by Declan Henry

I’m delighted to introduce my forthcoming book on former Ahmadis and explain the reasons why I wrote it.

This project began with curiosity and a genuine willingness to understand a community I had previously viewed in a positive light. My early encounters with Ahmadis were warm and friendly, and for a time I accepted the public image they presented. I wrote kindly about them in several of my books and praised them in interviews.

I attended their Jalsa Salana twice, visited their places of worship, shared meals with members, and enjoyed their company. I travelled to Lahore, where I spent time with the Lahori Ahmadiyya Movement. I even stood in the room where Mirza Ghulam Ahmad died, and in the ruins of an old mosque nearby where he once prayed. I wrote sympathetically about the persecution Ahmadis sometimes face in Pakistan because I believe injustice deserves to be acknowledged wherever it occurs.

That was before I became aware of some of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s controversial writings that had not been made visible to me earlier. I was genuinely shocked by the vile statements he made about Jesus and Maryam:statements that were not only historically baseless, but deeply disrespectful to figures held sacred by both Christians and Muslims. I had never before encountered anything like this in mainstream Islamic thought, or indeed anywhere else. It was a moment when the ground shifted beneath my feet,because it revealed a side of the movement that had never been visible in my earlier, positive interactions with them. It made me realise that the public image and the internal reality were not the same.

That discovery was unsettling enough, but it was only the beginning. Once I stepped beyond the polished public image and began listening to those who had lived inside the movement and had left, a far more troubling picture emerged.

What began as quiet, private listening soon became a much larger undertaking: a sustained, eighteen-month project in which I gathered the testimonies of thirty-three former Ahmadis, ranging in age from eighteen to eighty-two. These included ordinary members, people who had held positions of trust, and even individuals descended from the companions of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad himself. Their backgrounds varied, yet their accounts aligned with remarkable consistency.

One of the most disturbing themes that emerged was the level of hostility some former members described within the movement towards mainstream Muslims. Several interviewees spoke about a deep, visceral distrust that shaped their upbringing and their understanding of the wider Muslim community. This shocked me, particularly given that the movement’s public motto is, “Love for All – Hatred for None.” What they described was a private emotional climate that stood in stark contrast to the public messaging. Their accounts made it clear that,for many of them, negative attitudes towards Muslims were not incidental but woven into their lived experience inside the movement.

Another strong theme was the internal persecution that takes place within the community itself. I had previously written about the external persecution Ahmadis face, but I had never heard about the pressure, fear, and emotional control that former members experienced from the movement’s leadership, their families, and their peers. People spoke to me about three faces of the movement: the polished public face, the strict internal face, and the theological face that most members never fully see. They described contradictions, failed prophecies, and a culture where questioning was widely discouraged. I listened to stories about the incredible bravery of those who left this movement after concluding that its theology was misleading, and then having to face hostility, abandonment, isolation, intimidation, betrayal, and outright ostracisation from the very parents,siblings, friends, and community leaders they once trusted.

Many told me that the vast majority of Ahmadis have never read the written works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. They said only selected extracts are circulated, and that serious study often leads to doubt. Several interviewees used the same phrase:“After anyone reads the books of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad properly, they leave.”For me, that raised serious questions about how well the movement’s theology withstands close examination.

Thirty of the thirty-three people I interviewed for my book had converted to Sunni Islam. They did so after periods of confusion, private study, and emotional turmoil. Leaving Ahmadism often meant losing family, community, and the only religious world they had ever known. Several described it as stepping out of one life and into another, with no guarantee of acceptance on either side. They carried wounds that were not visible from the outside: guilt, isolation, fear, and trauma.

There is a silence around the lived experiences of former Ahmadis: a silence that serves no one. All the existing podcasts and livestreams about the Ahmadiyya movement mainly deal with the writings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and therefore concentrate on the movement’s theology and polemics. None of this captures the human reality of what it means to leave a movement that has shaped a person’s identity from childhood. None of it gives space to the voices of those who stepped away and often found themselves standing alone.

And that is why I am so pleased to have written this book, the first of its kind. My intention was to create that space, allowing former members to speak out and share their experiences. I wanted to document their stories with dignity, clarity,and respect. I wanted Sunni Muslims to understand what former Ahmadis carry with them when they arrive in their mosques: not to provoke division, but to foster compassion. These individuals were raised to distrust Sunni Muslims, yet they found the courage not only to leave Ahmadism but to embrace Sunni Islam. That journey deserves respect and recognition.

I wrote this book because former Ahmadis deserved to be heard. They are not seeking attention or revenge. They are ordinary believers trying to live their faith with integrity, and many have paid a heavy price for asking questions and leaving the movement.

I wrote this book so that Ahmadis themselves could read the suffering inflicted on their own people by their own people: to see and understand the emotional and spiritual suffering that the movement inflicted upon them after they decided to leave. There can never be any justification for this suffering from a movement that allegedly promotes peace and unity.

Let me tell you a little about converts to Ahmadism and the movement’s membership figures.

Recent research carried out in America into high-control religious groups and cults shows a clear trend: most new members leave within the first five years.People often join during moments of vulnerability or hope, but early enthusiasm rarely lasts. Short-term membership is the norm, not the exception.

We see the same pattern in the Ahmadiyya Movement. Despite the large membership figures it sometimes announces, most converts do not stay. Whether the movement claims to have two hundred million followers, or claims that forty million converted in a single day, or points to this year’s figure of 276,596 new members, the reality is that new converts rarely remain beyond five years.

Many of these alleged mass conversions occur in places such as West Africa,often after a clinic or school is built. But a one-time pledge does not necessarily lead to long-term belief. Joining is easy; staying is much rarer.

Then there is the issue of cultural Ahmadis. Because of social pressure, family tensions, and fear of being shunned, many who lose faith never formally resign. Instead, they quietly withdraw from Jamaat life and become what researchers call “ghost members”. They remain on the books but no longer believe in Ahmadi theology or Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

The reality is that the Ahmadiyya Movement remains a small religious community of well under one million members worldwide. Its long-term stability relies far more on birth rates than on the retention of converts. While it has centres and places of worship across the globe, buildings do not equal believers, and property ownership does not equal growth.

The claim that the Ahmadiyya Movement is “the fastest growing religion on earth” is simply not supported by the evidence. When the statistics are examined more closely, it becomes clear that the movement is not on the verge of global expansion and is not operating on the same scale as the world’s major religions.

My book, Breaking the Silence – Thirty-Three Voices of Former Ahmadis, will be published in due course.

It is a non-profit book, and all royalties from the book will be donated directly to an Islamic charity for humanitarian aid in Gaza.

http://www.declanhenry.co.uk