A Failure to Doubt?

Abstract

This chapter examines the unexpected ways in which Ahmadis partake in the culture of sectarian disputation between Muslim sects in South Asia. Much sectarian disputation between Muslim sects in South Asia has as its stated goal the shoring up of intellectual boundaries and the silencing of opponents. The chapter explores how the Ahmadis cultivate an argumentative subjectivity that can be referred to as “heroic polemicism.” It argues that if one continues to approach this heroic polemicism through narrow categories of epistemic doubt and belief, one will miss the actual relationship to truth that Ahmadis in Qadian attempt to cultivate, alongside the uncertainties that they feel in discharging their obligations to truth. The chapter then looks at how Ahmadis embrace the modern world as a landscape of opportunity that offers almost unlimited resources through which they might expand the all-conquering truths of their Promised Messiah.