This post is based on my response to Razi in his Reddit post on /r/ahmadiyya. Razi runs the Ahmadi Answers apologetics website promoting Ahmadiyya Islam. You can find him on Twitter as @StudentOfAhmad. In response, Razi has written a comment which you are encouraged to read to assess for yourself, the depth of his epistemology. Here’s a screenshot incase he later decides to remove it.
Walaikum as-salaam. It is clear that you are very convinced of the religion that you currently belong to and to which you profess as true.
One’s own subjective conviction, however, no matter how deep, does not make one’s positions objectively true. Thus, while we can put forward reasons for why we believe a certain position is most likely true, it would be arrogant of us to suggest that if someone disagrees with this worldview, that they are misguided or that they are “misunderstanding” something about “the truth”.
Such reasoning only leads to fallacious conclusions. You are implicitly suggesting that questioning Ahmadi Muslims begin with a fixed conclusion in mind (“Ahmadiyyat is true”) and then run all of their doubts through such a lens. This is a dishonest mode of inquiry for anyone to apply to their own journey of honest inquiry.
Consider a hypothetical: your advice was instead posted onto a Christian subreddit, and we replaced Islamic references to Christian ones. I’m sure that readers here would then notice more readily, how the advice you’ve given no longer works to lead one to Ahmadiyyat. It could just as easily be applied in a way that locks people into Christianity.
For example:
“Don’t understand the Trinity? Well, it’s okay, some people don’t understand these metaphysical truths. But you know Jesus is in your heart. You’ve felt his love and his truth. You’ve read and lived the profound wisdom of the Bible. Just pray to Jesus for being guided and at peace so that you always accept him as your lord and savior for eternal salvation.”
Regarding:
If you understand majority of the teachings as true and misunderstand one, it would not make sense to leave the faith because of it. Pray and try to understand that religion was never black and white.
Consider that most who are born into a faith are indoctrinated and socialized to agree with the majority its teachings from the get-go. If something is truly wrong or incorrect, it often doesn’t come to a person as an avalanche of black and white revelations. Rather, our natural curiosity begins to notice things that don’t add up. We explore points and counterpoints. Then we notice more things which do not add up.
Of course, one can also read bombshells like Nuzhat Haneef’s Recognizing the Messiah and indeed, have disconfirming evidence delivered as the aforementioned avalanche.
We can then crosscheck with your Ahmadi Answers website to determine which is the stronger narrative; which makes the more reasonable connections, and which one is applying post-hoc rationalizations to cling to a weak narrative.
In fact, there are numerous issues with both Ahmadiyyat specifically and Islam generally, if people just continue to explore. I’m happy for them to read through your website and Jama’at literature, and to compare and contrast with the material skeptical of Ahmadiyya Islam’s claims. Are you just as happy to have people explore these issues from Ahmadi Muslim material and from the source material of those who critique it?
If yes, that’s great! I’d love to hear of you encouraging others to read counterpoints to Ahmadiyyat and Islam from the source material of the critics and not just Ahmadiyya refutations. Its interesting however, in that all my years in the Jama’at, I never heard such encouragement to explore from the source. I leave the speculation as to why, to the reader.
Myself, I also know Ahmadi Muslims (those in my extended family) who don’t want me to even hint that I have researched the religion and left, because there are still younger family members who have not yet completed their indoctrination and social lock-in process. Planting the idea that one can question, doubt and leave is disastrous to completing the indoctrination process, it seems.
These middle-aged Ahmadi Muslim adults are afraid of the mere suggestion to their children, that reasonable people can investigate and find reasons to leave the theology behind
Indeed, if one was to take your advice, we would climb back in our shells instead of exploring these doubts further. Would you ever give a Christian such advice, to not explore their doubts, once they have stumbled upon something that is suspect?
When we courageously explore our doubts, risking our comfortable indoctrination, we recognize that there are many more things which just don’t add up.
It is arrogance to presume that in undergoing this journey of exploration and skepticism, that anything which looks suspect is the fault of one who is questioning; that they must be “misunderstandings”.
Have you ever considered that these ‘misunderstandings’ are a euphemism for a flawed theology?
Regarding:
Here is where I can come to some agreement with you. I found Ahmadiyyat to be a much more humane version of Islam than the rest of the Islamic world offers; both today, and in the pages of history.
My assessment after having left Ahmadiyyat, is that it was a sugarcoated version of Islam. Like you, I felt that if Ahmadiyyat wasn’t true, then no other version of Islam was going to be appealing. Not in the slightest.
Interestingly, your messiah Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, having grown up in such an environment, prior to evolving his own views on prophethood, the death of Jesus, etc., was in love with that same Islam for which you feel atheism is the more honest alternative.
It would have been more impressive if Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had left Islam in his early adulthood after making such an assessment, and then received revelation correcting the immoral and unethical propositions of the mainstream/orthodox Islam into which he was raised. But I digress.
Remember, one of your own formally trained imams (Ayyaz Mahmood Khan, in his dialogue with Dr. Arif Ahmed) has indicated that even if one thing was proven false about Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, then the entire lot of his claims would have to be thrown out. This is the boldness with which Ahmadiyyat prides for itself.
Consider this exchange from their dialogue at time index ~ 1:01:40:
Arif:
“An example would be Nostradamus. You know, who made a very large number of prophecies. You know, which were fulfilled, by the sounds of it with as much of evidence as the ones that you describe. Then he made other ones about the future that turned out not to happen.”
Ayyaz:
“But that’s my point, right. That’s exactly my point. That the difference between Nostradamus and a true prophet of God, is that he made a plethora of prophecies, some of them perhaps have been fulfilled. But even if one is unfulfilled or is false, then that’s enough to say that the person is a liar. But in the case of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and I believe in the case of other prophets. Each and every prophecy has to be true otherwise it’s enough to warrant you writing off the whole thing.”
Further, if the sincere devotion and prayers to God can lead a once Ahmadi Muslim like Nabeel Qureshi to accept Jesus as Lord instead, the methodology of praying for guidance that you espouse contradicts your own desired conclusion.
Peace.