THE THINGS WE THINK BUT ARE TOO AFRAID TO SAY

Source: https://reasononfaith.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/The-Things-We-Think-but-are-too-Afraid-to-Say-2019-Edition.pdf

THE THINGS WE THINK BUT ARE TOO AFRAID TO SAY

by
REASON ON FAITH

An analysis of some of the theological and cultural issues with disturbing
connotations & consequences which affect the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the body of establishment Islam in general, as seen within the context of modern and future times.

This document is an investigation and a quest—as told in the first person.

Inaugural Public Release
Spring 2019
Original Draft: Fall 1992
Original Private Release to the Jama’at: Spring 1998

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
—George Bernard Shaw

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE: 2019 RELEASE...........................................................................................................IV
PREFACE: 1998 RELEASE...........................................................................................................VIII
WHAT IS BEING ASKED OF THE READER
..................................................................................... XII
SOME BACKGROUND FROM THE WRITER ....................................................................................... 1
POSTULATES: ASSUMED AXIOMS UPON WHICH THE DISCUSSION BUILDS.............................5
POSTULATE 1: U NIVERSALITY ................................................................................................................ 6
POSTULATE 2: R EASONABLE I NJUNCTIONS ............................................................................................ 9
POSTULATE 3: R EPERCUSSIONS OF A F UNDAMENTAL NATURE ..............................................................10
POSTULATE 4: L IMITS OF I NTERPRETATION .......................................................................................... 11
POSTULATE 5: OVERALL T RUTH ........................................................................................................... 12
POSTULATE 6: T HE B ALANCE OF R EALISM AND THE I DEAL ..................................................................... 13
ISSUE 1: TWO FEMALE WITNESSES FOR ONE MALE WITNESS .................................................. 15
1.1 COMMON E XPLANATIONS ........................................................................................................... 18
1.2 T HE MEMORY R EFRESHING A RGUMENT .................................................................................... 25
1.3 A L OOK AT THE BOOK I SLAM ’S R ESPONSE TO CONTEMPORARY I SSUES ...........................................27
1.4 A L OGICAL AND R EASONABLE A NSWER IS NEEDED ..................................................................... 28
1.5 T HE SECOND WOMAN IS ONLY AN A SSISTANT ? ........................................................................... 30
1.6 SOME U NCOMMON EXPLANATIONS ............................................................................................ 32
1.6.1 Liars and Prone to Gossip?.......................................................................................................... 33
1.6.2 Women tempted by the Devil when they cannot pray ............................................................... 35
1.7 A N A MBIGUOUS SITUATION ....................................................................................................... 38
1.8 A L OOK INTO I SSUES OF E XCEPTIONS AND B EST WORDINGS ........................................................ 38
1.8.1 A Hypothetical Islamic Example ................................................................................................. 39
1.9 A N E XAMINATION OF I NTERMEDIATE QUESTIONS R AISED ........................................................... 41
1.10 CONCLUDING T HOUGHTS........................................................................................................... 45
ISSUE 2: POLYGAMY AND SLAVE WIVES ........................................................................................ 46
2.1 A N I SSUE OF G RATIFICATION ......................................................................................................47
2.2 A N I SSUE OF NATURAL I SSUE ..................................................................................................... 48
2.3 MARRIAGE TO A SLAVE WITHOUT H ER CONSENT ........................................................................ 50
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2.4 S LAVE G IRLS WITHOUT M ARRIAGE ............................................................................................ 52
2.5 P ERMISSION OF THE F IRST W IFE AND L EGAL C ERTAINTY ............................................................ 53
2.6 C ONSEQUENCES OF THE D ISCUSSED C ONTENT IN O UR C OMMENTARIES ....................................... 54
ISSUE 3: WOMEN AS DEFICIENT, AS GIFTS AND AS OBJECTS ACTED UPON BY MEN ........... 56
3.1 S AYINGS OF THE P ROPHET AND E STABLISHMENT I SLAM .............................................................. 57
3.2 S LAVE W IVES ...........................................................................................................................64
ISSUE 4: THE RIGHT OF THE HUSBAND TO BEAT HIS WIFE......................................................69
ISSUE 5: THE QUR’ANIC INHERITANCE RATIO ............................................................................ 77
5.1 T HE Q UR ’ ANIC S YSTEM ............................................................................................................ 80
5.2 T HE H YPOTHETICAL A LTERNATIVE S YSTEM .............................................................................. 80
5.3 A C ONCRETE E XAMPLE ............................................................................................................. 81
5.3.1 The Islamic Scenario .................................................................................................................... 81
5.3.2 The Hypothetical Alternate Scenario .......................................................................................... 83
ISSUE 6: THE DIFFERENCE IN DIVORCE PROTOCOL ..................................................................85
ISSUE 7: THE MARRIAGE OF HAZRAT AISHA AND PRECEDENT .............................................. 88
ISSUE 8: THE JAHILIA PERIOD AND CHANGE—THEN AND NOW .............................................96
8.1 A R EFLECTION ON THE C HANGES ............................................................................................. 102
8.1.1 Examples from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at ..................................................................... 104
ISSUE 9: ADMINISTRATIVE INSTITUTIONS AND THE AHMADIYYA MUSLIM JAMA’AT ...... 107
9.1 B ANNING M IXED C OMMITTEES ............................................................................................... 108
9.1.1 Female Youth and their Interest Level in the Jama’at .............................................................. 110
9.1.2 A Symposium with a Special Permission Mixed Committee ..................................................... 110
9.2 W OMEN NOT ALLOWED ON THE N ATIONAL S HURA ..................................................................... 111
9.3 W OMEN NOT CO - HOLDERS OF OFFICES WITH MEN ..................................................................... 112
9.4 A C ONCLUDING Q UESTION .......................................................................................................113
ISSUE 10: YOUTH AND THE AHMADIYYA MUSLIM JAMA’AT ................................................... 114
10.1 Y OUTH S PEAKING U P ...............................................................................................................115
10.2 I SSUES T ROUBLING Y OUTH : A T HEOLOGY AND C OMMUNITY THAT AREN ’ T P LAUSIBLE ................ 118
10.2.1 Technical Religious Beliefs Which are Hard to Accept.............................................................. 119
10.2.2 Cultural Practices and Rigidity in the Community .................................................................. 123

°

PREFACE: 2019 RELEASE

The first draft of this book was written in 1992.
After several years of reflection and refinement, I finally presented it to Canadian officials of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at in 1998.
No doubt, much has transpired and much has changed since that time.
A silver anniversary of sorts, this release represents the book’s public debut. The only new content of a material nature is this very preface to the 2019 edition.

CHANGES

Readers of the original release (people whom I can count on my fingertips) will
notice that the following updates have been made with careful consideration to
preserving the original words, style, arguments, strengths, and yes, even weaknesses.
1. Formatting. Fonts and styles have been updated for readability.
2. Ordering. The table of contents has been moved to the beginning of the book. The overly apologetic and stapled inserts prepared after the original release, have now been included inline as Appendix A.
3. Grammar. Minor improvements to grammar and punctuation have been made. These adjustments have been introduced both sparingly and reluctantly. Notably, these changes have only been applied where the original intent and tone could be preserved.
4. Personal information. References to my name, email address, as well as some age and date mentions, have been removed as this book makes the transition from private document to public dialogue.
5. Diagrams. These have been modernized from their original stick figure representations.
6. Suffixes. Islamic superscript suffixes for respect of holy personages have been removed for readability. For example, (pbuh) and (ra). Prefixes of respect such as ‘Holy’ and ‘Hazrat’, have however, been left in to maintain the spirit and tone of the original work.
7. Online references. The original appendix (now Appendix B) contains references and citations, just as before. This appendix however, now also contains links to online versions of these same sources, where available.
8. Public release. My original intent was to keep this book rather private; available only to a select circle of Ahmadi Muslims, including the central leadership of the Jama’at.
However, many years have passed since giving the Jama’at an opportunity to compose a written response that never came.
I now believe that it is time to bring these discussions into the public arena. It is time to normalize religious doubt and dissent.

In my follow-up preface and insert from 1999, I took a conciliatory tone, hoping to encourage a written response. Truth be told, I was also scared of the social repercussions for my family and for myself. The reality of challenging the Jama’at just got real.
Some follow-up conversations about the book with learned members of the
Community suggested alternate ways of looking at these issues. Even though such explanations hinged on violating Postulate One (the claim of universality—you’ll read about that soon), I wanted so much to avoid the impending conflict with the Jama’at over my book.
Sadly, in the first few years after the book’s release I numbed my intellect and
compartmentalized my doubts, effectively self-administering an Islamic version of Pascal’s Wager. My driving motivation? First and foremost, to avoid an impending confrontation and social stigma. Secondly, to once again feel that I still belonged to the community that served as the common thread with my family and my longest running friendships. Without a community of support from like-minded individuals, I simply did not have the emotional strength to follow through with the social repercussions of publicly questioning the religion. But now I do.
If writing this book today, several things about it would also be different. Here’s a sample.
1. Social observations. I stand by many of my social recommendations for the Jama’at.
However, I was clearly naïve in my questioning of why an older woman with a younger man would be perceived as much more unconventional than the reverse. Regardless of changing cultures and social norms, biological preferences for fertility will always influence human behavior—where older men with means will pursue younger women.
2. Extreme punishments. In Postulate One, I didn’t question the Ahmadiyya Islamic view that the Qur’anic verse for cutting off a thief ’s hand could range from the literal to the metaphorical. For some circumstances, I gave the literal option a pass. This is an accommodation that I would no longer make.
3. Overly apologetic. Despite my post-release preface (see Appendix A), it is my
contention today that the tone of this book is completely appropriate for the topic.
Sometimes, it’s important to call out the elephant in the room. Often, it is essential that we stop sugar coating. I’m particularly proud of my courage as a young man to question with incredulity, the mental gymnastics employed to sanitize the immoral—for example, the “what your right hands possess” of the Qur’an. Satire has a valid role in waking us up from our indifference. No longer do I apologize for that. We who question have tiptoed around notions of offense and blasphemy, for far too long. It is time to be unapologetically direct and dismantle revisionist apologetics and double-speak.
4. Praise for Muhammad. My questioning process began with an evaluation of the gender inequality in the Qur’an. As a teenager, almost everything that I had read on the topic of religion had come from Ahmadi Muslim sources. At that time, I had no idea that the biographies of Muhammad from Islam’s earliest sources were not as flattering as the spotless picture portrayed by Ahmadiyya Islam. I did not realize that the re-packaged and sanitized biographies of Muhammad written by the Jama’at were derived from a serious cherry picking of the earliest Islamic records available.
5. Theistic assumptions. During my years of questioning, the existence of a personal deity was always assumed. So too, was the possibility that a divine organization existed; one which might represent “the one True Faith”. I now reject the concept of a personal deity. To read more about my beliefs, see: http://ReasonOnFaith.org/my-beliefs.
This book is now public because everyone should be able to question inherited faith without intimidation—whether emotional or social. For those of you with an orthodox Muslim background, you too, should also be able to question without the risk of physical intimidation.
Our questioning process also needn’t be curated by community elders from the very institutions and belief-systems that we are critically investigating.
There is in fact, a fascinating story about what transpired after the original release of this book. You can read about that and much more, in the companion article to this book’s public debut: http://ReasonOnFaith.org/the-things-we-think.
REASON ON FAITH
Spring 2019
PREFACE: 1998 RELEASE
This document is a detailed analysis of technical religious issues of controversy
within Ahmadiyya Islam—and as a consequence and by definition—issues of
controversy within Islam (generally).
The purpose of this writing is to request that those learned scholars on Islam—
inside the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at and from within mainstream Islam—respond with a series of logical and plausible explanations to some of the controversial and contentious issues that I raise in this set of writings. In fact, it is my sincere desire to see the establishment of a forum for open dialog on these issues in order to foster a more thorough understanding of Islam—and of Ahmadiyyat; its reformation.
The latter few sections of this writing dealing with the Jama’at itself will likely only be relevant and comprehensible to members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, although other readers may find the opinions expressed in these sections of some interest.
It was not my original intention to circulate this document amongst Muslims not in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, nor to actually circulate the document widely. Likely, I will still do neither. Over the years however, I have been advised by a few different people within the Jama’at whom I deeply respect, not to take the arrogant view that non-Ahmadi Muslims have no valid insight of their own to provide on these topics. In a few sections of this document, I quote profusely from Professor Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam—Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. I believe she has provided an excellent contribution to this area of study, and I quote from her work extensively in an effort for readers to absorb other points of view on these issues—angles rarely discussed within Jama’at literature itself. I almost feel compelled to have readers of these writings read those of Professor Ahmed’s. Consequently, I strongly encourage anyone interested in these writings, to read her book. 1
Although I’ve always considered myself spiritual, I was also once more religiously grounded in Islamic theology and doctrine. I began this series of questions back in 1992—a full six years from the time that I write this address of my preliminary thoughts.
As I would often get very worked up about the issues I would write about, having to reach a deep state of clarity of mind and purpose, I could never work on these writings a few hours at a time. I required large blocks of time—two or three days in succession, at a minimum—before I could delve into a session of writing.
1 Please note that while I encourage readers to pick up Professor Leila Ahmed’s work, she has no connection, knowledge or endorsement of my writings.

As a consequence of this very restrictive style of writing and having been a
university student constantly on academic term or cooperative work term, I would rarely have occasion to devote two or three days in succession to these writings—but it was something I always knew I had to complete.
Six years later, the same questions still trouble me, but I’ve completed a
representative sample of them now. My one regret with having taken so long is that many readers may be expecting to find six years’ worth of research, effort and depth in these writings—but that’s not what this is. It is in fact, four or five solid weeks of full time effort—over the span of six years in time. If you read it with this fact in mind, I hope you will not be too critical of me.
In this light, much of the writing style stems from an earlier time, when I was 19 years of age. In an effort to finally complete this work however, I decided not to wait another year or two to deliver this document with an updated level and style of writing. Again, I apologize to those readers who are expecting a level of writing from a university graduate, only to find a style and a tone indicative of a much younger, but no less fervid writer.
When I began writing this document, I decided I should prepare some background on myself. Thus, in the winter of 1992, I wrote a small segment entitled Some Background from the Writer, which I’ve included here as an outline of where I’m coming from as a person (with regards to theology). I believe understanding the lens through which I saw, and not only seeing what I saw, will enable readers to better appreciate where I am coming from and why I ask the questions that I do. Those readers who can provide me with their insights, will be better equipped to do so—I believe—with some knowledge of from where my questions arose.
Admittedly, I have grown and changed considerably from the time of having written that background on myself as a preamble to this document.
I have many more questions on both theology and on culture which I do not address in this document—as a detailed treatment on all of these issues would take ten-fold the effort of that which I have already expended in completing this document. As a representative sample of the real issues troubling Islam and Ahmadiyyat, I am hoping that the feedback received concerning these questions will equip me with the tools and alternate frameworks within which to analyze the host of other similar controversial and disturbing issues—both theological and cultural.
As a clarification, it should be noted that this document focuses on issues of women, gender and social integration. In perhaps another writing, I will address questions I have on some intricacies and implications of the Ahmadiyya Muslim interpretation of prophethood and the role of religious state machinery.

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You can read the book here