: “A generous man should respond to a call at night even if invited to be killed.’”[275]
Ka’b’s words were prophetic. When he got outside, his brother and foster brother complimented Ka’b on the pomade in his hair and asked if they could smell it. Ka’b tilted his head, and one of the brothers grabbed the hair on both of Ka’b’s temples tightly and shouted to his partner, “Smite the enemy of God!”[276] The two stabbed, pummeled, and sliced at their brother with their swords, but Ka’b’s strength held up. What’s more, he roared so loudly that lights went on in all the houses in the neighborhood.
It was time to finish the killing and get out before anyone could show up to stop the execution. One of the killers gave up on his sword, grabbed his dagger and, he says he, “thrust it into the lower part” of Ka’b’s body then “bore down upon it until I reached his genitals, and the enemy of God fell to the ground.” [277]
Ka’b, the “enemy of God” was dead.
How did the killers feel about their deed? They extemporized exultant poetry—a common practice in the Arab society of the day—bragging that they’d snuck up on Ka’b in the middle of the night and had used deception and dishonesty to snuff out his life. “Sword in hand we cut him down,” said the poetry, “Ka’b’s brother…beguiled him and brought him down with guile” [278]…in other words, Ka’b’s brothers killed him using lies and trickery. “Guile”—lies and trickery—would become a key meme when it came to attacking those outside the circle of the devout, outside the circle of Islam. Someday it would be used on you and me.
The next morning, when the brothers reported their accomplishment to Mohammed and word spread, many other followers of Mohammed spouted their own rap-like poetry to celebrate the murder. Crowed the Muslim rappers, the killers who’d fought an unarmed man two-against-one, were “bold as lions.” The cowardly killing was an act of courage, said the exultant poets, because the killers were “seeking victory for the religion of their prophet” [279]. Thus was murder “for the religion of the prophet” elevated to a virtue of the highest degree—one mark of the cultural strategies that would still be at work among extremists and “insurgents” in today’s society.
The killing of Ka’b, the poet, could have been justified. Ka’b was encouraging an enemy. But this was just the beginning of Mohammed’s clamp-down on freedom of speech, his newest memetic contribution, his policy of killing dissidents.
Said the Prophet to his men, “Fight everyone in the way of God and kill those who do not believe in God.”[280] One of the first on the hit list was the leader of the Meccans. Mohammed sent two loyalists to sneak into Mecca and kill the city’s leading citizen, Abu Sufyan. But one of the pair of assassins was recognized when he wormed his way back into his hometown, and was remembered as a long-time trouble maker. His name was Amr. When the Meccans spotted Amr, they rushed him before he could do any harm.[281]
Amr and his companion ran out of town and hid in a cave. But this did not deprive Amr of the privilege of “killing those who do not believe in God.”[282] While Amr was laying low, he had a stroke of luck. A one-eyed shepherd with a single sheep came into Amr’s cave to rest. Amr and the shepherd compared family backgrounds, found they had mutual friends, and carried on a schmoozy conversation. Then the shepherd did something he probably considered harmless. Before going to sleep, Amr reports, “he lay down beside me and lifting up his voice began to sing:
I won’t be a Muslim as long as I live,
Nor heed to their religion give.[283]
Amr brags about how lustily he carried out Mohammed’s order to do away with anyone who does “not believe in God.”[284] “As soon as the badu [desert dweller][285] was asleep and snoring, I got up and killed him in a more horrible way than any man has [ever] been killed. I put the end of my bow in his sound eye, then I bore down on it until I forced it out at the back of his neck.” [286]
Then came more lessons in keeping your mouth shut when you disagreed with Islam, more murders, including the assassination by night of a wealthy and influential Jew who’d just given a dinner party in his fortified household for a group of eminent guests.[287] This death upset a 120-year old fellow-Jew in Medina, who sang a verse praising the upright behavior of the clan of the victim.[288] Abu Afak’s verses bore no criticism of Mohammed or of Islam. They were simply words of lamentation for the death of a decent man. But Mohammed was not pleased.
Using his usual wording, Mohammed called for a volunteer. “Who,” he asked, “will deal with this rascal for me?” The man who took on the challenge went by night and found Abu Afak sleeping out in the open in his yard.[289] Says the Islamic historian Ibn Sa’d, the killer “placed the sword on his [victim’s] liver and pressed it till it reached his bed.”[290] The next day the assassin sang celebratory verses advertising the glory of what he’d done. In those triumphant lines he let his listeners know that he’d killed a man too old to defend himself and had done it in the most cowardly of ways, a way that was becoming a Muslim trademark—sneaking up on the victim in his sleep:[291] “You gave the lie to God’s religion…,” said the murderer. The punishment for this offense? A Muslim[292] “gave you a thrust in the night saying ‘Take that Abu Afak in spite of your age!’”[293]
Next on the hit list was a mother of five, a mother still suckling an infant. Her sin was showing what the earliest Muslim historians called “disaffection” with all the bloodshed in her neighborhood. In her poetry, she dared warn that it was a bad idea to hang around with a leader whose hobby seemed to be “the killing of your chiefs.” Do you follow him, her poetry said, simply to grab your share of the plunder that comes in after his violent raids on passing caravans? Are you making the mistake of following this “stranger who is none of yours” out of sheer greed, “like a hungry man waiting for a cook’s broth?” [294] Then the poetess suggested that Mohammed be treated the way he was treating others:
Is there no man of pride who would attack him by surprise
And cut off the hopes of those who expect aught from him? [295]
Reports the first biographer of Mohammed, Ibn Ishaq, “When the apostle heard what she had said” he repeated his usual line, ‘Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?’”[296] The response to this by-now-familiar phrase was instant. One of Mohammed’s followers[297] went to the poetess’ house in the middle of the night, found her with her “children…sleeping around her,” felt in the dark to find the baby suckling at her breast, laid the baby aside on the bed, then rammed “his sword in her chest till it pierced up to her back.”[298]
When the murder was complete, all was not well in the killer’s heart. He was worried that God would punish him for this cowardly act. Says Ibn Ishaq, the assassin went to Mohammed first thing in the morning to ask if he’d brought the wrath of the Almighty down on his head. Not at all, said Mohammed, “You have helped God and His apostle.” [299] What’s more, explained Mohammed, ending a life in the name of Allah is a trivial matter, even if the victim is a mother of five. Declared Mohammed, ‘Two goats won’t butt their heads together about her.’”[300] A killing in the name of Islam is so inconsequential that it won’t even rile farm animals…much less bring down the fury of Allah. Mohammed had just added another key conviction to his growing weave of cultural concepts—killing a critic of Islam is nothing to get upset about.
Mohammed’s brutality achieved its purpose. At first, the clan of the poetess was in an uproar over her murder. [301] But Mohammed sent the killer to bully her kids. “Withstand me if you can,” he told the orphans, “don’t keep me waiting.” [302] Asma’s extended family got the message: don’t complain, threaten, or criticize Islam. Convert or risk a bloody death. Says Ibn Ishaq, “The day after Bint Marwan was killed the men of” her tribe “became Muslims.” Why did they switch to a God that had done away with their mother? Answers Ibn Ishaq, “They saw the power of Islam.” [303]
Murder was proving to be an effective recruitment strategy for the infant meme of Islam.
Another two incidents show more of the totalitarian form of society Mohammed, with his intolerance and anger, was crafting.
Six years later, after the conquest of Mecca, Mohammed was still driving home his absolute insistence on severity. Like Shaka Zulu, The Prophet issued a hit list of those in his old hometown, Mecca, he wanted rubbed out. One of the victims on the list—Abdallah bin Sa’d—had acted as a scribe for Mohammed, writing down many of the key passages of the Quran.[304] So what was his crime? Says one of Islam’s most important historians, the tenth century Persian Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, when Mohammed “was dictating ‘Exalted in power, full of Wisdom,’” Abdullah would change the wording and “write it ‘Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful’, thus changing it.” [305] Later on, when Mohammed preached, he’d use the words Abdallah had written, not those Allah had originally “spoken” through Mohammed’s mouth.[306] To Abdallah this seemed a suspicious way of handling the direct revelations of God. So he rejected Islam and went back to Mecca and to the beliefs of his forefathers.
Abdallah wasn’t enthusiastic about being murdered for his quiet act of peaceful dissent. When he found that he was an assassination target, he fled to his foster-brother for protection. His foster-brother kept Abdallah hidden until “after the people of Mecca had become calm.” [307] Then he took Abdallah to the spot where Mohammed was holding court in the newly conquered city and asked for mercy.
The foster-brother pleaded for a pardon. Mohammed said nothing. The foster-brother pleaded some more. Mohammed still sat in stony silence. So the foster-brother pleaded the case all over again. Finally, Mohammed said a grudging yes, he’d let Abdallah live. When Abdallah and his relieved foster-brother left the room and were out of earshot, Mohammed turned on “his companions who were around him” in one of his common moods—a fury. How had his stalwarts failed him? By not understanding what he really wanted. “‘By God, I kept silent so that one of you might go up to him and cut off his head,” said the Prophet angrily. Then “Why didn’t you give me a signal, Messenger of God?” asked one of Mohammed’s lieutenants. The Prophet spat out a simple sentence, “A prophet does not kill by making signs.”[308]
In other words, Mohammed wanted his companions to understand that in his presence they should cut down anyone he’d targeted for death immediately, no matter how much Mohammed pretended to be forgiving and beneficent. In Mohammed’s presence, the default mode was murder.
Thus was born the form of intolerant dictatorship, the violently meme-policed dictatorship, that today has made the Middle East one of the poorest regions in the world[309]. Thus was born one of the world’s longest-lasting and widest-spread superorganisms, a superorganism that has survived nearly 1,400 years. How can we account for this contradiction—one of the world’s most vigorously explosive meme teams, a collective personality with astonishing longevity, a culture that has taken more territory than any other in history, yet a culture that all too often withers its wealth production, squelches its potential sources of vitality, kills its critics, its protesters, its innovators, and its artists or terrifies them into silence? What’s wrong with this picture? What hooks in Islam and what collective mind or muscles in the superorganisms Islam has assembled account for Islam’s extraordinary success?