This is a guest post from Q.Ahmad, a former Ahmadi Muslim. Here, he responds to a Reddit post penned by another former Ahmadi Muslim entitled, What are your values?
Thanks for writing such a beautiful and thoughtful post. ❤️
I can relate to many of the things that you’ve written. After leaving religion, I also struggled with these questions concerning values and purpose.
We’ve grown up with the idea that without a deity and without religion, one cannot have a real purpose. I’m now baffled by my former mindset. The religious mindset seems to define ‘purpose’ in such a narrow way.
Allow me to present an analogy. It’s one that I usually relay when this question arises. I’m sure you’re all familiar with coloring books for children, and that you’ve yourselves enjoyed them when you were young. They contain pre-printed lines of cartoon characters and scenes. Sometimes, there’s also a secondary picture guiding you on what color to put where.
The purpose many religious people are trying to convince us of, reminds me of these same coloring books for children. The religious messaging being telegraphed seems to be saying:
- Without the lines how do you even know what you’re supposed to be filling in?
- Stick to the predefined color.
- Never ever color outside of the pre-printed lines.
To me, this way of thinking about things seems so wrong. I’m not any less capable of drawing on a blank piece of paper as I am coloring in between the lines. In fact, it’s the opposite. I have way more possibilities and I’m only limited by my imagination and my ambition. A religion not predefining my life doesn’t mean that my life has less meaning. It means that I have more possibilities to create meaning.
At first, this freedom felt scary. It made me anxious to think outside this template that the Jama’at provides for having a good life (which is, as you’ve described in your post).
One can feel lost thinking about the endless possibilities that have opened up to you. Subconsciously craving the authoritarian guardrails we grew up with and which gave us a feeling of supposed security. Just following what you’ve been told has the apparent benefit that you don’t really have to take responsibility for your actions. You don’t really have to think about it and the consequences. Allahu A’alam. That is, Allah knows best. Or, in our case, the Jama’at knows best.
To step outside of all of this means to take responsibility for my actions. To really think them through. Which brings us to the question of values.
As I shifted from a religiously based value system to a more secular humanist based one, I don’t think my basic values changed that much. The values that were instilled in me are still alive and well. They still serve as the compass in my life.
I’m still the same person with the same personality and the same heart. I still believe in things like kindness, humility, patience, empathy and compassion. I am still trying to learn, to improve myself and to be helpful to the people around me. I’m full of passion, curiosity, a burning desire to discover and to understand the world. None of that changed when my religious beliefs faded away. I would even say that I’m more true to those values than I ever was as an Ahmadi Muslim.
Back then, I thought I cared about family and love. But I excluded people from the LGBTQ+ community from my consideration.
I claimed to value knowledge and science but when they clashed with Jama’at doctrine, I would spin and misrepresent them until they fit the predefined narrative.
I claimed to not hate anyone but dismissed and disregarded the pain of all of the people who struggled with the dogmatic and narrow margins the Jama’at expects its members to operate within.
I pretended to be for justice and equality but kept defending deeply misogynistic, homophobic, and harmful ideas.
After I lost my faith, I gradually stepped away from the responsibilities that I had held in the Jama’at. It felt weird and it was a bit of a depressing period in my life. I had dedicated and sacrificed so much of my time for this cause. For my entire life up until this point, working for the Jama’at was synonymous with doing good. Without it, my life felt empty and pointless. But only at first. Indeed, I had to reconstruct what it meant to be good, and I had to do other things that I would find value in.
It seems silly now, but it took me a while to realize that I was never actually dependent on the structures or the narrow margins of the Jama’at in order to help other people. I could just go out and do it.
Back then, we had a mass migration of people from Syria into Germany, and so I just went to a migration center and offered to help. Two years later, we now have established structures and a network that helps hundreds of families. This is all outside of the Jama’at. Through this charity work, we’re providing language courses, homework help, child care and paint therapy for women who’ve had traumatic experiences. We’re giving people hope, a new home, and new perspectives.
None of this needed any religion to accomplish. Our helpers have very diverse religious backgrounds. There are many non-believers, like myself. There is no thought wasted in trying to convert people or in how to gain salvation points. The focus is on simply this: helping people.
It feels very different from the charitable work that I used to do for the Jama’at. It’s less convoluted and it’s not loaded up with unnecessary baggage. For example, I’ve been able to work alongside very competent women. There is so much I keep learning from them. This was and still is, unthinkable in the Jama’at.
There are countless other possibilities. Many of them, as you pointed out, are not even on the radar for the Jama’at. For some, the doctrine itself creates problems. So, not only does religion not hold the monopoly on values, but in order to be true to the values worth having, we have to overcome some of the dogma pushed on us by religion.