They’ve seen too many contradictions and illogical fairy tales, but they’ve not tabulated it all like an academic might. But they trust their gut. Organized religion doesn’t add up. Coming from a Muslim background, I tend to run into other ex-Muslims or people heading in that direction.
These life experiences are not just limited to my former group, the Ahmadiyya Muslims; I see this with with Sunni and Shia Muslims of all stripes.
There comes a time for many of us, when family and friends want to confront us. They want a dialog about religion to bring us back into the fold.
If you left Ahmadiyya Islam, that intervention will no doubt come from a practicing Ahmadi Muslim explaining how logical Islam is — especially the Ahmadiyya interpretation. Similarly, if you came from a Twelver Shia background, you’ll get the same intense plea about how logical and clearly true that denomination is amongst all others. And so on. And so on.
I believe that whether religious or not, we all win when we raise the level of dialog with critical thinking skills.
In this post, I want to present questioning Muslims, ex-Muslims and even practicing Muslims, a syllabus of resources to work through — videos to watch — that cover some key topics.
For those hoping to bring ex-Muslims back to the fold, engaging with this material with an open mind will help you gain an understanding of our thought processes, the critical thinking landscape, alternative perspectives and some specific critiques of Islam.
Not all concepts or objections against religion will apply to all parties. For example, critiques of Islam that involve an eternal Hell won’t apply to Ahmadi Muslims directly, who believe the Qur’an really points to a cleansing Hell that is temporary. Likewise, some examples that Theramin Trees uses may not apply to Muslims in general, when he gets into specific Christian doctrine.
However, the general concepts do carry over well. The underlying theme? Critical thinking and looking at the issues from perspectives other than those you’ve inherited.
Without further ado, playlists I have created for this purpose.
Did you make it through all of these? If you did, congratulations. We’ll all now have a much better set of terminology and concepts to have a dialog with.
To begin your exploration of this material, I suggest you start with a one minute video from Theramin Trees that primes this journey. It’s called The Impossible Game: