I’ve responded to some of the comments in this video, including this one from Daud Nasir, where he asks:
why didn’t you asked Allah for guidance? why has Allah the almighty no part in your decision?
I’ve replied to that comment on YouTube, and am including my response here for easier readability.
My thesis here is this: religion and the move to leave it because of contradictory evidence is often thwarted by the emotional appeal to prayer. It’s why I believe that many people who are otherwise compelled to leave based on bad evidence for religion, don’t. They stay based on emotion, guilt and wanting to return to the familiar. That overwhelming release of emotions is cathartic, and it can be mistaken for “God guiding” one to stay in the religion that is familiar to them.
Here are my thoughts in response to Daud Nasir’s question:
Nabeel Qureshi asked Allah for guidance. He sought Allah, and found Jesus instead. Do you feel this is a wiser strategy than evaluating evidence to see what actually makes sense to your thinking mind?
In my experience, the emotional seeking you suggest leads one to succumb to the emotional choice they want to make / wish to be true, to stay among familiar friends, family and community.
The doubting Protestant prays and if they return to religion, voila, they are usually back a Protestant just like their family. Mostly, it’s not that they pray and have God point them to being a Twelver Shia Muslim.
These switches between religions are rare. When they happen, they are usually moves between denominations, as the underlying paradigm of familiarity still drives us. Otherwise, prayers of this type, if they had merit, would lead to large patterns of people saying, “I prayed to God, and He led me to xyz”, where “xyz” would be statistically significant in one direction, one religion, one particular denomination.
Such big choices should not be about emotion. Rather, they should first and overwhelmingly be about evidence.
Why are not rational reasons sufficient for you? Why do they have no bearing for you? Why are you not willing to engage with Hani Tahir’s ideas with rational arguments, instead of suggesting a fuzzy, nebulous response to his laying out concrete reasoning?
It is my observation that when one cannot engage on evidence or good argument, this emotional card is pulled, “Why didn’t you pray on it?”. However, it’s clear Hani Tahir still has an Islamic belief of some kind. Did he say in his video, “I didn’t pray to God for guidance?” How can you be so presumptuous to assume that he didn’t pray for guidance? Is it because it doesn’t line up with your emotional conclusions?
Whether flawed or not, Hani Tahir is engaging based on concepts, evidence, argument. IMHO, that’s how you should also offer to “bring him back” to Ahmadiyyat.