Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
Blog: awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Defying Jihad: The Dramatic True Story of a Woman Who Volunteered to Kill Infidels-and Then Faced Death for Becoming One
By: Esther Ahmad, Craig Borlase
Narrated by: Julia Farhat
Craig Borlase (British ghost writer, former English teacher and author.)
One presumes there is no picture of Esther Ahmad because of risk to her family’s life.
Esther Ahmad is an evangelist dream who in her story reveals the myopia of religious belief. Like Voddie Baucham, Ms. Ahmad conflates living a decent life with religions’ dogma. There is no incontrovertible truth in the teachings of religious doctrinal literature. The Holy Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, the Tripitaka, and the Torah are filled with words that have interpretation contradictions that lead and mislead humanity.
There is little doubt that Esther Ahmad saved herself and some number of innocents by abandoning Jihadist religious beliefs.
Her story is of a very brave woman who defies her family and Jihadism in Pakistan, but her refuge in Christianity carries every organized religion’s contradictory teaching. Her journey from organized Islamic religion to organized Christian religion is trading one mythology for another.
The history of Christian religion is as violent, and conflict ridden as Jihadist Islam.
Depiction of the Eleventh Century Christian Crusades
Absolute belief cannot come from the written word because the written word is man’s interpretation of what may or may not be the word of God, Allah, Yahweh, or whatever name the Divine is given. Esther Ahmad’s journey is heroic. She lives in a culture of violence and overcomes its alure through a will-to-believe. She abandons Islam, marries a Christian, and flees her father’s Jihadism to eventually arrive in America.
What is disappointing is Ms. Ahmad trades one organized religion for another, both of which are based on a man’s interpretation of Holy books. Human interpretations do not prove the existence of Divinity.
Ms. Ahmad’s journey to Christianity is reinforced by what appear to be two miracles. Her mother is cured of heart disease and her brother’s infected leg are healed through prayer. A skeptic might argue they were not miracles because her mother never had medically diagnosed heart disease and her brother’s infected leg may have naturally healed. Organized religion and human belief neither prove nor disprove a Divinities’ existence.
Ms. Ahmad faces an inquisition by Muslim scholars in defending her belief in Christianity.
Depiction of a Christian Inquisition.
She is questioned on four different occasions in front of other Muslim believers. Her knowledge of the Koran trips up the first three inquisitors and the third offers her a bribe to return to the Muslim faith. Ms. Ahmad’s defense is ironic because she shows inconsistencies in the Koran that make Muslim clerics look foolish. The irony is that the Christian Bible is equally riddled with inconsistency, but the Muslim clerics choose only to defend the Koran without pointing to the inconsistencies in the Christian Bible. That is the weakness of the cleric’s inquisition because, like the Koran, the Bible is written and re-written by humans.
The strength of Ms. Ahmad’s story is in her will to resist a patriarchal organization, and her own father who is prepared to murder her for blasphemy.
The weakness of Ms. Ahmad’s story is reliance on Christian dogma that comes from the word of man, not a Divinity.
One can believe in Divinity without believing in organized religion, particularly with the force-of-will demonstrated by Esther Ahmad. “Defying Jihad” is, without question, a story of bravery but also a story of organized religions’ delusions. Ms. Ahmad’s story is a false flag for belief in any organized religion, rather than belief or disbelief in Divinity.
This is a remarkable story of an extraordinary woman, but it fails to move one who has read many histories that show how organized religion has misled people by lying, abusing, robbing, and murdering innocents on their way through life.
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