Ali Sina - Understanding Muhammad

When Sane People Follow Insane People
the situation can help to explain why the people acted as they did. Once the
People’s Temple had moved to Jonestown, there was little the members could
do other than follow Jim Jones’s dictates. They were comforted by an authority
of absolute power. They were left with few options, being surrounded by armed
guards and by the jungle, having given their passports and various documents
and confessions to Jones, and believing that conditions in the outside world were
even more threatening. The members’ poor diet, heavy workload, lack of sleep,
and constant exposure to Jones’s diatribes exacerbated the coerciveness of their
predicament; tremendous pressures encouraged them to obey.”
We know that Muhammad was not pleased with those who deserted him.
As we can see, there is little difference between Muhammad's way of thinking
and Jones’s. However, it would be a mistake to assume that cult believers stay
only because they are coerced. Psychological coercion is much more powerful
and long lasting. The victims become willing, even grateful, participants in their
own abuse and enslavement.
Osherow writes: “By the time of the final ritual, opposition or escape had
become almost impossible for most of the members. Yet even then, it is doubtful
that many wanted to resist or leave. Most had come to believe in Jones. One
woman’s body was found with a message scribbled on her arm during the final
hours: ‘Jim Jones is the only one.’ 339 They seemed to have accepted the
necessity, and even the ‘beauty’of dying. Just before the ritual began, a guard
approached Charles Garry, one of the Temples hired attorneys, and exclaimed,
‘It’s a great moment... we all die.’” 340
A survivor of Jonestown, who happened to be away at the dentist, was
interviewed a year following the deaths: “If I had been there, I would have been
the first one to stand in that line and take that poison and I would have been
proud to take it. The thing I’m sad about is this: that I missed the ending.” 341
What is it that drives normal people to these extremes It is difficult to
explain or even understand that once believers accept a cult leader as a divine
being, they become willing participants and the extensions of his psychopathic
mind. Could this explain the zealotry, the fanaticism and the absolute devotion
of the early Muslims towards Muhammad Did those early believers see in
Muhammad what the followers of Jim Jones saw in him The following hadith
reveals this zealotry very clearly.
339 Cahill T. In the valley of the shadow of death. Rolling Stone. January 25, 1979.
340 Lifton, R. J. Appeal of the death trip. ew York Times Magazine, January 7, 1979.
341 Gallagher, N. Jonestown: The survivors' story. ew York Times Magazine, November 18,
1979.
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