Although I was once a devoutly religious Ahmadi Muslim, I did not leave Ahmadiyyat to embrace mainstream Islam. Nor have I embraced any other religion. This article explains my beliefs and my positions.

This treatise explores my positions on religion and philosophy. I will present a limited critique of Qur’anic scripture and Islamic philosophy. This is to help convey the basis for my rejection of Islam. For me, it distills down to scriptural verses which are illogical, and teachings that lack moral grace.

To be clear, I’m not referring to the revisionist understanding and expression of these ideas in western, progressive Muslim communities. I’m going to the source.

Introduction.

My primary goal for this piece is to communicate to you the reader, where I stand on various subjects related to theology, personal expression, and community. I am laying this out now, so that my friends and family need no longer tap-dance around these subjects.

Please know that if you are a Muslim, I am not attacking you. It is only the ideas bundled up as religion which I ask you to critically evaluate with me. Please understand that my immediate and extended family are all still practicing Muslims. Much of my extended circle of friends are still practicing Muslims too. I love them dearly. I stand with you against anti-Muslim bigotry.

My purpose with this platform is to challenge ideas and to examine the truth-claims of Islam. Why? Because none of us should be content to live life atop foundations which are not true. These foundational religious ideas might be ones that you hold dear. They are however, just that: ideas. Religious ideas do sometimes confer social and emotional benefits to those who hold them. They also have the power to perpetuate an us-versus-them narrative. They can burden the mind with cognitive dissonance. My quest however, has always been to align myself with that which is true, and not just with that which is useful (or merely convenient). We can rebuild that which is useful over a foundation of that which is true.

What do I mean by ‘truth’? Well, science helps us discover what is not true in order to build models to approximate reality. It is in this sense, that I refer to truth. It’s not about having absolute certainty; it’s about our best approximations at modeling reality. The foundations I speak of in this same sense, refer to our collective best efforts as a species. We have the ability to for example, codify best practices for living that far exceed commandments in the Old Testament.

While I discuss Islam generally, much of my specific focus is on how Ahmadiyyat interprets Islam. This is because I was originally from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

As we navigate the landscape of beliefs, facts, and reason, please remember that people have rights while ideas do not. It is true that some ideas are helpful, just as some ideas are harmful. Most religions include generous servings of both. As I’ve stated in my About page:

Perhaps you too, dear reader, have chosen to leave Islam and have sought a means by which to communicate this to loved ones. If so, this piece is dedicated to you.

Summary.

What follows is a snapshot of my positions. Most of these same ideas will be revisited in later sections of this essay.

Motivations.

Why do some of us feel it necessary to explain our beliefs and positions with such precision and depth? In short, it is to be understood by those who matter to us. It is a craving that most of us share. It is part of the human condition.

Beyond personal clarity with friends and family, I believe that I have something to contribute to the wider discussion on the topics of philosophy, religion, Islam, Ahmadiyyat, and building community.

With my growing activism on social media, it also became clear that an exposition of my own beliefs would be helpful for my audience—be they kindred spirits, antagonists or just curious observers.

Precisely articulating how I felt about the mysteries of life have always seemed an exercise best conducted through conversation. This is because the concepts are far more important than the labels.

My ideas, I have always felt, could only be conveyed using detailed explanations and precise language. Simple labels like agnostic, atheist, or deist cannot possibly convey the nuance in my intuitions, inferences and reasoning. Hence, this article.

I personally strive to keep an open mind. I have always believed that we should go wherever the evidence takes us. It was this attitude of self-honesty that transitioned me from one who vocally championed Islam to one who seriously questioned it.

We must be willing to accept the conclusions of our search, even if they be unexpected or unpleasant. Our findings may run afoul of the expectations of those whom we love. We must accept them with solemnity nonetheless. Only then can we truly claim to be embarking on an honest journey.

For emotional and familial reasons, it was difficult to leave classical theism. I wanted Islam to be true. I have always had an emotional and practical incentive for theism to win.

Loved ones who didn’t understand concepts like the burden of proof or Ockham’s razor wouldn’t be scratching their heads at my decision to leave Islam. Loved ones wouldn’t be sad that I have left the belief system that we once shared in common.

If you’re a theist of some variety, perhaps you can imagine just how difficult your own life might become if you ever told your loved ones that you no longer believed.

I suspect that scores of people hold a position similar to mine. They just haven’t found the right labels to describe their beliefs. I suspect that many people embrace both skepticism and a reverence for the numinous, as I do.

My writing here at Reason on Faith is my way of vocalizing what I have for too long, suppressed. Much of my writing is so that my family and friends can understand my thought process. I want my family to know that I have good reasons and thought-out positions for the advocacy and activism that will follow.

Another one of my goals in challenging theology is the empowerment of Ahmadi Muslim youth. I wish for them to know that they need no longer wrestle with vacuous sermons, extreme gender segregation, gender discrimination in leadership, homophobia, and a host of other issues that fuel cognitive dissonance.

Rejecting Religious Truth Claims.

I reject religion and religious truth claims outright. I do this based on what I believe to be fallacious reasoning proffered by proponents of classical theism.

Please note that I am not equating fallacious with insincere. I do believe that most theists hold their beliefs with sincerity. We simply disagree. Sometimes it’s on the facts. Sometimes it’s in how we reason. Sometimes both facts and reason play a role.

I often find myself aligned with compassionate everyday atheists as well as vocal anti-theism activists. Be it in opposition to Islam, to Christianity or to any other faith.¹

I do not believe that any scripture put forward in recorded history has any real connection to literal conceptions of divinity. I’m not sure that true divinity even exists beyond it being a beautiful metaphor for the mysterious, the sublimely romantic, for our collective sense of wonder, and for the intricate unknown. For me, it is that which inspires awe and humility as we gaze out at the stars.

Please do not confuse this position with a claim to have explored every religion. That is an impossible game. I believe that any just God worth worshipping would have readily surfaced for humanity reasonable evidence—moral teachings, clear prophecy, scriptural concordance with science, and the like. In my humble opinion, the prominent options on offer do not impress. Furthermore, the entire concept of worship reeks of arrogance for the being who would demand it. Religious worship is tangled up in a degrading kind of love.

Growing up Muslim, we are never taught to explore the moral implications of a Being—Allah—who demands that other beings worship him. I encourage you to now actually ponder the concept.

The following 75 second video sets the stage for this essay and understanding my perspective. It’s called The Impossible Game and was produced by TheraminTrees.

the impossible game by theramin trees

With religion being critiqued at my hands, the religious often mistakenly direct cosmological and teleological arguments my way for the existence of a God. Ahmadi Muslims often join in, since Ahmadiyya Islam is a focus area for my critique.

In these discussions, I sometimes find myself needing to clarify my positions in tweets that are much too short for that purpose.

.@ReasonOnFaith Like the multiverse or atoms organising themselves & inexplicably springing to life purely by chance, becoming conscious?

— Bureau Francophone (@islam_et_media)

April 25, 2016

.@islam_et_media For the record, I’m an agnostic deist. So let’s skip the teleological arguments. I don’t see any religions *worthy* of God.

— Reason on Faith (@ReasonOnFaith)

April 25, 2016

 

[archived screenshot]

This isn’t to say that I believe that the teleological, cosmological or any other arguments for the existence of a deity are convincing. I find them all deficient in various ways.

In my opinion, both the cosmological and teleological arguments are too abstract to be convincing proof. They also contain flawed premises.

Our brains do crave simple answers to big questions. I however, do not rush to quell the mysteries of existence by adopting simplistic placeholders just to assuage my primate brain.

If a God exists who is intelligent enough to design the Cosmos, then scriptures from a “revealed” religion like Islam should have been truly impressive. Yet I find the Qur’an simply unworthy of such a Being. I expected much better from the Creator of the Universe. It’s time to raise our standards.

In the formal arguments put forth for the existence of a God, one or more points in the premise of each argument’s syllogism are always contested. In my limited exposure to philosophy, the atheist’s rejection of one or more of these premises have always been justified.

The debate around the teleological argument will rage on. Mysteries we’ve not solved include abiogenesis: how the first inorganic matter became organic, as well as the phenomenon of consciousness. To be sure, our choices are not between:

1. We do have a naturalistic explanation, so we don’t need to invoke God.
2. We don’t have an explanation yet, so God did it.

This would be a false dichotomy. A third option commonly omitted by theists is, “We don’t know”. That is not to say that we will eventually have full knowledge of all things. We may never know. And that’s a completely valid possibility.

To jump to a specific explanation because we have no logical explanation currently, is to commit the logical fallacy known as the Argument from Ignorance.² This third option may in fact, be our best approximation of reality. This is the position I start with. It is the null hypothesis in this debate.

I do accept that a fourth option is possible: intelligent force(s) beyond our understanding may be responsible for the creation of our universe. But even if we grant this hypothetical, it only supports deism. It does not address the question of where these intelligent forces came from. It just pushes the problem back one level without actually solving anything.

The so-called “revealed” religions fall flat when critically examined. It is my contention that while deism is an unfalsifiable position, classical theism does fail scrutiny. This fourth possibility does not much further the case of the Muslim or Christian advocating for a personal God.

I doubt that science will ever enable us to identify what lies beyond or before our universe, or whether such questions even make sense.

As I understand it, modern cosmology indicates that time itself does not have meaning outside of our universe. Such metaphysical riddles may forever lie in the realm of “we don’t know”. And that’s okay. The fact that we may never know does not justify a reflex belief in a God.

Theism’s Appeal.

No doubt, theism has an emotional appeal. Especially when you factor in the social benefits conferred upon individuals who are part of an organized community.

Theists get to minimize their exposure to decision fatigue. They don’t have to evaluate answers and decide on the merits of religiously given positions. The meaning of life is neatly prepackaged for theists.³

Religious adherents can punt on the big questions of existence because “God” and—insert your religion of choice here—is the easy answer to every unknown. Theists can just get on with the business of living. Further, a belief that death is not the end can be comforting when confronted with the reality of our short life spans.

Envisioning that there is something or someone greater than us provides the comforting notion that our lives and even our actions might have meaning and purpose beyond that which we can discern or construct in this very life. This is especially comforting in the wake of dealing with the otherwise inexplicable loss of a child or similar such tragedy.

With the belief that, “God has a plan” and that “only God knows”, we get to defer grief. Instead of taking the full write down however, this deferment is placed as a charge on our spiritual credit card. God picks up the tab and the interest charges in the Hereafter. As a result, we can attenuate and defer much grief that we would otherwise experience in this life.

So what’s wrong with deferring grief this way (besides the whole premise being a lie)? Well, if we knew this life was the only one that we could be certain of, many theists would have made more of an effort to get closure with loved ones in this very life. It changes your perspective. You make this life count. It underscores the importance and timeliness of things that you need to say and do in this one precious life that we know that we have.

To say I’m sorry. To say I love you. To tell that girl you’ve been thinking about that you like her—without having religious guilt bear down upon you. No more should religion dictate whom we are allowed to love. No more in-group / out-group tribalism.

Like children who seek the approval of their parents, we instinctively value that which someone of authority over us might also approve of. As adults, getting a deity’s approval is the ultimate form of feeling like we need not question our decisions—at least not the religiously motivated ones.

Further, a sense of connection with the rest of humanity through a common focal point that is itself believed to be divine consciousness can feel more purposeful than a shared connection that is only metaphor and not metaphysics. I believe this is why man invented and evolved both God and religion.

Whether real or imagined, the subjective feelings and aspirations for a metaphysical connection; this sense of awe with our very existence, and our desire to care about more than our finite selves, is how I define spirituality.

Exploring these sublime states of connection and love are healthy. I however, believe that humanity needs new constructs to express and explore these concepts that go beyond the failings and fiction of even contemporary expressions of religion.

Real Constructs.

Some constructs exist in the real world as crutches. These constructs can be very useful if we learn to use them as such. The danger arises when we ascribe agency to, or construct mythology around, such supports.

Consider the humble cucumber plant. It has tendrils for support. Nothing intrinsic to the cucumber plant itself can provide the structural support the tendrils seek. But if you place a dead twig next to the cucumber plant, it will happily take hold of the twig. The cucumber plant will deploy its tendrils like grappling hooks onto the twig and rise. Recognizing this, gardeners and farmers often place trellises of vertical or netted string next to infant cucumber plants to provide support.

A cucumber plant whose tendrils have hooked on to netted string for support

Neither the twig nor the string are part of the cucumber plant. They are not intrinsic to cucumber plants. Yet if you place either of them next to a sprouting cucumber plant, the plant is likely to climb to higher heights.

A twig with a bend in it will also work. The cucumber plant will grapple on to the bent twig and improvise. The point is this: some tangible anchoring construct was needed to assist the climb. A structural construct of convenience upon which growth could take place. There is no inherent “truth” in the string or the twig. It’s just an anchor. And even if it was crooked, it would still provide some utility; some measure of support and stability.

Perhaps you can now see where I’m going with this. I believe that religion is like that twig. Indeed, I believe that Islam is actually akin to that bent twig. And I believe that we can do better. Much better.

Islamic civilization and the gift of Islamic thought.

Centuries of Islamic civilization have at times, given us sophisticated philosophy and legal jurisprudence. The Sufis, sages, mystics and scholars of Islam built schools of thought and ethics upon its foundations.

Andalusian polymath and Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd, whose name was often latinized as Averroes

These early Islamic scholars made some reasonable pronouncements for their time. They also believed many things that we would now find disagreeable given our modern sensibilities. I do commend the generations of Muslim scholars who tried however, to move society forward. Their goal was to build a more robust ethical framework for living. They made use of the raw material of early Islam, which they believed was divine in origin.

These religious philosophers of Islam built upon the foundations that they inherited. This was the age of oral traditions with hundreds of thousands of alleged sayings and doings of Muhammad circulating. Most of these were not yet assembled into trusted sahih collections. Those came between 100-200 years after Muhammad’s death.⁴

Muslim scholars added to this material with their rulings and case studies. They applied their own logic. They added their own wisdom. They employed subjective moral reasoning to interpret what they felt were objective moral prescriptions. They helped organize the raw material of Islam into Islamic fiqh for consumption by contemporary and future generations of Muslims.

Hassan Radwan⁵ aptly conveys that we would be foolish to completely ignore centuries of such human wisdom—even if the foundations lacked a connection to the divine:

Hassan Radwan
posted in: Facebook Group: Muslims for Secular Democracy

Islam, as a loose collection of ideas supported by a book believed to be divine, solved the apparent grounding problem in philosophy. Just like Christianity before it. Islam gave us a foundation—an anchoring truth claim—upon which to build sophisticated philosophy and mysticism.

The string and the twig provided a convenient support to the growing cucumber plant. So too have the foundational ideas of Islam given Muslim sages and mystics something to build upon. If it wasn’t Islam, human minds would have anchored developments in philosophy and culture to whatever foundations were on offer.

Perhaps alternative religions would have flourished and perhaps one of those might have gained a foothold. It’s also possible that our pagan ancestors may have just stagnated instead of contributing more to philosophy. Perhaps Christianity would have dominated unchallenged and unchecked.

The rapid growth of civilization required that we be collectively grounded to something—anything. Agreeing on a foundation enables higher levels of social cohesion, ethics and philosophy to develop; even when that foundation’s metaphysical, historical, and origin claims are but fables and fabrication.⁶ With centralized vision and control, religious ideas can flourish. Unity in the early stages of a religion’s development helps to consolidate doctrine. This typically occurs under the leadership of the religion’s founder. This consolidation of core doctrine must take place before the conflicts of succession and warring interpretations arrive on the scene, i.e. when a religious leader eventually dies.

Going further back, to Muhammad’s own death, we see the Sunni-Shia split. Even Ali, the fourth khalifa of the Sunnis felt that he was robbed and should have been the first successor to Muhammad. He eventually pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr for the sake of unity, not because he truly believed that Abu Bakr was rightfully intended by Muhammad to be the first Khalifa.

For demonstrating what is possible, we cannot deny that religion has played a pivotal role in humanity’s education.

I urge you to ponder. Truly, stop to consider the episode in the Qur’an where Muhammad’s skeptics ask him questions to prove his truthfulness, only for them to receive vague and useless responses in return.

It is my belief that religious truth claims are nothing more than recycled myths. Even some contemporaries of Muhammad believed this to be true. They were unmoved by the aesthetic beauty of the Qur’an, and yet they knew classical Arabic better than anyone alive today. The Qur’an itself mentions that some contemporaries of Muhammad found the Qur’an to be nothing more than recycled myths. Muhammad’s detractors found the Qur’an to be linguistically unimpressive. That’s not to say that no passages were moving to Muhammad’s detractors; just that in totality, it did not impress.

Some contemporaries of Muhammad found the Qur’an to be evasive and vague in response to their queries. They believed the Qur’an’s stories to be the recycled fables of the ancients. Qur’an 8:31-33 chronicles these precise objections.

It’s as if repeating the charges without providing an exculpatory response (such as an actual demonstration of divine knowledge or power) somehow makes the charges go away. It doesn’t.

Let there be no doubt; I believe that religion has served a necessary role in the cognitive era of our species. The lessons learned from religion were an indispensable crutch and organizing principle for society. Of course, with the good came the bad.

While we can still benefit from the support religion provides, I believe that religion’s power to affect positive change diminishes by the day. This is because the truth claims of religion—all religions—are effectively under fire. They are buckling under rational inquiry.

Islamic scripture and apologia are now being debunked and toppled with increasing frequency. Islamic apologists and enthusiasts are resorting to deleting tweets and deleting posts when they later realize that such inadvertently indict Islam. Blusterous apologists are backing out of debates which they themselves proposed. Muslim apologists now realize that their ex-Muslim opponents know Islam. Indeed, we know our Qur’an.

Yes, even Ahmadiyya Islam contains a hodgepodge of contradictory apologia and positions that contradict known science.

Exegesis: When it can mean anything, it means nothing.

When one reads Ahmadi Muslim commentary of the Qur’an, verses that otherwise read as nonsensical on the surface (to us modern day readers) are retroactively given elaborate metaphorical meanings in the commentary.

Such exegesis⁷ also employ post-hoc back-dated inventions to classical Arabic, so that the language may contain previously lost meanings and idioms that help salvage a Qur’anic verse from ridicule or an undesirable doctrinal conclusion.

The words of scripture provide the raw material. From such, exegetes get to riff on the Arabic roots of the words involved. The exegetes conjure up elaborate hypotheticals using the flimsiest of evidence. They scramble for gradients of meaning and metaphor that might rescue the text from itself. In the end, they create a road to their desired destination, even if no path can be found from the literal or the implied text to take them there.

When exegesis veers from the text, you can create a road to anywhere from anywhere. Scripture becomes meaningless.

Sometimes, modern religious exegesis goes to painstaking efforts to soften or reverse an obvious reading of the text. We see this phenomenon when we compare Ahmadi Muslim Qur’anic commentary with the earliest tafsirs of the Qur’an. The latter articulate what was understood during the first few centuries that followed Muhammad. This was the time when Islam’s various schools of thought were being forged.

Philosopher, author and neuroscientist Sam Harris has demonstrated how in the hands of the creative commentator, we can derive something that sounds deep and profound but which is simply contrived and arbitrary nonsense. We can spin tales from almost any source text. Tales that have little relation to the elaborate fiction being spun.

The clip from 1:06:15 to 1:10:12 is priceless. Religions can mislead; getting people to creatively read in to texts. https://t.co/UeQYjKK5fT

— Reason on Faith (@ReasonOnFaith)

March 22, 2017

[archived screenshot]

In the following audio clip, Sam Harris illustrates how one can make something as mundane as a cooking recipe for fish sound like a metaphor for the meaning and paradoxes of life. The short clip is both amusing and instructive. I implore you to take a listen.

Consider that when Muslims wish to hold the Qur’an to read it, they wash their hands first. Some even perform the ritual ablution or wudu to prime their mind and body. This reinforces the psychology that what they are about to read is profound. Nay, it is divine!

Now what if instead of the ritual wudu, you were to prime yourself by reading the children’s story The Emperor’s New Clothes? How might a priming to trust your inner skeptic color your reading of the Qur’an?⁸

Indeed, some of the metaphor in Qur’anic exegesis, especially that written by Ahmadi Muslims, is full of deepities. But what is a deepity, you ask?

rationalwiki.org entry for the word deepity

Let’s return to the Qur’an and the great lengths to which Ahmadiyya Islam⁹ will go to reconcile the nonsensical.

The Ant-Men of Qur’an 27:17-18.

The Qur’an contains a passage in the chapter entitled Ants¹⁰ that has traditionally been read as a retelling of how the speech of real ants was both heard and understood by Prophet Solomon. To this day, a sizable majority of the mainstream Muslim world continues to believe in this phenomenon as a literal miracle. Since Ahmadi Muslims believe Allah is consistent, anything in past scripture that sounds like magical powers, must be re-interpreted so as to sound more pedestrian. Ahmadi Muslims have no other choice but to re-interpet these verses of the Qur’an so as to not have them sound like a scene from Pixar’s A Bug’s Life.

Not-metaphorical ants

Using the Ahmadiyya numbering and an Ahmadiyya translation, here are verses 18-19 of Chapter 27:¹¹

Let’s look at the translation from mainstream Islamic sources, representative of how the Qur’an has been understood for centuries:

It’s rather convenient for the Ahmadiyya translation to use the Arabic word naml in place of the English word ‘ant’. To the English reader perusing the English translation, the word Naml sounds much more exotic than ‘ant’. I encourage you to read the Ahmadiyya commentary for these verses, starting with footnote 2156. The tweets that follow contain my responses to this commentary.

Solomon + his army may 'crush them' while the army 'knows not'. Strange choice of words if one were *not* referring to literal ant colonies.

— Sohail Ahmad (@ReasonOnFaith) April 23, 2017

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Here’s that footnote in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s one-volume English Qur’an with commentary:¹²

This exegesis states that, “and Masākinakum (your habitations) in the verse lends powerful support to the view that Naml was a tribe, since the former verb is used only for rational beings”. What this exegesis conveniently overlooks is that if you start with a fairytale premise—that ants and humans can communicate with one another—then it is completely reasonable to use a word for ant dwellings that is also used for rational beings like us humans.

If the ants understand who Solomon was and that his soldiers were coming, and Solomon could in turn understand their speech, then we have established that both species in question possess rational faculties.¹³ Of course, this conclusion points to an absurdity within the Qur’anic text itself. In its time, and for centuries that followed, orthodox Muslims have had no problems ascribing such rational faculties to ants because of this Qur’anic verse.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim commentary suggests that at most, Solomon’s army might have been passing by (“Solomon might have passed by the valley where the tribe called Naml lived.”).

This defies the most basic of common sense. Please stop and re-read that last paragraph.

Ahmadiyya Islam’s tafsir here is the Emperor’s New Clothes, where the emperor is marching down the parade route. We who question with an appreciation for the facts represent the boy in the crowd blurting out, “But he hasn’t got anything on!”

Step back and ponder. Does this not strike you as pure mythology? It is my conclusion that Ahmadiyya Islam has toiled hard to rework Qur’anic verses which contain fairytales into lost idioms of language and manufactured metaphor.

Orthodox Muslims who interpret the verses of Surah al-Naml¹⁴ as it plainly reads, make excellent points. Such Muslims push back on revisionist metaphor from modern Muslims who attempt to save the Qur’an from looking like it is talking about, well, talking ants.

Mainstream Muslim exegesis rightly IMHO, reject Ahmadi Muslim tafsir on the 'ants' of Surat al-Naml being men. See: https://t.co/IQG52tBsIk pic.twitter.com/DzzxpuhPAt

— Sohail Ahmad (@ReasonOnFaith) April 18, 2017

[archived screenshot]

The exegesis included in the above tweet does propose a belief in supernatural fairytales (humans understanding the speech of ants), but it is a much more faithful reading of what’s plainly evident in the Qur’an.

The exegesis cited in the above tweet was written by Syed Abul Ala Maududi, he having completed this work in 1972. He was an ultra-orthodox hardliner who was rightly criticized by Ahmadi Muslim scholars for his despicable views regarding offensive jihad and death-for-apostasy. But can we really find fault with his analysis of Qur’an 27:18? For convenience, I am reproducing his footnote 24 commentary to this verse.¹⁵

I can’t deny it. This commentary makes a lot of sense given the text of the Qur’an. How does an army of soldiers accidentally “crush” other human beings “without knowing” it? Given that the word naml in Arabic means “ant”, can you really deny the obvious meaning here and continue to insist that “ant” is the name of a people belonging to a tribe named after a valley of ants?

To be sure, I’m not advocating that a man named Solomon literally talked to ants, as the Qur’an describes in very clear language. I’m simply making the case that to deny that the Qur’an has portrayed a literal fairytale here, is to engage in mental gymnastics of the highest order. In my view, the Qur’an is a collection of myths, authored by man. This perspective is how we reconcile the competing claims of a plain reading versus manufactured metaphor. This passage is neither literally true as the fairy tale it describes, nor is it by any reasonable stretch, metaphorical.

Tafsir Ibn Kathir also comments on these verses of the Qur’an.¹⁶

Ibn Kathir, the most famed tafsir author ever, who is also cited numerous times within Ahmadiyya Muslim tafsir, has clearly stated that Solomon was capable of understanding the speech of various animals. Did Ibn Kathir too, not know classical Arabic? Was Ibn Kathir also unaware of Arabic idioms? If Islam’s greatest minds for century after century got it all wrong, who’s fault is that? The recipients of the message or the allegedly divine author of the message?

Soldiers walking. Who are they more likely to “crush”—ants or humans?

Here’s another take on this verse which cites numerous early Islamic commentators on the matter:

How is it that all of these native Arabic speakers over a millennium, familiar with the idioms of the language, missed a common-sense interpretation that didn’t require a descent into mythology? How did they miss an interpretation that is in keeping with natural law? How is it that they opted instead for childish fairytales?

Taken the way Ahmadi Muslims would have you read these verses, they really tell us nothing of moral significance beyond the trivial (“don’t crush the innocent by accident!”). Yet they make perfect sense for a holy book in the 7th century which was trying to impress upon believers that Allah granted near-magical powers of communication to his chosen prophets. Again, deploy Ockham’s razor.

Far better for Allah to have used his limited authorship instead, to give us a verse which clarified that rape is forbidden—whether with one’s wife, or with any other woman; even if she be a domestic slave or a captured prisoner of war. What a wasted opportunity to provide useful guidance in God’s pristinely preserved final book for mankind.

Consider next, the Islamic tafsir, Tafsir al-Jalalayn. This is one of the most prominent tafsirs in Sunni Islam. Here’s what it has to say about this very same verse.

In Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a queen ant is being referred to. Can we still deny that this verse is referring to literal ants?

Consider that Ahmadiyyat also started in the Indian subcontinent. A century on, the overwhelming majority of its adherents are non-Arabs. Who would have a better grasp of the idioms and nuances of the Arabic language than mujaddideen¹⁷ raised in the Arabic speaking world?

Is it reasonable to insist that centuries of native Arabic speakers, including prominent tafsir writers and mujaddids of their age, didn’t understand the true meaning of who and what the subjects of this verse were? How smart and how in touch with continuous divine revelation¹⁸ were they, if their own personal understanding of Islam was that of literal fairytales?

What kind of a God would purposely reveal misleading fairytale wordings to human beings like this and pawn it off as “guidance”? Does this not seem more like the games and riddles of human minds? Does this sound to you like the solemn words of the Creator of the Universe sincerely attempting to guide His creation?

God seems to be trolling us if it’s metaphor. He’s talking about “crushing” in a chapter entitled “Ants” in a passage referring to “ants” adjacent to verses about Solomon understanding all manner of animal speech. To continue to use metaphor among a people who for centuries keep taking it literally is downright irresponsible. It’s trolling them. It’s setting people up for failure; not for guidance. Such a callous deity is not worthy of our worship.

Be honest with yourself. If this passage with Solomon and the ants wasn’t in the Qur’an, but it was present in the holy book of a competing religion, how would you react? Most Muslim apologists would have a field day trouncing over the anemic apologetics employed to explain away these fairy tales. Why then, do so many refuse to listen to that inner voice when these preposterous verses actually do exist in the Qur’an? Please don’t be among those who silence that inner voice of reason. You deserve better.

Miraculous Metaphor: Jesus and Qur’an 3:49.

Ahmadiyyat stresses that Jesus didn’t literally give the blind sight or literally resurrect the dead.

Consider the Qur’anic verse recounting some of the alleged miracles of Jesus:

Don’t you find it rather thoughtless of a super-intelligent deity to describe the miracles of Jesus in the Qur’an using such literal and suggestive language on purpose?

Here is the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s translation of the same verse, which they number as Qur’an 3:50.¹⁹

According to Ahmadiyya Islam, these are just metaphors for Jesus having given the spiritually blind spiritual sight and the spiritually dead spiritual life. When we’re talking metaphors, is there really a meaningful distinction between the spiritually blind and the spiritually dead? Enough to call them out separately in a holy book meant for all peoples and for all time?

Moreover, why was it so important for Allah to call out both spiritual transformations as distinct from one another (healing the blind, raising the dead) if neither were to be taken literally?

Furthermore, why couldn’t Allah have just used the adjective spiritual himself, instead of letting Muslims grope in the dark for 1400 years until someone came to explain that adding the qualifying adjective “spiritual” explains what was actually meant by Allah? What does this say about Allah as an effective communicator?

How is it that no authentic hadith have ever been recorded clarifying that spiritual sight and spiritual life are what were actually meant? Consider that the Qur’an came in a time where people had a greater predisposition to believe in literal fairytales when it came to matters of religion. Does employing metaphor here represent a responsible use of language on the part of the author?

Since Christians of the time believed these same miracles of Jesus literally, why didn’t Allah in the Qur’an correct those misunderstandings? Why did he instead, perpetuate them?²⁰

To not make a correction here brings to mind the like of one who has heard misleading information and yet chooses to pass it on in a manner that will continue to mislead. Someone who repeats a confusing narrative instead of correcting it with clarity. Is this Godly? Is this being merciful to people who have now been misled to believe that supernatural miracles are real?

Recall that both the Old Testament and the New Testament of the 7th century, like today, contained miracles that were easily understood as being literal. It was a simpler time. According to Ahmadiyya Islam, Christians and Jews would have been mistaken if they took their books literally vis-a-vis references to supernatural miracles.

So what does Allah do with the Qur’an to reign in this misguided propensity to believe in supernatural miracles? Nothing. He does nothing to break that cycle of supernatural literalism. Instead, Allah gives us Qur’an 3:49 about Jesus.

If Allah wrote Qur’an 3:49 and yet intended it to be metaphorical, there is no other conclusion but to charge Allah with sowing the seeds of misdirection, obfuscation and purposely creating fitna. For this state of affairs, Allah has only himself to blame.

Questions We Should be Asking

Let’s enumerate some of the questions that arise from the Ahmadiyya Islamic position on this verse.

1. Is there any evidence from sahih hadith with undisputed isnads, that these were metaphors and not literally true?
2. Do we have any evidence that Muhammad even got the memo regarding this verse being all metaphor?
3. Can we read about the metaphorical meaning in any major works of exegesis of the Qur’an, such as the famed Ibn Kathir? Perhaps also, something prior to 300 A.H.?²¹
4. If these really were metaphors, why is it that no such metaphor exists in the Qur’an to recount Muhammad’s success stories with preaching?
5. Were Muhammad’s religious transformations in his 23-year ministry less spectacular than the three-year ministry of Jesus in Jerusalem?
6. Did Muhammad not give the spiritually dead spiritual life? If he did, where is this recorded in those terms?
7. Have not religious personalities both prior to and after Jesus, also given the spiritually dead spiritual life? What makes it so special in the case of Jesus?
8. Do Muslims who also perform impressive before and after dawah transformations, need the permission of Allah when they give spiritual life? How exactly does that work when giving spiritual life as opposed to just giving spiritual sight?

Notice how the clause by the permission of Allah comes into play in Qur’an 3:49 only when the real heavy lifting happens, such as bringing an animal or a human being to life. Why don’t we need the permission of Allah for curing the spiritually blind or healing the spiritually sick? It makes no sense unless you read the verse as originally intended in the seventh century: literally.

I implore you to read the Ahmadi Muslim commentary on this particular passage. You may find as I do, that Sam Harris’ spiritual insights from the Hawaiian fish recipe are more illuminating.

Allah takes great effort to correct the metaphorical usage of terms prevalent in the Bible at the time of the Qur’an’s alleged revelation, such as ‘Son of God’. Yet, Allah decided to continue to employ misleading supernatural metaphors elsewhere in the Qur’an.

Why must Allah employ these misleading metaphors for such important topics when they are bound to be misunderstood by most Muslims across most of Islam’s history? To commit the same and obvious oversight repeatedly²² is not the mark of an intelligent lawmaker, let alone the Creator of the Universe.

Conclusions Pointed to by the Evidence

Applying’s Ockham’s razor, there are now obvious conclusions that we can draw regarding the miracles of Jesus as relayed in the Qur’an.

1. There is no meaningful distinction between the spiritually blind and the spiritually dead. A reference to giving sight to the blind and to giving life to the dead can only be meaningful and worthy of mention as distinct miracles if we take both events literally. This of course, raises obvious supernatural problems. While accepted by the orthodox, embracing literal supernatural miracles is rejected by the Ahmadiyya.
2. The Qur’an’s references to the miracles of Jesus were intended to be literal, reaffirming what Christians of the time believed and what Muslims most likely believed since the time of Muhammad. No Muslims of the time have been recorded as having had any objections to such a literal reading. Embracing these miracles literally made it easier to sell Islam to Christians too.²³
3. Muhammad didn’t ever claim to do anything physically miraculous that anyone else could ever witness or verify.²⁴ Hence, no mention attempted in the Qur’an of Muhammad being a messenger who also gave sight to the blind or life to the dead. If such a verse was present, we know that Muhammad would have been called out on it specifically. His opponents would have demanded a demonstration of such; just as they did regarding his claims generally (Qur’an 8:31-33).

Ahmadiyyat is anxiously trying to salvage the text to show that all of this literalism was actually meant figuratively. After sincere reflection and a reasoned analysis however, we can come to no other conclusion but that the Qur’an is the work of fallible human beings from the seventh-century. It is a book originally subscribed to by those who readily believed in stories recounting supernatural miracles. To suggest today that it means otherwise is nothing more than a desperate act of post-hoc revisionism.

Letting go of religion can be difficult. I know.

Permission to Beat One’s Wife and Qur’an 4:34.

Consider the Qur’an, verse 4:34. Currently, it has a provision for beating one’s wife after exhausting a series of escalated measures given that a husband fears disobedience from his wife.

There are in fact, numerous contentious issues with this verse, such as male guardianship, the justifications for it, and the fact that the wife hasn’t even done anything wrong yet—the husband just “fears” that she might. Here, I am focusing on just one problematic component—that of actually beating one’s wife.

Here is a translation of the verse from a mainstream Sunni Muslim source.

Let’s now look at a translation of the same verse from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Notice how the word ‘beat’ from the orthodox translation has been rendered here as ‘chastise’? It certainly sounds a bit old fashioned. And there’s a reason for that.

Ahmadiyya Islam's 5-vol commentary tries to soften Qur'an 4:34 on a husband's 'right' to beat his wives. Uses more obscure word 'chastise'. pic.twitter.com/XSRVNOgAkZ

— Sohail Ahmad (@ReasonOnFaith) April 27, 2017

[archived screenshot]

Let’s look at what the Oxford English dictionary has to say about the word chastise:

Oxford Dictionary: British & World English

The main dictionary entry describes an action one might take against say, lazy colleagues. Of course, you wouldn’t physically beat them. The secondary meaning points to dated usage. In the past, chastise did refer to the actual act of beating another person.

Ahmadi Muslim translators have played a clever sleight of hand here. Let’s unpack what might have been their strategy:

There’s no escaping it. The Arabic word in this verse means to beat. We’re talking physical, corporal punishment administered to a woman by her own husband.

The words of the Qur’an do not temper the beating with any rules. Translations that insert the adjective “light” to qualify the beating do so based on inferences from hadith. Yes, that same body of literature that contains some ridiculous pronouncements. Muslim apologists cherry pick from the Hadith when and as convenient.

If you reject the hadith and the seerah²⁵ literature as unreliable, and believe that the Qur’an alone can provide guidance, then you’ve just enabled unmitigated wife beating. There are no means from within the Qur’an itself to insert the adjective “light” or to reference seventh century toothbrushes to carry out said beatings.

Let’s take a closer look at the Ahmadiyya Muslim 5-volume commentary on this verse. Specifically, the part that deals with the beating: ¹²

After Abu-Bakr died, Umar was considered (by both Sunni and Ahmadi Muslims) to be the best among Muslims to lead. Note the insights gleaned from this commentary regarding Umar’s character.

Umar wanted permission to beat “refractory” wives.²⁶ Umar did get his request granted for a wife beating provision, only to have it moderated when women followed up with Muhammad to complain. How could Umar have been fit to lead Muslims as one of the Khulifa Rashideen? Can Umar honestly be held up as a moral example for any of us? There are Muslim men alive today who have never hit their wives, nor were they ever tempted to do so (as “refractory” as such wives might be). Are these men better than Muhammad’s second in spiritual command?

The recalibration of this provision clearly moved with the wind; flip-flopping with whomever just happened to complain last. But do you know what is timeless? Allah’s words. Allah overruled Muhammad when the latter was hesitant to marry Zainab. Allah’s word trumps everything and everyone.

Yes, yes, I know—according to the hadith, a man who beats his wife is not the best among men. Yes, yes, I know—Muhammad is characterized as having never beaten any of his 11 wives. And for this, among other reasons, Muslims believe that Muhammad was the best among men.

I submit to you that we could do much better by simply removing the final escalation in this verse which allows a husband to beat his wife. Then every Muslim man could more easily aspire to being the best among men!

What many Muslims fail to realize when they are triggered to respond with a defense of this verse, is the very simple question:

Why is this provision to beat your wife even present in the Qur’an in the first place?

It must provide a net benefit instead of a net harm to society for it to be justified, right? So please, let’s hear about that net benefit. I know you’re tempted to run to the Qur’anic commentary to see what contrived gymnastics they’ve exercised to arrive at a justification for beating one’s wife; but I want you to think about it. Search your humanity. Use your innate moral compass. We all have one. What does yours say?

Go ahead. Pause and think. Seriously. Don’t just keep reading.

Please, take a moment to reflect on this if you currently identify as Muslim. I implore you. Give yourself a minute to think about the benefits of this provision to beat one’s wife, found within a timeless book, for all of humankind. Could you come up with some benefits? Could you come up with any?

Okay, now take half that time to think about the harms this provision enables, and of the countless women who have suffered because Allah granted their husbands air cover to beat them.

Now that you’ve thought about the pros and cons; both for the couple and in the context of human nature—considering many millennia of human civilization past and hopefully yet to come—how did you do? Did you envision net benefit or net harm?

It’s also worth pointing out that the Qur’anic injunction to beat one’s wife after a sequenced escalation isn’t worded as a recommendation or as an option. It’s an outright command. Once you’ve exhausted earlier measures in the sequence, you move to the next stage. If it gets to this next stage, you are to beat your wife. Anything else (e.g. hadith indicating that you make it a ‘light’ beating or that you avoid it altogether to be the best among men) are merely creative apologia from sources secondary to the Qur’an.

I applaud Muhammad for trying to soften the wife-beating verse after the fact (if such hadith are to be believed). A true holy book from God however, would never have even contained this provision in the first place.

Consider a hypothetical: what if Quran 4:34 did not allow a man to beat his wife. In such a scenario, would you then:

1. Criticize the Qur’an for being incomplete?
2. Claim that the Qur’an was missing needed prescriptions for harmonious and healthy marital relations among some elements of society, where men feared disobedience from their wives?
3. Claim that the Qur’an lacked the moral high ground since it did not have this provision to beat one’s disobedient wife?

Of course not. Therefore, you have just proven to yourself that we human beings can do better. If not to me, at least admit it to yourself.

We can make numerous small improvements like this to the Qur’an that a rational, loving and peaceful human being (such as yourself, I hope) would be hard pressed to deny are improvements. And when we make these improvements, it’s death by a thousand paper cuts for the Qur’an. It’s game over for the folklore that champions the narrative that the Qur’an is a perfect book.

Want a few more examples? Then peruse the Better Qur’an Project. Reflect on why it is that human beings have come up with these modified verses instead of the supposed Creator of the Universe having done so in the first place.

Consider also this debate from the UK, which includes ex-Muslim Maryam Namazie and representatives of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. The two parties debate the merits of Sharia Law. In the last 30 minutes or so, Qur’an 4:34 comes up. Although somewhat peripheral to the debate’s main topic, the ridiculousness of Qur’an 4:34 is made bare when Maryam Namazie asks with exasperation (I’m paraphrasing): What value is there to society in having a provision that allows a husband to beat his wife!?

Finally, consider Hassan Radwan’s article and short video on the attempts by apologists to twist the Arabic words of 4:34 to soften the language. The verse states that a husband may physically beat his wife, and there’s no getting around that fact.

Beyond Faulty Foundations.

Religion addressed the grounding problem by fluke. We owe religions like Islam some credit for this. But our species has now progressed further. Instead of bent twigs blown into place by happenstance, we can and should deliberately formulate loftier foundations upon which humanity’s greatest philosophical ideas and minds, including those not yet born—can build.

We should build new foundations without the baggage of unjustifiable truth claims. This baggage plagues so many religions, including modern revivals like Ahmadiyya Islam.

I believe that the moral education of our society starts with our children. I also believe that moral education is not the exclusive realm of religion. In fact, I find some religious teachings and stories downright immoral. We need only consider the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice (read: kill) his son to see how dangerous the relationship between human beings can become in the presence of divine command theory.

In his debate with William Lane Craig, atheist philosopher Shelly Kagan expressed the importance of proper moral training. It strikes me that many theists assume that only other theists appreciate the value of a sound moral education. However, that’s just not so. Moral education is important to us non-theists, even though we won’t necessarily couch it in the same terms as a theist might.

Today, non-theists do not have organized structures of dedicated moral education in the way that major religious organizations do. This will change as some of us non-theists opt to construct organized communities to rival those of the religions that we left behind (minus the unsubstantiated truth claims and questionable baggage).

Once we construct these codified, popularized, and formalized moral frameworks, I believe that they will be superior to the moral prescriptions of Abrahamic religions. Yet even without such formally packaged moral curriculum, several European countries composed of a majority of atheists have already demonstrated that we can navigate the moral landscape using our human intuitions coupled with sound social conventions.

On a more personal note, after producing material on the counter-apologetics front, I aspire to participate in creating one of many conceptual foundations that we, the spiritual but not religious, might choose to build upon. Such an endeavor is something I have personally wanted to pursue for many years.

And who knows. Perhaps one day, you too will join me in this effort.

My Positions Explored.

Just as a person can be a sibling, a son or daughter, a parent, a coach, a friend, a manager, an accountant, an American, an Olympian and so on; there are several labels that can be applied to my identity. Some of these labels help articulate my position on religion.

While a Muslim will often state that the term Muslim is their most important identifying label, I do not use the ex-Muslim label in the same way. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find any ex-Muslims who use this label to uniquely and exclusively identify themselves. Consequently, the retort, “Why do you choose to identify yourself with a negative!?” is a baseless accusation directed at ex-Muslims.

For myself, the ex-Muslim label is one of several labels that apply and I sincerely hope that one day it will be as superfluous as ex-Christian is today.²⁷ The ex-Muslim label is not a label informing you about who I am as a person. It is a contemporary label that tells you that I can and I have left a religion that many around the globe do not have the freedom to leave.

Do you remember all of the ‘Je suis Charlie’ solidarity after the Charlie Hebdo attack in France? Yes, it’s simply like that. Solidarity and awareness.

The ex-Muslim label seeks to raise awareness: people can and do leave Islam. People can have a rational aversion to an ideology while still having respect for the rights of human beings who consider themselves adherents of that ideology.

As ex-Muslims, we can and do critique Islam while simultaneously defending the rights of Muslims to be free from bigotry. Ex-Muslims such as myself support Muslims who practice their faith, so long as it does not infringe on the rights of other members of society. For some Muslims in the West, Islam is a personal matter, and so no such conflicts of infringement arise. It can and has worked.

I am an agnostic deist. I am an ex-Ahmadi. I am an ex-Muslim.²⁸ Some may even consider me culturally Muslim. I am a free-thinker. I am pro-love, pro-humanity, pro-community, pro-good-philosophy, pro-wisdom and pro-reason. I reject all religious claims asserting that they are “revealed” truth. I reject New Age assertions about the reality of the universe which attempt to go beyond poetry without commensurate evidence.

I do acknowledge that there are some useful ideas within many religions; ideas that have been woven into the fabric of various cultures around the globe.

Cultural Muslim.

Many people would consider me a cultural muslim. On several issues, I happen to be more conservative (and thus appear more observant) than many Muslims who bear the label but don’t much reflect on their inherited programming. I generally avoid the term “cultural muslim” however, because of the confusion it engenders about beliefs. The word ‘Muslim’ is inherently belief-based.²⁹ There are hybrid colloquialisms that are however, emerging. One such movement and identity is Muslimish.

Without exception, I reject the label ‘Muslim’ on its own. By definition, that term implies theological beliefs about the Qur’an and Muhammad, which I dismiss.

Religion influences culture and culture will often imprint on our lives beyond the outright acceptance or rejection of any particular ideology. I have personally retained some aspects of culture commonly identified with Islam.

Islamic culture is the vehicle through which I had originally accessed these practices. I do not doubt however, that most if not all beneficial practices associated with Islam today, can be found in civilizations prior to Islam.

Practices closely correlated with Islam as they relate to my life include the following:

• I do not consume alcohol.
• I do not gamble.³⁰
• I do not eat pork³¹
• I have no tattoos
• I have no piercings and never grow my hair very long (both frowned upon for men in Islam)
• I trim my nails short.
• I trim hair in other areas like a good Muslim boy. Good hygiene has no religion.
• I use a lota in the bathroom.³²
• I offer and respond to Islamic greetings of peace in Arabic when interacting with Muslims.

With regards to Islamic greetings, this includes my interaction with Muslims who know that I am no longer a Muslim. The kindness with which that greeting is offered to me, and with which I offer it to others, has not changed.

Some of this is admittedly transitional or should I say generational—such as using Islamic terminology in greetings and conversational idioms. I don’t expect my grandchildren to adopt such greetings verbatim. I hope that we one day popularize something just as nice as the intent of Assalaamo Alaikum with the ubiquity of today’s simple hello. I also endeavor to pass along the wisdom of abstaining from alcohol and gambling. Such an effort will require a positive belief-system framework to ground it—a future endeavor which I seek to be involved with.

I continue to make use of idioms and phrases which today, still bear a religious connotation. I believe that the sentiments felt are not exclusive to religion. Take for instance, the word blessed. Absent a divine agent, you can still feel a sense of gratitude in response to a fortunate event or state of being. I am still blessed to be alive. We non-theists can feel those same feelings, without invoking the supernatural.

I choose to co-exist with family members³³ who are still deeply religious. Small efforts on my part to use common cultural and even religious idioms helps to maintain a bridge of familiarity and connection with people who cannot process the concept of personal autonomy and advocacy in matters of religion (except where they fit the mold of identity politics).

Where it really matters however—with principles that I strongly believe in—I will not compromise.

However, I will no longer pretend to take the Islamic position on an issue or to defend the Qur’an where I deem either to be advocating an immoral position.

The Belief Spectrum.

Labels fall short in many respects. But if I had to choose, then agnostic deist would be the closest characterization of my position. If I were to be even more precise, I would say that I am on the continuum between implicit atheism³⁴ and agnostic deism. But that’s a mouthful. So I simplify to just identifying as an agnostic deist.

Astute readers may claim that I’m creating confusion here; that implicit atheism already encompasses a sufficient degree of uncertainty to accommodate the non-belief position that I espouse. Although I identify with the arguments and aims of many atheists, the word atheist does not encompass connotations for the deistic intuitions that I also hold.

I grant you that deism is an unfalsifiable position. I am also aware that for many, deism has been a rest stop on the road to identifying as an atheist. I also grant you that deism is so vague as to be inconsequentially distinct from atheism in everyday life.

Given that both atheism and deism leave us effectively alone to forge our own path, I believe that we humans must fashion our own rules for how to live a successful life. We must live by values which enhance the lives of our fellow human beings. Values which also promote the responsible stewardship of our shared planet.

Perhaps the best way to convey my position is to say that I am an agnostic atheist with deistic intuitions and sympathies.

I do support the challenge to religion of many vocal and contemplative luminaries in the atheist community across a spectrum of approaches. People like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, TheraminTrees, and The Masked Arab, to name a few.

My anti-theism is not in conflict with my solidarity to many objectives espoused by Ahmadi Muslims. We are both:

• Against blasphemy laws in Pakistan and elsewhere in the world.
• Against theocracies.
• Against religious persecution.
• Against death-for-apostasy laws and doctrines.
• For promoting charity work in the service of humanity.
• For separating religion and government.
• For promoting the freedom of and from religion.

Thankfully, this list goes on. We can show solidarity with those whose truth claims we simultaneously reject.

Agnostic Deist.

Perhaps it is my limited exposure to centuries of philosophical debate and argumentation that leads me to accept as a working premise that there is quite possibly a directed intelligence behind our universe and the mysteries of life. In truth, I can see many sides of the directed consciousness argument.

I also understand the position that might be taken by an atheist who reasons that my deism takes us no further in understanding our own lives than that of an atheistic worldview.

“God” created the universe, including us, but hasn’t and doesn’t get involved beyond the Big Bang. Great. So now what?

Retort from a hypothetical Atheist

Our consciousness and abstract intuitions, along with our personal experiences of wonder suggest to me that deism is a reasonable position, albeit an inconsequential one.

Since my deistic intuitions are not an affirmed and absolute position in the way that say, a Muslim might unequivocally recite the shahada,³⁵ I prefix it with the qualifier agnostic. Perhaps someone more versed in philosophy can suggest the proper nomenclature here should my colloquial mashup not be etymologically sound.

There seems to be much gray area and overlap between many terms. By way of example, consider the not-so-obvious differences between agnosticism, agnostic atheism, and weak/negative/soft/implicit atheism.³⁶

Regardless, while I find the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) flawed, any merit to various reboots of the Teleological Argument are also irrelevant, since I’m fine with accepting deism as a possibility. Further, deism does not facilitate the biggest jump religion requires us to make: the leap to classical theism.

Debates on the existence of abstract conceptions of God not tied to a particular religion are practically irrelevant. To debate a meaningful God is to argue for classical theism. To argue for classical theism effectively requires that you pick your flavor of religion and then defend your God and his existence through that religion’s teachings, through its founder and through its scripture.

The intelligence in my conceptions of deism have little resemblance to the gods of classical theism. That is, my conceptions of what such an intelligence might be, bear almost no resemblance to the petty Allah character portrayed in the Qur’an.³⁷

With continued reflection and continued exploration on my part, you may witness a change in my terminology and positions over time. I readily concede that. I hope that you also allow whichever beliefs you hold today to be subject to revision as new information comes in.

Technically, I do not believe in the proposition, “some god or gods exist”—and this is generally the litmus test for implicit atheism. Unfortunately, there’s no way (that I know of) to adorn the simple implicit atheist label with added “deistic intuitions”.

With more study, those intuitions which I have ascribed to deism may prove to simply be the Argument from Ignorance fallacy. I readily admit that. If such were to be the case, then implicit atheism would be the next logical evolution for my belief position.

The difference between deism and atheism is however, functionally irrelevant to how we live our lives. It’s more within our grasp to investigate scriptural claims that have been debunked by our modern, scientific understanding of the world. It is also within our grasp to deduce which moral philosophies are repugnant and nonsensical. Through these means, I reject the jump from deism to classical theism.

I don’t believe that humanity will possess the know-how for many millennia to investigate and quantify the unsolved mysteries that lead people like myself, to speculate about the presence of something or some being beyond space-time who was the first mover. There’s a very good chance our human tools will never be able to penetrate what lays beyond the space-time of our universe.

While it is true that the mashup of various terms can lead to ambiguous areas of overlap, it should be clear at this point that I do not have an ideological overlap with strong atheism nor with classical theism.

The critique that implicit atheism deploys against classical theism is the critique against the claim of a divine origin for religious scriptures. It is the critique of claims that prophets spoke on behalf of actual deities. It is a critique against the presumed authority to impose religious laws and conventions through the mind-dulling process of religious indoctrination. Agnostic deism does not take away from this critique of religion.

The Critique of Religion.

While I critique religion, especially that with which I’m most familiar, I don’t claim to have a codified alternate belief system to propose. I do believe however, that this is a fascinating area for humanity to explore and develop.

I suspect many closeted non-believers are reluctant to voice criticism in their respective religious circles out of a perceived obligation to have a ready answer to every objection that a former co-religionist might challenge them with.

We who reject religion are not claiming to have an alternate, codified answer to every question in the universe. We are merely poking holes in belief systems that do make such positive claims. We reserve the right to be skeptics. We are not cynical. We simply demand that humanity not jump to baseless conclusions just to fill the void of the unknown.

Theists claim that God, and by extension his chosen religion, is perfect. This means that even one clearly identified flaw brings down the entire house of cards. Just one contradiction, one scriptural incongruity with reality, one failed prophecy, or one falsehood.

I believe that humanity must start anew with the humility to say, “We don’t know” for those things that we don’t yet have answers to. We will construct our own edifices atop the rubble left by the inevitable implosion of religion. We will swap in superior philosophy, moral codes, and community structures.

Prayer Studies.

The founder of Ahmadiyyat would often challenge others with his prophecy and with prayer. Prayer is of course, a central practice in most religions.

If prayer indeed works beyond the mere probabilities of chance, wouldn’t this be a wonderful phenomenon to design a study around, employing rigorous scientific controls?

We don’t have to wait for claimants to prophethood to make vague and ambiguous predictions to investigate the power of asserted deities. We can empower ourselves. We can democratize the investigation of theology and the attested personal and intervening nature of God himself.

While Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had made several statements of a prophetic intent relating to people’s life spans—both for himself and for the religious opponents with which he dueled—you’ll find that these statements are scattershot across nearly 30 years of written material. Given enough digging, there are some issues for which you can pull different statements from different sources to suit the particular narrative sought.⁴¹ Prophecy needn’t be this ambiguous and convoluted, but with religious claimants, it often is.

So how do we empower ourselves to investigate these matters today? A clear, unambiguous, randomized, double-blind controlled experiment is what we need. Studying intercessory prayer is the way to go. It doesn’t require that we wait for messiahs, prophets or prophecies.

Harvard Prayer Study

Such a prayer study has in fact, already been conducted. The results were published in 2006. The funding came from the John Templeton Foundation. They seek to demonstrate the value of humanity’s spiritual dimension. This is the same foundation that set up the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. This prize is designed to provide a cash gift that will always exceed the cash value of the Nobel Prize gift. Talk about incentives to skew our resources towards religion.

Christine Soares, reporting for Scientific American in her article No Prayer Prescription, described the composition of the research team as having consisted of:

The study’s abstract can also be found on PubMed⁴² under the title, Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients. The study’s subtitle continues:

It was all setup brilliantly. This would be the study that would finally demonstrate that God intervenes. Theism would triumph over deism, agnosticism and atheism.

Consider how promising this all looked for believers as the study was set to go:

1. The funding is in place—and from a foundation that seeks to promote the benefits of religion, no less.
2. A cross-disciplinary research team is in place to design the study, including doctors from the Harvard School of Medicine.
3. It’s randomized. It’s double blind.

So what were the findings, you ask?

A doctor is praying. Might prayer actually work?

The study showed that intercessory prayer did not work. You read that right. Prayer did not work. You can read about what the findings were in numerous publications, including Scientific American and PubMed.

So how does an Ahmadi Muslim, keen enough about his faith to participate in online forums, respond? Well, I’ve captured such a response for you here:

An Ahmadi Muslim (Reddit user 'lakeclear') responds to the Prayer Study that doesn't support his desired outcome: https://t.co/w7NgWzhVlJ pic.twitter.com/nvc0gbYNfX

— Sohail Ahmad (@ReasonOnFaith) May 23, 2017

[archived screenshot]

When we however, examine the statements of prominent and senior officials within the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, we obtain a much more enlightened but daringly bold stance.

Consider the formal dialog in April 2015, between Dr. Arif Ahmed⁴³ and Ayyaz Mahmood Khan⁴⁴ entitled, Atheism or Belief: Which is Evidence Based?

Here, the Ahmadi Muslim representative welcomed prayer studies, confident that they would demonstrate the power of prayer. Was he not familiar with the Templeton Foundation funded Intercessory Prayer Study from 2006? I suspect that at the time of his dialog with Dr. Ahmed, he may not have been.

While I would really love to see a double-blind independently run prayer study conducted again, my gut tells me that this is unlikely to happen. My gut also tells me that Ahmadiyya Muslim leadership will have since vetoed the brave and sincere offer from Ayyaz Mahmood Khan on behalf of the Community.

See time index 1:54:10 to 1:55:30 of this debate for the relevant clip where Ayyaz Mahmood Khan himself suggests the validity of such a prayer study. The goal of course, is to provide evidence for a God who hears and responds to prayers.

In this same dialog, Ayyaz Mahmood Khan doubled down, by confidently reminding us that such a prayer study is precisely what the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community himself proposed.

If I am wrong, I would be happy to be corrected and to learn that the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is actively following up on getting an independently run prayer study designed. With “tens of millions” of adherents worldwide of which practicing adults are required to tithe at least 1/16th of their net income, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community surely has the funds.

Since Ahmadiyyat places a lot of emphasis on missionary work, on prayer being the way that we attain certainty with respect to God, etc., it would be an odd thing if a scientifically sound and independent prayer study was not pursued by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Rejection of New-Age Fact Claims.

I’ve been a student of personal development and success literature for some time. Anyone who’s done enough reading in this space will know that many concepts that could legitimately be deemed New Age are frequently intermingled with otherwise non-controversial ideas about how to enhance one’s effectiveness in life.

I’ve come across a lot of similar concepts that appear under different names, such as karma, the law of reciprocity, the law of attraction, etc.

While none of these can be proven in a scientific way, we can speculate as to why adherence to some of these principles and metaphors may yield benefits for the practitioner and for society. Such speculation is of course, completely non-scientific and at best, anecdotal.

I am not averse to practices which we may not understand, but which seem to yield benefits—especially if they are not slippery slopes into unsubstantiated knowledge claims.

If we make use of these practices as we did with the string analogy for good posture, without claiming that they have actual scientific credibility in the way that the Law of Gravity does, then I have no objections to incorporating such ideas into practice. Whenever we do so, we must judiciously underscore what is convenient metaphor, what is empirical tradition, and what is validated science. These distinctions are important and they prevent society from being taken advantage of by snake oil salesmen.

At the same time, it would behoove us to investigate the reasons and mechanisms behind why practices that seem to work, work. This includes cultural practices, spiritual practices, and moral codes.

For example, some practitioners of prayer are performing what arguably looks similar to forms of incantation and affirmation. Some traditional religious practices that appear to provide benefits to the practitioner often have non-religious analogs. Sometimes just believing that something is helpful (in the context of our own lives) can make it so; it affects our psychology and thus, our actions. Belief can direct our conscious mind to program our subconscious mind, which in turn influences our behaviors, actions and ultimately, our results.

Some may explain the so-called law of reciprocity by suggesting that we might be psychologically wired to reciprocate in greater measure than the kind gesture originally directed our way. Giving to others can also benefit the giver, even when there is no hope or expectation of reciprocity from anyone. Giving can engender the feeling of responsibility to be congruent with the identity implied by our giving. This can then drive our own behavior whereby we better ourselves. It can propel us towards the fulfillment of our stated goals.

Similarly, the adage, “believe you will be successful and you will” may not technically be rooted in an actual metaphysical law, but it may produce results in our lives because the practitioner has a galvanizing reason to take action once this belief is firmly planted.

If a concept seems beneficial, such as mindfulness meditation or the law of reciprocity, I will use it. However, I won’t make unsubstantiated knowledge claims about such practices.

I may well break your stereotypes regarding non-theists. I can be animated and passionate in the promotion of empowering beliefs and in my conviction that by serving others, we enhance our own lives.

Ex-Muslim, ex-Ahmadi.

I believe that Ahmadis are most definitely Muslim. As such, my leaving Ahmadiyya Islam makes me at once, both an ex-Muslim and more specifically, an ex-Ahmadi.

As you might have read in my About page, I detest anti-Muslim bigotry.

While I critique Islam generally and Ahmadiyyat specifically, it is the underlying theology and the institutions and practices which are derived from it, that I take issue with.

That is not to say that I don’t recognize the many wonderful things that Ahmadi Muslims and other people of faith do. I also do not deny that there are some excellent and poetic verses of wisdom in just about all religious scriptures.

I do not hold nor do I espouse for others to hold bigoted views against Muslims, whether Ahmadi or any other denomination. We need to be able to deal with all individuals in fairness; judging people by their actions and not by their skin color, their ethnicity, their gender, their sexual orientation, or their religion.

I also believe that disabusing people of their religious faith is an act of kindness to the individual and a noble endeavor towards creating greater harmony and social stability on this, our shared planet.

Need for the ex-Muslim Label.

Those of us who reject the theology of Islam are ex-Muslims.

If you want to see why people around the world are leaving Islam, you can follow the Twitter hashtag #exMuslimBecause.⁴⁵

Ex-Muslim groups emphasize the need to use the ex-Muslim label because it helps normalize dissent. It sends an important signal across the world: former Muslims who no longer believe, do in fact, exist. No longer should former Muslims hide their dissatisfaction with Islam or their true convictions regarding Islam’s truth claims, its injunctions variously interpreted, or its rigid structures of control.

If we as ex-Muslims do not say anything about our identities, then for the most part, we are assumed to be Muslims. This, by virtue of the fact that many of our families are religiously observant. This perception is also due to our cultural backgrounds, our immigrant histories, and quite noticeably, our very names.

We broadcast “Muslim” as the default setting. This feeds into misleading and inaccurate Islamic propaganda regarding the number, the composition, the ubiquity, the desires, and the views of Islam’s supposed adherents. We want to correct those misperceptions by having our voices heard. We want to be counted correctly and not as pawns in the political schemes of those who would promote identity politics.

The ex-Muslim label helps to empower others who have mistakenly labored under the false belief that one could never actually leave Islam.

The ex-Muslim label is not a defining identity but rather, a badge of protest.

We wear the badge ex-Muslim with pride. We wear it for those who do not have the freedom to proclaim the same. Sadly, across the Muslim world, there are too many who do not have the freedom to exercise this basic human right of self-determination.

We speak for the atheist bloggers hacked with machetes in Bangladesh in broad daylight.

We speak for the free thinkers and secular activists in Pakistan who have increasingly gone missing.

We speak for the atheists and agnostics in Iran and Saudi Arabia who live in fear and who must hide their true identities.

We speak for those non-believers forced to live double lives.

What almost all of these people have in common is something that you may not have realized without the awareness campaign galvanized into motion by the use of the ex-Muslim label. These people weren’t just atheists, agnostics or freethinkers living in a vacuum. These people had left Islam. They were and are, ex-Muslim.

And so we speak out—we who do have the freedom to identify as ex-Muslim. We speak not only for ourselves, but for those without a voice.

There are elements within the broader global Muslim community who seek accommodation, espousing tolerance and civility but who in turn expose an ugly underbelly of intolerance when they come face-to-face with the notion that some people have chosen to leave Islam. This intolerance is intensified whenever ex-Muslims wish to peacefully and passionately counter the religious apologia of Islamic doctrine.

When a young man or woman can grow up in a Muslim household anywhere in the world, and openly leave the religion of Islam without repercussion, we will no longer need the ex-Muslim label. Until then, I and others around the world will continue to use this label.⁴⁶

One day, I’ll meet an atheist, say, Pakistani. She’ll say, “Imtiaz, why did you call yourself “Ex Muslim”?” I’ll explain that like other apostates, we were shunned, hated, spit on, cussed & even murdered by machetes. Simply for not believing & expressing it. That day isn’t today. https://t.co/qeLhKBC3Xl

— Imtiaz Shams (@imtishams)

January 26, 2018

Especially with how abusive certain Islamic communities are. This is why Ex Jehovah’s Witnesses, Ex Mormons, Ex Catholics (strict), Ex Hassidic Jews, are LOUD. We’re loud b/c no one gives two shits about our human rights, especially many of our own previous faith communities.

— Imtiaz Shams (@imtishams)

January 26, 2018

Generally speaking, it is Muslims who are most upset with our use of the term; preferring instead that we stay silent. The label helps us recognize and support one another. It helps us organize and mobilize. Our previous faith communities don’t care for us and our rights and so we stand up for each other.

I have begun writing because it is time for me to break my silence. I can no longer stay on the sidelines and pretend like I do not have strong opinions regarding the theology of Islam in general, or of Ahmadiyyat in particular. I can no longer be silent about the problems, personal hardships, and social pressures experienced by many as a result of the unsubstantiated belief claims and the religiously driven social structures of control.

Authentic Relationships.

Having now written about my beliefs, I can finally address the topic of maintaining authentic relationships with family and friends. That I am no longer a Muslim is something that my immediate family has been cognizant of for many years.

Muslims who don’t know me, might well be forgiven for tossing tired cliches my way regarding why I chose to leave Islam. It is precisely for this reason that I have opted to include in this very treatise, an excursion into theological counter-apologetics. See Exegesis: When it can mean anything, it means nothing.

It is now time for me to be more open with my extended family and friends; giving you all an opportunity to be more open with me. I know that it’s been awkward for you, tap dancing around the topic of Islam and belief when you’ve not seen me very often at Juma’ah, Eid, Iftar functions, or Jalsa Salana.⁴⁷

I’m speaking to those of you in the wider Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, as well as those of you who are my friends from mainstream Muslim communities. You too, may find my positions on Islam a source of tension. Please know that while I critique Islamic theology, I still respect Muslims as my fellow brothers and sisters in humanity. I still respect you.

For several years, I have let many friendships with practicing Muslims fade. I often thought, “If they knew that I was an ex-Muslim…”

• Would they still want to be friends?
• Would they still want me to tell them that I was visiting their neighborhood, so that we could catch up over dinner?
• Would they still want me present at:
  • their wedding?
  • their father’s funeral held at the mosque?
  • their child’s Ameen ceremony at the banquet hall?
  • pickup basketball with other guys from the mosque?

Such thoughts have been playing on my mind for years. So please forgive me if I seemed averse to staying in touch or didn’t come look for you at Jalsa Salana. It’s likely that I wasn’t even attending that day, but I didn’t feel comfortable getting into that conversation. Well, at least not until now.

Please know that I don’t want to lose any of the friendships that I have with my devout Muslim family and friends. I’ve simply tried to anticipate how you might feel, and I’ve tried to honor that decision on your behalf. I’ve wanted to share my thought process with all of you for so many years, but I just didn’t know how. Fifteen minutes cannot do it justice. This is my attempt to explain to all of you, what I believe and why.

Did you recently invite me to a wedding only to find yourself needing to now rescind that invitation? I understand. To be sure, I’ll be disappointed, but I get it. Please don’t be afraid to tell me. Like you, I don’t wish to be present if I’m not truly welcome. I also understand that sometimes, it’s very difficult to explain such things to elderly family members for whom reasoned religious dissent is a foreign concept.

Do you no longer wish to be friends—whether on social media or in real life? I understand that too. But before you withdraw, I have one final request: please do send me a short note to personally let me know of your wishes. I’ll accept your decision of course, although I may lament the loss of our friendship or acquaintance. Your explicit communication though, will help me better understand the parameters you have in mind for any future interaction. I promise to respect your wishes.

I do want you to know that you may in fact, have other friends and family members, who are just like me. People who have held back from telling you that they have left Islam. There are numerous reasons why people still perceived to be Muslim might not have divulged their true feelings on the matter. For the curious, see my article Reasons Why Many Muslims Haven’t Left Islam—Yet.

I am hopeful that one day soon, a change in religious belief will no longer be grounds for us having to lose friendships or the bonds of family. If you’re one of those friends who accepts me regardless of our religious differences, it would be deeply gratifying to hear from you; to know that I still have your friendship and your goodwill.

It is my sincere wish that all of us get to experience life with strong friendships and loving familial bonds. Relationships that are based on authentic communication and acceptance.

Children.

I often wonder what the children in my extended family circles think of me. While I used to pretend to pray with them at the behest of their parents, I recently stopped doing so. The Qur’an labors on about the evils of the hypocrites, yet most Muslims strong-arm their ex-Muslim family members into hypocrisy as the prerequisite for us to retain amicable relations—or even existing living arrangements.

Most of our practicing Muslim family members plead with the rest of us to maintain these charades in order to “protect” their children from even contemplating that religion is a choice. This is how delicate the process of childhood religious indoctrination is. It is also quite possibly damaging to how these young children see us ex-Muslim family members, once we refuse to participate in further charades of inauthenticity.

Out of respect for a parent’s right to instruct their own children on religion, I never broach the subject with children. If they do approach me, I change the subject and encourage these young family members to query their parents instead.

The Muslim parents of such children know that they could not defend Islamic scripture in front of their own children from the elegant critiques that we might uncork. This is why many Muslim families do not even entertain such open dialogue.

Imagine your seven year old niece speaking frankly, as children are apt to do, “Uncle Rayoz doesn’t do namaaz with us anymore. He must be really lazy. Allah will be angry with him. He is going to burn in Hell as punishment. Why doesn’t Uncle even care about being good?”

I don’t doubt that for many children in my extended family, I am seen to be the enigmatic lost soul; the black sheep. Ironically, I am the one who can be consulted by family members young and old on almost every subject, except of course, religion. I can’t help but speculate: young family members must be puzzled when it comes to the moral convictions that I hold—and whether I even have a full set. For why else, in their eyes, would I no longer participate in anything overtly religious?

Oh, how far from the truth such misperceptions can be!

How much we ex-Muslims sacrifice of our own dignity to preserve family relationships; simply because religious ideas are too weak to defend themselves.

I say no more hiding. I will continue to respect parents’ wishes: non-engagement with their children on matters of religion. However, I will no longer be silenced from sharing with the world at large, that which I have learned about Islam and that which I believe to be true. There needn’t be a conflict between engaging in counter-apologetics on Islam, and the noble pursuit of fostering authentic, loving relationships with our Muslim families and communities.

To my fellow ex-Muslims who are safe to do so: it’s time to reclaim your authenticity and your dignity. Enough with the appeasement that’s tantamount to self-denial.

Coexistence.

I believe that the world would be a better place without traditional forms of religion. I do acknowledge however, that not all religions are equally positive or equally negative in their effects. At various points in history, some religions have allowed for pluralism and scientific progress, while others have trounced on human freedoms and rightfully earned our collective scorn. It should be noted that not all denominations within Islam are equally “good” or equally “bad”. This distinction of course, also applies to other religions.

There are benefits to the shared values and community that organized religion often fosters. In my opinion, humanity would be wise to adopt similar models, even after dropping all of the scriptures, prophets, and their associated supernatural baggage.⁴⁸

It should also be noted that I do not deny that devout Ahmadi Muslim families can raise honest, disciplined, studious, generous and loving human beings precisely because of the values that they instill in their children. Values that are absorbed through a culture of repetition and strong community role models. Many of these are values that I would like to see continue.⁴⁹ While my exposure has primarily been to Ahmadiyya Islam, we can conclude that similar positive effects are possible by merely observing other communities, such as the Church of Latter Day Saints.⁵⁰ Yet I suspect that you, like me, do not believe in any of their religious truth-claims either.⁵¹

Clearly, a true model of reality isn’t necessary for basic moral training, but I do believe that it helps. I hold the view that we could do far better if we had a more accurate model of reality coupled with structured community. The former is what the non-theist community tends to understand, while the latter is where religious organizations excel.

As organized religion fades, I am confident that humanity will replace religious communities with non-faith based equivalents; at least for those who wish to participate. This is a topic however, for a different essay.

Coexistence with my own Ahmadi Muslim family and friends is much easier than it would be for an ex-Salafi Muslim to pull off. Ahmadi Muslims and Ismaili Muslims, for example, both exhibit more shared values with humanists than other denominations within Islam might. Relatively speaking, these groups are more progressive than the orthodox on many issues.

Will friends and family see me the same way when they realize that I am no longer a Muslim? Will they see me the same way when they know that I am one who actively engages in counter-apologetics and one who passionately advocates for critical thought when it comes to Islam/Ahmadiyyat?

Only time will tell.

In what follows, I’ve listed some of the ways in which I navigate coexistence with my religious family and friends, while still being true to my beliefs.

In no particular order:

• Muslim Greetings. I still use Muslim greetings in Arabic with my Muslim family and friends: Assalaam-o-Alaikum and Walaikum Assalaam. It’s a greeting of peace. I have no issues with it.
• Respect for Parents. I still encourage younger members in my extended family to listen to and respect their parents, even when they disagree and even in matters of religion. The children can exercise individual thought in all matters when they are adults.⁵²
• Retaining Idioms. For folks who probably don’t know that I have left religion, I don’t wave it in their face.⁵³ If I’m signing off on an email, I may even use the parting salutation, Wassalaam. If the context would be awkward or overtly in-your-face without it, I may even use the word inshallah—i.e. “God willing”.
• Understanding. I don’t get agitated when someone uses terms like inshallah or jazakallah⁵⁴ with me.
• Celebrating the Good. I’ll applaud the good things that I see the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community doing. Are they holding a charity run to raise funds for a hospital? They’ve got my solidarity and goodwill.⁵⁵
• Religious Functions. I’ll attend the religious functions of my devoutly religious family and close extended family, such as an Ameen⁵⁶ ceremony. I’ll even volunteer to help with the audio, video and if asked, with formally greeting the religious clergy who attend.
• Not Creating a Scene. I don’t make a scene when at segregated events, as much as I believe that gender segregation is a net negative to society.⁵⁷
• Paying Respects to the Deceased. I will go to the mosque when the time comes for a loved one’s funeral: the viewings, washing the body, and funeral prayers. I will pay my respects to the deceased in the way that they wished to be honored. It’s a small accommodation I’m willing to make to honor the deceased on their terms. It doesn’t compromise my principles.

When my ex-Muslim status is public, I may be inhibited by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community from exercising some of these aforementioned forms of coexistence. Regardless, I will still attempt to build bridges with those who remain devoutly religious.

As long as Islam is a force on the global stage, I will continue to critique the ideology. I will do so because many ex-Muslims wished that someone had challenged them to think critically about Islam, sooner.⁵⁸

So what about you? If you currently identify as Muslim, are you willing to challenge your beliefs and investigate Islam’s history and truth-claims from sources outside of your mosque-community? Are you willing to ask the tough questions and examine the beliefs that you were indoctrinated with as a child? Have you ever wondered why it is, that most children end up being emotionally invested in the religion of their parents?

Do you want to follow the belief system predetermined for you from childhood? Or do you want to grab life by the horns, exercise your free will, and actively choose your own destiny?

I encourage you to think critically. I also support your right to come to the conclusion which resonates most with you. Peace.

1. Again, I must emphasize that my opposition is to the truth claims and various injunctions of these ideologies; I am not opposed to people. There are also some aspects of some religions that I continue to find beautiful.
2. This is not to say that one’s opponent in a debate is ignorant. It is merely to say that one who jumps to an unsubstantiated conclusion to address the unknown, is making a logical error. In the context or arguing for the existence of a deity, this is also known as the “God of the Gaps” fallacy.
3. Beyond the religious advice to “be fruitful and multiply”, I believe side-stepping decision fatigue contributes to theists having bigger families. It is easier for theists to meet someone who shares similar values, earlier in life, to marry. Community and familial social structures of support make having children easier. I believe that when non-theists organize better in a few generations (at least those who wish to), we will start to close some of these gaps. It will require a similar build out of community and of some shared best practices and principles for living.
4. Most estimates are closer to the 200 year figure.
5. He currently identifies as an Agnostic Muslim. He gives khutbas in this vein as well. Previously, he had co-founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain with Maryam Namazie. A few years later, he returned to identifying as Muslim with a new outlook. He has also translated My Ordeal with the Qur’an into English. Hassan Radwan believes that Muslims can reinterpret their faith into something that meshes better with our modern moral sensibilities.
6. One need only consider the success of the Mormon Church. Those of us who are not Mormons can easily critique the character and life of Joseph Smith, the Church’s founder. Yet modern day Mormons can have very fulfilling lives, stable families and richly rewarding communities. Such religious communities can produce prodigious authors and luminaries such as the late Stephen R. Covey, who was also devoutly religious.
7. The more formal word for religious commentary.
8. Try this exercise on the two passages discussed below. The first is from Sura al-Naml regarding the talking ants, and the second is from Surah al-Imran regarding the alleged miracles of Jesus.
9. Recall, Ahmadiyya Islam is my former religious denomination.
10. Surah Al-Naml—Chapter 27 of the Qur’an.
11. This is Qur’an 27:17-18 using the standard numbering system. Ahmadi Muslims count as verse one the initial invocation of “In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful”—which most other Muslims do not.
12. Paragraph breaks have been added to the following excerpt for enhanced readability.
13. This can be true even though us mere mortals of today cannot decipher the speech of ants; that being a gift only granted to Prophet Solomon.
14. Chapter 27 of the Qur’an
15. Paragraph breaks have been added to the following excerpt for enhanced readability. I have however, not touched any of the grammatical and punctuation errors in this excerpt.
16. Paragraph breaks have been added to the following excerpt for enhanced readability. I have however, not touched any of the grammatical and punctuation errors in this excerpt. The portions in parenthesis repeat excerpts from the Qur’an, while the content that follows is the Islamic scholar’s actual commentary.
17. Mujaddideen is plural for Mujaddid. These are Islamic saints prophesied to arise roughly every century after Muhammad’s passing, to revive and renew Islam.
18. Recall, Ahmadiyya Islam maintains that revelation hasn’t ceased with Muhammad. Only law-giving revelation has ceased with him. Allah continues to talk to saintly people and everyday people, because he is a living God. If that were true however, why then did God decide to ignore talking to his own mujaddids—the very pinnacle of mankind in their respective centuries?
19. Ahmadi Muslims consider the first invocation of each chapter an integral part of the text, and therefore, start numbering one verse earlier than mainstream numbering schemes.
20. I suspect letting people believe that the Qur’an affirmed the literal miracles of Jesus worked well as a proselytization strategy; reducing the hurdles for Christians to convert to Islam. If the miracles were clarified as metaphor back in the 7th century, that would certainly alienate potential Christian converts to Islam. Again, deploy Ockham’s razor.
21. “A.H.” stands for “After Hijrah”—the year that Muhammad migrated from Mecca to Medina.
22. The supernatural and the world of fantasy and magic has been repeated in several waves of religious literature, misdirecting so much human energy and thought. It has been such a waste of human focus. Why would a just God use language that perpetuates such myths?
23. The trinity had to be rejected, because otherwise, there would be no role for Muhammad and Islam as a distinct religion. Everything else however, is designed to be familiar and comforting to Christians (the virgin birth, miracles of Jesus, sleepers of Ephesus, reverence for Moses and Jewish law).
24. There’s no external record of splitting the moon (i.e. no one in China ever recorded it) and the night journey to Jerusalem was either not physical or not witnessed by anyone.
25. The “seerah” is the biography of Prophet Muhammad. When the word is used on its own, it most commonly refers to the Seerah of Ibn Ishaq. It is the earliest biography of Prophet Muhammad that has survived in part to today. Revered by the orthodox, on closer examination, it is not flattering to Prophet Muhammad.
26. Refractory literally means “stubborn” or “unmanageable”, according to the Oxford English dictionary.
27. Technically, some former Christians do use the term, but it is primarily for clarification, not for raising awareness that Christians can choose to leave Christianity.
28. Ahmadi Muslims are Muslims, so by definition, leaving Ahmadiyya Islam without choosing another religion or denomination meant that I had left Islam.
29. This is notwithstanding terms like the Atheist Muslim popularized by Ali A. Rizvi and originally meant as a joke. Many in oppressive Muslim countries are not allowed to shed the label ‘Muslim’ and so for them, qualifying it with the prefix ‘Atheist’ indicates that they have cherry picked from Islam, all the way to disbelief.
30. Not even $5 when visiting Las Vegas or $1 when playing cards with friends.
31. I actually get nauseous at the smell. No doubt, this is cultural conditioning. I also believe that pork is not the healthiest of meats, even when properly prepared. I fully concede that this might be inherited bias speaking in favor of Islamic practices that I have grown up with.
32. In southeast Asian cultures, the little watering can you see in bathrooms (called a lota) is for this purpose. Certainly, religion does not have a monopoly on good hygiene.
33. My immediate family is fully aware of my ex-Muslim views and positions on Islam, the Qur’an and Muhammad.
34. Synonymous with implicit atheism.
35. The Muslim declaration of faith, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”.
36. These terms are explained in detail in my earlier article, Beliefs and Labels.
37. The Allah character of the Qur’an is obsessed with the disbelievers. He killed homosexuals en masse in the time of Prophet Lot. He comes across as acutely insecure (associating partners with Allah is the biggest sin). He reveals cryptic texts that lend themselves to interpretations which promote abuse and suffering. He demands worship while refusing to provide unassailable evidence.
38. I use quotations around some of these words because we are using physical metaphors of containment to describe that which is beyond space-time. Given that these ideas are beyond the physics describing that which is within our universe, physical terminology to describe them will always be conceptual and not literal. Hence, I often refer to successive layers of containment as the context in which things exist or take place.
39. You can see this appeal made most clearly in Surah Ar-Rahman of the Qur’an (chapter 55).
40. See the Density Parameter of the Friedmann Equations for details.
41. See page 53 of Nuzhat J. Haneef’s book Recognizing the Messiah, for plenty of examples. The clearest survey of imprecision is in the various time spans (age ranges) given by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad for his own lifespan. In his younger years, he bracketed it with “about 80 or close to it” and then 80 +/- 2 years. As time went on, this increased to 80 +/- 6 years. That gives us a 12-year span within which he could pass on and still fulfill the prophecy. Yet, it isn’t even that simple. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s year of birth is disputed (see pp. 54-56), making the prophecy’s fulfillment clouded with controversy.
42. Note that PubMed comes under the purview of the United States National Institute of Health (NIH).
43. A senior lecturer in philosophy at Cambridge University, speaking in favor of the atheist position.
44. A scholar of comparative religion, representing the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. He has participated in debates prior to this, on behalf of the Jama’at.
45. With the brevity of Twitter, these will of course, only give you a sound byte view. You can dig into some of the underlying counter-apologetics by watching videos produced by many ex-Muslims, including those from The Masked Arab. More resources are available in my sidebar, Resources: Counter-Apologetics.
46. This is in addition to the other labels that may identify and describe us. For me, humanist, secularist, free-thinker and agnostic deist all apply—and this list is by no means exhaustive.
47. Juma’ah literally means Friday, but in this context, refers to Friday prayers. Eid, of which there are two in a lunar year, are religious holidays for Muslims. Muslims generally go to the mosque on Eid to say an additional congregational prayer and hear a religious sermon. After the sermon, the congregation greets one another with hugs. It’s actually quite uplifting. Iftar refers to the meal/event where one breaks their Ramadhan fast. Jalsa Salana means “Annual Gathering”. It is a tradition that the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community started, encouraging his followers to hold a religious convention each year, in every country. Almost all members of the Community can be found in attendance.
48. My ideas on “religion without religion” can easily be misunderstood by the atheist community. A such, I ask that any non-believers withhold judgment until I expound on these ideas at a future point. I understand your concerns and I believe that I have novel solutions to address them.
49. There are also several values which I would not like to see continued; and these tend to focus on the amplified indoctrination you get with a tight knit community that socially and emotionally punishes people in subtle and not so subtle ways, for displaying independent thought; for not conforming. In more concrete terms, I would like to see young people who overwhelmingly don’t agree with the rigid gender segregation imposed on them, to push back.
50. i.e. the Mormons
51. Here, I am primarily addressing those readers who were born Ahmadi Muslims.
52. Fortunately, in Ahmadiyya Islam, there’s much less to object to as compared to orthodox Islam. It still has its problems, but kids will survive. There’s no FGM or indoctrinated creationism. There’s no indoctrinated hate for other people in Ahmadiyya Islam. Conversely, if my extended family where Salafi Muslims, then I would actively undermine the indoctrination of younger family members, out of concern for their safety and that of the general public.
53. Note that one of the goals of this treatise is to introduce others to my beliefs in a systematic and thorough way, so that I can be congruent while others need not contend with awkwardness around the topic and around me.
54. Literally, “May Allāh reward you [with] goodness”.
55. I’ll usually donate on my own and to non-religious charities—such as Foundation Beyond Belief—as religious organizations will accept donations from everyone, but in marketing their religion, use the funds collected as a reflection of the generosity of the community’s adherents; skewing the narrative about religious belief and giving, when it may have actually been the wider community of non-believers pitching in to provide significant contributions.
56. This ceremony is conducted after a child completes their first reading of the Qur’an in Arabic. It involves the child reading a few passages in front of friends and family.
57. This is again, a topic for another essay.
58. This is what many ex-Muslims say. They wish people had challenged them to question their beliefs earlier in life. They wish non-Muslims and ex-Muslims had been willing to have spirited discussions with them. They would have figured things out much earlier, as a result.