In speaking up, you play a crucial role in helping others who are searching. It’s time to do your part. Light up the firmament.

My approach consisted of gathering the strongest counter-arguments to Islam. In most cases, the strongest counter-arguments came from mere contemplation. From honest reflection. I questioned some of the Qur’an’s most problematic verses on women. My analysis turned into a book. The written form lends itself to the communication of nuanced ideas too difficult to catalog in conversation. Verbal dialogue does not lend itself to a systematic traversal of branches upon branches of apologetics, analysis, and argumentation.

My book focused on the moral and social implications of the Qur’an’s imbalanced treatment of men and women. My book also contained observations and opinion of how the religion negatively influenced the social growth of my own community, the Ahmadiyya Muslims.

I wanted to see if Islam could muster a cogent comeback. Instead of answers, my book raised a small disturbance with the religious elites in my Community. This is that story. A journey for answers—and the fallout.

My book is entitled The Things We Think but are too Afraid to Say. It was first released privately to the Jama’at’s leadership, some 20+ years ago. Today, and for the very first time, my book is now available to the public.

Overview.

Today, I am wiser and more experienced than the young man who began writing The Things We Think but are too Afraid to Say. I do believe, however, that after all these years, my book still holds up rather well.

I do plan to revisit key areas of the book in the coming years with the production of new, standalone essays. These will provide for shorter reads and a refreshed presentation of the book’s themes. To kick things off, I have completed a revised and expanded version of the book’s foundational section. It’s an essay entitled The Postulates. This essay contains the ground rules and implicit assumptions that many of us from an Islamic background will recognize. I believe that these postulates represent an important part of the conversation going forward. What rules do we use to evaluate the merits and truth claims of any religion, including Islam? The Postulates present a framework that seeks to establish starting points for dialogue.

The 2019 Edition of my book presents everything contained in the original 1998 Edition. With the exception of an additional preface for 2019, some grammatical improvements for readability, and newly hyperlinked references, this reprinting is an accurate representation of the original’s arguments and analysis. This means that I am giving you access to the weaker arguments, the knockout blows, as well as everything in between. All are issues that my own religious community’s senior leadership could not, or would not, address.¹

Had I released my book of questions publicly in 1998, I do believe that the Jama’at would have been motivated to actually respond. By contrast, releasing my book publicly today in the age of social media almost guarantees several unofficial attempts at a response will be made. I expect that today, many young Ahmadi Muslims in the Jama’at’s Writers Guild will be infused with a misdirected victimhood complex to ‘defend the faith’. They will no doubt, attempt a response. My message of goodwill to such passionate souls is simply this:

Remember, I too believe that the persecution of Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere is simply wrong. I too, believe that Ahmadi Muslims have the right to self-identify as Muslims everywhere in the world. I stand in solidarity with you against terrorism, blasphemy laws and in support of secular governance. On many issues, we are one. When it comes to whether Islam is actually true or not—that is where we differ. Ask yourself, how many born-Ahmadi Muslims would be believers if you introduced them to the religion and its proofs, as grown adults?

A Journey of Questioning.

As a devout Muslim teenager, I had studied Islam/Ahmadiyya with a passion. I wanted to learn more about God’s plans for humanity. I wanted to be more effective in sharing His message. The Islam presented to me in literature published by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was inspiring. Compared to orthodox Islam, it also seemed progressive.

As a teenager of 17, I became active in preaching. This activism took place in my high school and in my speaking opportunities at local Jama’at events. To be more effective with my preaching efforts, it occurred to me that I needed to understand the contentious issues for which Islam was so frequently criticized. These were criticisms that didn’t seem to be an issue in the East, but which were persistent here in the West. These were criticisms that I had to admit that I too, could empathize with.

I promised myself that if I came across something that didn’t sit well with me, I would work to understand it. If I was put off by something, then no doubt, open minded people outside of the religion were going to be too—and they would be far less forgiving. I promised myself that when investigating such topics, I wouldn’t ever gloss over the Islamic apologetics. Unless I could honestly say that certain explanations truly resonated with me, I wouldn’t use them to defend the faith in front of others nor to silence the questions in my own mind. Having a clear conscience was non-negotiable. In addition, I resolved to never capitulate to sophistry.

With this firm stance, it was inevitable. I had come to a crossroads. This brutal self-honesty came with consequences. Once I began exploring, I encountered numerous issues that didn’t sit well with me. My issues with Islam at the time focused primarily on the gender inequality that was woven into the Qur’an. Disparities between the sexes exist in the Qur’an when it comes to the rules and protocol for witness, marriage, divorce, inheritance, and sexual consent. Further, the Islamic apologetics on the Qur’anic injunctions codifying these imbalances were rather unconvincing.

As a very active youth member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the early 1990s, I enjoyed considerable access to the Jama’at’s senior leadership. This included the Amir and Missionary In-Charge of Canada, as well as the Jama’at’s National Secretary of Canada. I had several collaborative one-on-one discussions with these leaders. With the missionary, it was often in his office at the Bait-ul-Islam Mission House. With the National Secretary with whom I often volunteered, we had occasion to speak during our many long drives between Maple, where the Mission House was, and Scarborough, where we both lived.

My religious elders appreciated that I wanted to be better equipped to explain the controversial issues in Islam. After all, my goal was to take tabligh² here in the West, to the next level.

When these religious elders tried to answer my questions in conversation, the answers were never satisfactory, or they never maintained cohesion for very long. I would leave these conversations only to come back after having conducted additional research and reflection. I would present arguments for why the proposed explanations from my religious elders were unsatisfactory. To their credit, they did often acknowledge where their suppositions didn’t hold up to criticism. Acknowledging this, there were times that we’d collectively brainstorm for alternative explanations.

I know that we all felt it. We were on the same team. We wanted to steel man Ahmadiyyat in order to share it more effectively, i.e. to convert more people.

This process of critiquing proposed justifications for controversial injunctions would be repeated several times over, for any given point. Most of the time, there wasn’t a clear and convincing resolution to my queries regarding the inequality of men and women in the Qur’an. This concerned me. I was having conversations with missionaries and religious elders whose job it was to illuminate the beauties of Islam.

Ultimately, I decided to write my questions down. This way, I could clearly highlight where the Jama’at’s Islamic apologetics didn’t pass muster. It occurred to me that sometimes, complex ideas have to be written down to be communicated most effectively. 

Writing enables us to explore sophisticated concepts with nuance, and in a systematic fashion. I thought that I’d give Islam such an opportunity. I wouldn’t judge Islam based on verbal conversations that happened to yield underwhelming responses. Instead, I would pen a comprehensive set of questions to elicit what I had hoped would be a thoughtful and comprehensive response from the Jama’at’s top minds.

I first began writing in the Spring of 1992.  Over the next several years, I refined my observations and my questions. Fast forward to the Spring of 1998. My book of questions was finally ready for a limited release.

The Distribution.

It was a crisp, cool morning in the suburbs of Toronto. The cashier at Kinko’s took my payment. It cost me some two-hundred dollars and change. The cashier handed me a box of three dozen freshly printed, cerlox bound books. This was the Spring of 1998. I was both excited and anxious. I had just received hard copies of my book for distribution. This book was the embodiment of questions that had weighed on me for over half a decade.

The List.

The Jama’at’s National Secretary knew that I was working on a book of questions, and that he would be receiving a copy. In addition, I made a list of people that I planned to give a copy to. Many were my peers. Most were friends that I had grown up with. In the end, few people on my list actually received their copy. I’ll explain why, later in this piece.

At the behest of my own family, some copies were slated to go to learned elders in the Community. An elder Ahmadi Muslim friend suggested that I send a copy to a Sunni Muslim scholar that he knew and respected. My friend’s perspective was simple: I shouldn’t take the view that non-Ahmadi Muslims wouldn’t have anything useful to add. I never did get around, however, to engaging any non-Ahmadi Muslim scholars.

My goal with this limited distribution was to generate some dialogue. Did my peers in the Jama’at have similar questions? Did they have similar observations? If they hadn’t thought of these issues before, what did they think of them now?

Idealizing Ahmadiyyat.

As a child attending Islamic Sunday School, I recall being taught that Islam was rational. We were taught that Islam contained no contradictions and that Christians didn’t have logic on their side, as we Muslims did. Consequently, Christians would shy away from debates with Muslims, we were told. Especially when they had to face-off against Ahmadi Muslims. Now I don’t think this line of propaganda was official Jama’at policy, but I do believe it was representative of how practicing Ahmadi Muslims would often see themselves.

This confidence in the Ahmadiyya Islamic narrative carried over from my youth and into my questioning phase as a young adult. I honestly believed that the more dialogue that we could generate within the wider Jama’at, the faster we’d all converge on the best answers. I honestly believed that the Jama’at would benefit from such dialogue. I wanted the Jama’at’s best minds to explain away these specific and problematic issues.

I had a rather flattering view of Ahmadiyya Islam. Ahmadiyyat was confident. It welcomed questions and dialogue. If religious elders in the Canadian Jama’at couldn’t answer my questions, some open dialogue would surely help us converge on better answers, together. Perhaps scholars of the Jama’at from around the globe would jump in. Perhaps everyday Ahmadi Muslims would take an interest in exploring these issues.

In idealizing Ahmadiyyat, I believed that the scholarly establishment within the Jama’at would welcome the challenge to demonstrate why Islam was superior and why the Qur’an was still timeless and universal.³

The First Copies.

A few weeks before the National Secretary of the Jama’at would have received his copy, I had given out copies to other Ahmadi Muslims. People on my list received a copy when I had occasion to meet them.

One copy went to my devoutly religious cousin. A second copy went to a close childhood friend from Sunday School. A third copy went to a childhood friend with whom I played hockey in the informally organized Ahmadiyya Sports Association (ASA) ball hockey league. A fourth copy went to my local religious youth leader, the Qa’id. These were all people in their mid-to-late 20s.

What would happen next, I did not anticipate.            

The Fall Out.

Shortly after distributing a handful of copies to people on my list, the National Secretary of the Jama’at contacted me. He asked me why it was that some people had already been given a copy. The National Secretary was under the impression that the book was exclusively for senior Jama’at officials to review, i.e. himself and the Amir.

In his understanding, the Jama’at’s leadership would be the ones to make the determination of who, if anyone, should also get a copy. I could sense that the National Secretary was upset with me.

The Hot Potatoes.

You may be wondering how it was that the Jama’at’s senior leadership was alerted to my book’s initial distribution. There were, in fact, two people who had received a copy directly from me and who had decided to pass the book up the Jama’at’s chain of command. Neither of them were Jama’at office-bearers. Both were, however, active members of the Community.⁴ Apparently, neither of them got too far into actually reading the book. What perplexed me at the time was that these people were my peers. For the most part, they grew up in Canada. Did they never ponder the gender inequality so pervasive in the Qur’an?⁵ Did they never ponder whether Ahmadiyyat’s apologetic commentary even made any sense?

For some, my book was clearly a hot potato. The Jama’at representatives who received copies from my peers had since forwarded them on to the National Secretary. I wasn’t upset that my peers had somehow revealed the existence of my book, putting it on the Jama’at leadership’s radar. Nor was I upset that my peers had given their own copies over to the Jama’at. The Jama’at’s senior leadership would have been receiving their own copies when I would have had occasion to meet with them next. The Amir and the National Secretary had been on my distribution list from the start. The National Secretary and I had talked about my writings prior to the book’s completion. That my book was in the works was neither a surprise nor a secret. What some might see as a betrayal of trust by my peers wasn’t actually the reason for my dismay.  

I was disappointed that my peers hadn’t the curiosity nor the desire to confront new ideas. Uncomfortable ideas. Apparently, my book presented too provocative a challenge to their inherited beliefs and their social conditioning. A challenge to ideas perhaps incorrectly perceived as a challenge to their identities. Reading the ideas of one of their own who questioned the religion was likely seen as socially uncalibrated and self-destructive. Perhaps it was even perceived as hostile.

The challenge facing us free thinkers is that too many people conflate the critique of an ideology with an attack on the people who hold it. Unfortunately, this erroneous equivalency and this confusion continues well into the present day. Many Muslims are conditioned to be defensive about anything that might compromise their religious convictions. They are conditioned to resist anything which might challenge the foundational ideas that define how and why they live their lives as Muslims.

My only goal in the limited and private distribution of 1998 was to generate some feedback and discussion amongst my peers. I wondered:

A few days after the Jama’at learned of my initial distribution, and at the request of the National Secretary, I retrieved the last remaining copies out in the wild.

One dear friend of mine, I vividly recall. He came to my house and reluctantly handed over his copy of my book. He had only started reading it. My friend had no opinion on its contents as yet, but he did feel it a minor travesty that something which I had put my heart and soul into, was now being censored in this way.  

Recovering Copies.

It was now late Spring. The National Secretary had asked my father to hand over all copies of the book—those yet to be distributed as well as the initial few copies which I had since retrieved.

I felt a flood of conflicting emotions. Having worked so closely with the National Secretary, I felt a sense of loss given how upset he was with me. I deeply respected him as a mentor and as a wonderfully kind human being. But I was also on a fact-finding mission. I was on a quest and I wanted others to join. I wanted dialogue. I wanted answers. I wanted other people to care about the issues. I wanted people to wake up from inherited-belief-autopilot-syndrome.

So why did I surrender like this? It wasn’t, in fact, just about repairing my relationship with the National Secretary. I also capitulated for more practical reasons. In hindsight, my instincts proved to be rather prescient. The National Secretary advised that it was the leadership here in Canada that was going to provide me with answers. I didn’t want to give the Jama’at any excuses not to respond to my questions. Given that the Jama’at wanted to be the exclusive recipients of my book, I did as they asked. They were now on the hook to provide me with a formal response.

Had I continued to distribute the book myself, I would have lost the narrative. The story most talked about in the Community would have concerned itself with my defiance. My wish was that people might ponder and question inherited theology. Not whether I had gone rogue.

Interestingly, neither the National Secretary nor the Missionary In-Charge had asked me to send a copy to Mirza Tahir Ahmad, the Ahmadi Muslim Khalifa at the time. After asking me to hand in all copies of my book, it was natural to assume that if my questions and analysis were worthy of the Khalifa’s attention, a copy would have been sent to him by the Canadian Jama’at. They had a crate full of my printed books at the Mission House. Surely, they would be sending a copy for the Khalifa’s perusal, I thought. But as far as I know, Mirza Tahir Ahmad was never sent a copy.

Years later it dawned on me: my self-policing and capitulation to the Jama’at was the mark of deep religious indoctrination and even more so, a fear of the social consequences for both myself and my family. What would have happened had I published my book for all to see? What would have happened if I had just openly dropped Islam, married whomever I wished and moved on with my life? Well, in 1998, I had no mental model for how to deal with the fallout from doing any of these things, and so I didn’t. I played the role expected of me.

A supportive community is essential for most of us to make bold moves through uncharted waters. But this was 1998. No such communities existed back then.⁶

Reactions: The National Secretary.

A few weeks after obtaining his copy, the Jama’at’s National Secretary finished reading my book. I very much appreciate that he took the time to go through it. I appreciate that he understood why I had raised the questions that I did.

Soon after, the National Secretary visited me. We talked about my book. I vividly recall the conversation. We spoke in my bedroom on chairs facing one another, door closed. I mostly listened. I was definitely anxious.

The National Secretary did convey a mix of surprise and displeasure that I had approached the topics in my book from the perspective of an outsider looking in. I explained that I had wanted to be as objective as possible, without presupposing conclusions that we were conditioned to accept by sheer virtue of having been born Muslim. Starting with a conclusion in mind and then looking for confirming evidence in order to navigate back to that initial “conclusion” was a dishonest mode of inquiry, I explained. We should not be dishonest with ourselves.

The National Secretary advised that he did not personally have answers to the issues that I had raised in my book. He nonetheless told me that my questions and analysis were scholarly. Yes, that was the exact word that he had used. The National Secretary then shared a story with me. That of a former Twelver Shia Muslim who had converted to Ahmadiyya Islam. This convert was deeply familiar with the succession history of early Islam. Although the convert had accepted Ahmadiyyat, he still felt strongly that based on early Islamic history and evidence, it was Ali ibn Abi Talib who was meant to first succeed the Prophet Muhammad—not Abu Bakr.

The National Secretary explained to me how this convert was allowed to keep his private convictions on the subject, and still be an Ahmadi Muslim. The convert just wasn’t allowed to suggest to others that his personal view had any official sanction in Ahmadiyya Islam. The National Secretary suggested that perhaps I could have some private views and convictions which I kept to myself. Beliefs which Ahmadiyya Islam would not endorse or recognize in any official way. This might be the path by which I could retain a measure of belief in Islam/Ahmadiyya.

Such dual messaging strategies never sat well with me, however. I have always wanted to share my best ideas with the world and I have always wanted others to do the same. The National Secretary and I were at an impasse. Sensing this, the National Secretary with loving kindness gave me the best advice that he knew how to. He offered the sincere but wholly disappointing counsel: just pray and have faith.

The Jama’at’s Silence.

Although the National Secretary was kind enough to acknowledge that he personally wasn’t equipped to respond to my book, I did expect that someone else would have at least been assigned the task. I kept waiting. About a year after my sit-down with the National Secretary, I began to suspect that no written response was coming. Given how the next 20 years would play out, this was rather prescient of me.

Many more months would pass. Pondering the Jama’at’s continued silence on my book, at some level, I began to accept that the lack of a written reply or rebuttal of any kind, was in fact, my response. In the battle of ideas, Ahmadiyya Islam had tapped-out. The no-answer-answer, was in fact, my answer. Islam did not occupy the moral high ground with which to dispute the charges of inequality raised by my book. There was no point in continuing to waste my life trying to square this circle. No matter how much I had wanted to belong to the Community in which I grew up, trying to reconcile Islamic theology with reason was futile.

With this realization, there wasn’t much that actually changed in my life. I didn’t begin drinking alcohol nor did I begin eating pork. In fact, to this day, I still do neither. I’m still very much culturally Muslim and in a few ways, actually more traditional than some Muslims who retain the label of ‘Muslim’ for purely social and familial reasons.

I did, however, cease attending most Jama’at functions, fasting, and performing the Islamic prayer. These specific changes were enough for my religious parents to take notice. Yet, my parents had witnessed how religious I was before all of this. They had witnessed how diligently I had studied the faith. They had witnessed how conscientiously I had put my questions into writing. They had witnessed how, for several years after writing my book, the Jama’at wasn’t able nor was it willing to provide a written response.

For Muslim parents to whom religion is everything, a child leaving Islam is scary—even when that child is a fully-grown adult. Muslims are taught to believe that without Islam (or religious belief generally), human beings are rudderless.

At another level, however, my parents did understand. They couldn’t charge me with being the lazy Muslim or the irresponsible son. They couldn’t accuse me of being the wild child. I was none of those things. For these reasons, my father’s efforts to win me back to Islam weren’t even directed my way. My father focused on the Jama’at’s leadership. He focused on the one man in the Canadian Jama’at who could direct resources toward the composition of a written response. But my father was mistaken. My father had given the Jama’at’s Amir and Missionary In-Charge too much credit.

Reactions: The Amir and Missionary In-Charge.

Unlike his contemporaries, the Amir and Missionary In-Charge of Canada during the 1990s had a very much deer-in-the-headlights reaction to my book.

After my sit-down with the National Secretary, there were no further discussions with any Jama’at officials about my book. No written replies or rebuttals were even attempted. None at least, that ever saw daylight.

I had heard rumors that perhaps some Jama’at scholar in Hamilton⁷ was working on replying to one or more of the topics in my book. Ultimately, the Amir had vetoed moving forward with any formal response. Perhaps the Jama’at was concerned that publishing an incomplete or weak rebuttal would reflect badly on the Jama’at. Would it be safer for them to simply ignore the book than to risk answering it poorly? Perhaps pretending like my book didn’t exist was the shrewdest course of action for the Jama’at. Whether or not a written response was actually begun and then shelved, we may never know.

Since entrusting the book to Jama’at elders exclusively, it was only they who were in a position to read it and to respond to it. While I did originally seek to engage my peers in dialogue, I wasn’t interested in the opinions of uncles spouting off conspiracy theories or trying to justify misogyny. I was only interested in the Jama’at’s official response to the issues raised. These answers would empower me to more honestly evaluate, once and for all, the claims, coherence, and the evidence for Islam/Ahmadiyya on these specific issues.

After every couple of years that would go by, my father would manage to pull the Amir aside and ask, “Do you have answers to my son’s religious questions yet?”

In this section, I relay the Amir’s responses to my father, as he relayed them to me. While the wording is paraphrased in the first two encounters, the sentiments are spot on. These encounters were seared into memory on the very day that each of them had taken place. The three asks parallel the narrative arc typical of the three acts one might find in a play—except that the events shared below—actually took place.

The First Ask.

The first time my father asked the Amir about answering my book, his response was profoundly honest. There was a sincere vulnerability in his words. My father relayed the Amir’s confession:  

To this, my father stood puzzled. Wasn’t the Amir and Missionary In-Charge taught how to defend Islam in his seven years of missionary school?⁸ What exactly did they learn there? Was the Missionary In-Charge not taught how to answer Islam’s critics? This man wasn’t just a local Missionary assigned to a particular city. This missionary represented and was in charge of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community for all of Canada. For well over a decade.

The Second Ask.

A couple of years had passed since my father first asked the Amir about my book. An occasion had now presented itself for my father to pull the Amir aside and ask him once again: when would the Jama’at’s official response to my book be coming?

As before, my father relayed the Amir’s reaction to me. This time, the Amir had been noticeably perturbed:  

My father was embarrassed. He came home and asked me why it was that I would write that Prophet Muhammad (54 years old) had raped young Aisha (9 years old).⁹ Unfortunately, my father was unable to grasp the writing in my book for himself.¹⁰ As a result, he took the Amir’s word for what was in the book. My father mistakenly assumed that my book had claimed that Muhammad had raped his youngest wife.

I didn’t expect a missionary to throw his hands in the air with outrage because he didn’t like facing pointed religious questions. Not that I had even asked one, but why should a blasphemous question go unanswered? Why do we assume that such a question couldn’t possibly have been a sincere ask?

The contents of my book having now been clearly established, it is worth underscoring what free and open inquiry actually entails. I believe that there is nothing wrong with someone asking a question which requires that we confront uncomfortable and possibly blasphemous contentions. We should not be shy in asking our religious leaders about the questions which trouble us.

The Muhammad-Aisha-rape question wasn’t one that I had ever posed. But had I done so, I would have expected that a mature theologian would be able to point out why my objections did not hold up to scrutiny. I would not expect them to so easily dismiss questions from a person whom they had witnessed growing up devoted to the Jama’at, with their very own eyes. Someone who was previously so passionate about the religion and the Community. If a religious leader can so easily be triggered by blasphemy, can they really expect to have an honest conversation with those in their flock who are doubting?

I explained to my father that there was no Muhammad-Aisha-rape passage in my book. My father finally understood. At this point, he was justifiably disappointed with the Amir for misrepresenting the contents of my book. This incident led myself and my family to a discouraging realization: the Amir and Missionary In-Charge must not have even opened the book. The Amir must have given a copy to some assistant to summarize for him. Perhaps I wasn’t on the Amir’s list of priorities. Completely understandable. Such people often do have a lot on their plate.

However, what we can conclude from this episode is that the Amir’s assistants (at that time) must not have been very bright. Yet it was also the Amir’s responsibility to have ascertained the scope of their abilities before delegating sensitive tasks to them.

If on the other hand, the Amir had actually read the book himself, then his response to my father was truly disappointing. We would have to conclude that the Amir and Missionary In-Charge had straight up misrepresented my book—or—that he was grossly incapable as a theologian and as a religious leader.

The Third Ask.

Fast forward another few years. My father once again has a private moment for an exchange with the Amir and Missionary In-Charge. The Amir brushes off my father’s request that he or someone else in the Jama’at answer my book. The Amir explains why there’s no point in the Jama’at responding to my book. He indicates that my book puts me so far beyond the pale, that it’s a waste of anyone’s time to respond. This time, the Amir executes his final evasive maneuver and pronounces in Urdu:

Translation: He’s a write off; he’s a lost cause.

This expression in Urdu is not a paraphrasing of the Amir’s response. This is the exact phrase uttered by the Amir and Missionary In-Charge, to my father.

Recap.

Over several years, an honest admission from the Amir progressed into outright dismissiveness. The Amir had gone from:

1. “I’m confused”, to
2. Misrepresenting the contents of my book, to
3. Claiming that my book of questions puts me so beyond the pale, that it’s not even worth a response.

What does it say when the religious leadership of a missionary sect of Islam cannot address the most basic of questions concerning the inequality of women in scripture?

Ask yourself: why was there no formal response? Was it simply internal Jama’at politics holding back a written answer, or was Ahmadiyya Islam hemmed in theologically?

I’ve since realized that once you begin posting on social media, Jama’at officials suddenly do wish to speak with you. I wonder, will this eagerness to dialogue be retracted when the prerequisite is that we live stream these conversations for the public? Or that the Jama’at publishes a formal written response to my first batch of questions from 20 years ago?

I’m certainly done with religious elders espousing private theology to placate those who might begin thinking for themselves. If you have something insightful to add to the discourse, then it’s worth sharing your explanations with the world.

Lessons Learned.

From these early experiences in the Jama’at and with the lack of a written response to my book of questions, many lessons would come into focus in the years that followed.

The story continues with insights gained in these intervening years, as relayed in the sequel to this piece, Lessons Learned on Community and Dissent.

1. For those of you who are feeling adventurous, you can find many friendly Ahmadi Muslims to talk to at events like Meet a Muslim and Coffee, Cake and True Islam.
2. Tabligh means proselytization. See the resource box above, Proselytization Terminology, for more context.
3. For those of you interested in the positioning of the Qur’an in this way, see Postulate One in my essay, The Postulates.
4. Later in life, both did in fact, hold various volunteer positions of responsibility within the Jama’at. Fortunately, we have all remained on excellent terms, although we haven’t discussed my book in almost 20 years.
5. Muslims often like to point to the spiritual gender equality articulated in the Qur’an as a response. I see these claims of spiritual equality in the Hereafter as merely dangling carrots in front of people. Incentives with no value in this life. They are vacuous statements intended to placate women so that they might swallow the stark inequality which the Qur’an articulates for them in this very life.
6. Fortunately, they do today.
7. A Canadian city an hour’s drive southwest of Toronto.
8. For Ahmadi Muslim missionaries, this training academy is Jamia Ahmadiyya
9. For authentic hadith citing Aisha’s age at the time of consummation and the fact that she was still playing with dolls, see this WikiIslam entry.
10. As an immigrant, originally from India with limited post-secondary education, my father unfortunately, could not follow along with the diction used in the book.