May reading
The reading:
Al Ma’idah: verses 67 to 81
67.O Messenger, announce that which has been revealed to you from your Lord, and if you do not, then you have not conveyed His message. And Allāh will protect you from the people. Indeed, Allāh does not guide the disbelieving people.
68.Say, “O People of the Scripture, you are [standing] on nothing until you uphold [the law of] the Torah, the Gospel, and what has been revealed to you from your Lord [i.e., the Qur’ān].” And that which has been revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase many of them in transgression and disbelief. So do not grieve over the disbelieving people.
69.Indeed, those who have believed [in Prophet Muḥammad (ﷺ)] and those [before him (ﷺ)] who were Jews or Sabeans or Christians – those [among them] who believed in Allāh and the Last Day and did righteousness – no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve.1
70.We had already taken the covenant of the Children of Israel and had sent to them messengers. Whenever there came to them a messenger with what their souls did not desire, a party [of messengers] they denied, and another party they killed.
119
71.And they thought there would be no [resulting] punishment, so they became blind and deaf. Then Allāh turned to them in forgiveness; then [again] many of them became blind and deaf. And Allāh is Seeing of what they do.
72.They have certainly disbelieved who say, “Allāh is the Messiah, the son of Mary” while the Messiah has said, “O Children of Israel, worship Allāh, my Lord and your Lord.” Indeed, he who associates others with Allāh – Allāh has forbidden him Paradise, and his refuge is the Fire. And there are not for the wrongdoers any helpers.
73.They have certainly disbelieved who say, “Allāh is the third of three.”1 And there is no god except one God. And if they do not desist from what they are saying, there will surely afflict the disbelievers among them a painful punishment.
74.So will they not repent to Allāh and seek His forgiveness? And Allāh is Forgiving and Merciful.
75.The Messiah, son of Mary, was not but a messenger; [other] messengers have passed on before him. And his mother was a supporter of truth. They both used to eat food.1 Look how We make clear to them the signs; then look how they are deluded.
76.Say, “Do you worship besides Allāh that which holds for you no [power of] harm or benefit while it is Allāh who is the Hearing, the Knowing?”
77.Say, “O People of the Scripture, do not exceed limits in your religion beyond the truth and do not follow the inclinations of a people who had gone astray before and misled many and have strayed from the soundness of the way.”
78.Cursed were those who disbelieved among the Children of Israel by the tongue of David and of Jesus, the son of Mary. That was because they disobeyed and [habitually] transgressed.
79.They used not to prevent one another from wrongdoing that they did. How wretched was that which they were doing.
80.You see many of them becoming allies of those who disbelieved [i.e., the polytheists]. How wretched is that which they have put forth for themselves in that Allāh has become angry with them, and in the punishment they will abide eternally.
81.And if they had believed in Allāh and the Prophet and in what was revealed to him, they would not have taken them as allies; but many of them are defiantly disobedient.
Paper: Thinking forbidden thoughts, Michael Shein
The discussion:
A point from last month’s discussion has stayed with me, further reinforced by a comment from a blog reader. He noted that from a psychoanalytic perspective, the significance of a boundary lies not in its stated purpose, but in its psychological function. Thinking about the psychological function of states of faith or lack of faith formed a turning point in thinking about the meanings elaborated in the verses we read this month.
In our previous discussion (link below),
Sameness and difference in faith and psychoanalysis.
we explored the vertical relationship with God versus the horizontal relationship with others (the sibling relationship). We examined how tension exists at the intersection of the two, specifically, the capacity to translate internal faith into outward action when engaging with others. These ideas guided my thinking regarding this month’s readings.
In “Thinking Forbidden Thoughts: The Oedipus Complex as a Complex of Knowing,” Michael Schein argues that the Oedipus complex should be understood as a fundamental structure of human knowing rather than merely a theory of psychosexual development. By examining the transition from Freud’s early seduction theory, which viewed the child as a passive victim of external trauma, to the oedipal model, Schein highlights a radical shift toward internal agency. In this framework, the subject is no longer a passive recipient of external events but an active author of their own subjective reality. While the surface themes of the myth focus on incest and patricide, Schein posits that the deep-level structure of the complex is a dualistic process of knowing that simultaneously fuels a desire for insight and a resistance to the painful limitations that knowledge reveals.
Michael Schein conceptualizes the loss of paradise as the inevitable emotional cost of transitioning from childhood innocence to psychological subjectivity. He argues that the act of “coming to know” is inherently linked to experiences of separation, as the individual moves away from a primary, undifferentiated state to one defined by internal and external boundaries. Using the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden as a parallel, Schein suggests that the “fall of man” is triggered by the desire to know, which effectively trades a state of bliss for one of self-awareness and differentiation.
The theological differences between the Bible and the Quran regarding the Fall offer a clear illustration of Michael Schein’s two models of “knowing”. In the Biblical account, the focus is on a definitive fall through disobedience that fundamentally alters human nature, whereas the Quranic narrative portrays the event as a temporary lapse of memory or mistake followed by immediate repentance and divine forgiveness.
Adam represents the facilitated model of learning, where the loss of paradise is endured as a necessary step toward subjectivity. By repenting, Adam accepts his human limitations and the knowledge of impossibility, transforming his transgression into an emotional achievement. This mirrors Schein’s view that true learning only occurs when one can tolerate the pain of losing innocence to gain agency.
In contrast, Satan (Shaytan) embodies the impeded model of knowing, characterized by a rigid resistance to truth and a refusal to acknowledge limitation. Rather than learning from his experience, he retreats into an “omniscience” of pride, where his narrative remains unchanged despite new information. While Adam uses the loss of paradise to evolve into a subject, Satan experiences the encounter with knowledge as a wound, leading to a permanent blindness that prevents further development.
Bearing all this in mind, I was struck by verses 67 to 71 , especially verse 71. In this sequence of communications to the Messenger peace be upon him, he is reminded of his authoritative authority as one who is assigned with the task of delivering the message of God and that he is not to worry as God will assist him in the task. Then verse 70 gives the example of a people who choose their own desires over the truth thinking that this will bear no consequences but they become blind and deaf.
These verses are an example of the Oedipus process of impeding learning. These people choose disavowal, and thus become blind and deaf. If we think of blindness as one’s blindness to one’s internal experience and deafness as the impermeability to receiving the external truth, or reality testing, we can then think about the psychological function of Kufr in terms of its relation to truth. Kufr or disbelief is a total erasure of the truth. It reflects a closed off insulated internal state whose primary psychological benefit is to provide stability by eliminating the discomfort of debt (gratitude to God) and reality testing.
Interestingly the opposite of Kufr in the Qur’an is Shukr (gratitude). Gratitude is a state of psychic permeability. To be grateful, one has to acknowledge that one is not the source of one’s own success. This creates a debt of love and responsibility, i.e. a soft receptive ego. Kufr on the other hand, linguistically translated as disbelief in God, but based on this analysis also refers to ingratitude, reflects a psychic armour. By covering the source of goodness (God) the individual cancels the debt. It is the ultimate narcissistic achievement. This form of autonomy at the cost of reality creates a sealed heart which is what the verses warn of.
If we think of disbelief (kufr), hypocrisy (Nufaaq) and transgression (fusuq )as psychological defences, we can formulate that the spectrum from belief (Iman) to disbelief (Kufr), can also be considered as representing positions similar to the paranoid schizoid and depressive position. They embody the polarities from envy to gratitude and all the defences in between.
While hypocrisy (nifaaq) has a parasitic relationship to the truth, reflecting a fragmented internal state which endeavours to achieve safety by not committing to any given truth and paying the cost of one’s convictions, transgression (fusuq) is antagonistic in that it represents an internal state that is boundaryless; its psychological function is to attain power by asserting autonomy via smashing the internal superego.
The questions however remains, is there a trauma of truth and a psychological consequence to living in a not knowing state?
Ultimately, the Quranic narrative of Adam and Satan (verses 31 to 37 of Surat al Baqara) serves as a template for two diverging paths of human consciousness. When we view the story of creation as a complex of knowledge, it reveals a fundamental ethical choice: how one responds to the trauma of truth. Adam demonstrates that the acquisition of wrong knowledge, the forbidden thought or the seductive hype of the ego need not lead to permanent blindness. Instead, by acknowledging his transgression through repentance, he converts a moment of “falling” into a state of “becoming”. He accepts his limitation, forfeits the narcissism of paradise, and gains the capacity for true learning and subjectivity.
In contrast, the sealed heart described in Verse 71 represents the ultimate failure of this Oedipal process. By choosing Kufr (disbelief/ingratitude) as a psychic defense, the individual attempts to achieve a false autonomy by erasing their debt to the Divine. This armour provides a temporary stability but at a devastating cost: the loss of reality testing and a profound internal blindness. If faith is a state of psychic permeability, a soft ego capable of gratitude, then disbelief is a state of rigid insulation. The moral of the text is clear: the only way to navigate the tension between the vertical and the horizontal is through the depressive realization of our own dependence. We must be willing to lose the “paradise” of self-sufficiency to inhabit the truth of our human condition.
Psychoanalysis & Beyond 
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