Propaganda in Academic Literature

Before the Internet, the strongest disinformation weapon in the hands of the Ahmadiyya leadership was countering any academic work about the community was :

  • silence on pure academic work e.g. in the case of Prophecy Continuous
  • vilification of the author in the case of Muslim authors and traditional writing
  • double-down on illogical stance within their community

This approach worked before the Internet Age. With the Internet, Ahmadis students failed to reconcile the academic world with the illogical and pseudo-intellectual audacity of the community's 'scholars'. A good many academic-minded Ahmadis left in the 1990s and 2000s and others raised serious questions about the intellectual qualifications of a community they considered a thought leader.

With the history and beliefs of the Ahmadiyya becoming more transparent with the Internet, the leadership has spent considerable effort in another three-pronged strategy:

  • silence on outlandish issues such as 'Arabic is the mother of languages' and 'Jesus in Kashmir' . These important tenets of the faith are now being completely ignored.
  • softly inject false historical narratives about their controversial history into mainstream academic literature and then use that in citations.
  • try to silence English-language writers with the 'persecution' card so that the English Web does not contain counter-narratives. Vicious social media trolling (Facebook and Twitter) and baiting of Muslim thought leaders is the chosen approach.

In this section, we will present a list of academic articles, journals and books where the quality of research and peer review is questionable. In some cases, authors from unrelated disciplines have been paid to write.