Op-Ed: How "Muslims" Silence Women While Abdullah Hashem Lets Them Speak

When people speak of "cancel culture" today, many think of digital outrage, shitstorms, and public executions on social media. Of people being pilloried for saying the wrong words - or even for remaining silent at the wrong moments. Cancel culture - it sounds like censorship, overreaction, an assault on freedom of speech. But what if we redefine the term? What if we turn it into something spiritual - away from the destruction of people, toward the destruction of lies?

Because the real crisis isn’t too much outrage - it’s too much silence. Silence in mosques, churches, living rooms. Silence that tells women: Don’t speak. Silence that pushes us all back into old roles. This silence isn’t sacred. It’s manufactured. And it must be cancelled.

A YouTube video captures the entire drama: Influencer Ali Dawah sits spread-legged before the camera. Beside him, his wife - veiled, mute. She’s allowed to write her thoughts on a whiteboard he gifted her. No dialogue. No exchange. What looks like partnership is a monologue in modern disguise. A ritual of submission with an Instagram filter.

This image is no isolated incident. It’s a system. The systematic disempowerment of women. The illusion of participation. The simulation of progress. Men who stage themselves as religiously liberal while reinforcing patriarchal structures. Their whiteboard is like a Twitter account without a tweet button - a stage without a voice.

This isn’t religion. This isn’t faith.

This is training.

In clear contrast the female members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light recorded many response videos, showing that they do have a voice and know how to use it.

In Iran, Jina Mahsa Amini was beaten to death because a strand of hair peeked from under her hijab. In Pakistan, a religious council declares men may "lightly beat" their wives. In Afghanistan, the Taliban close girls’ schools. In Europe, women in many churches are barred from spiritual authority.

Meanwhile, in leftist, secular circles, we witness another form of dogmatism: Spiritual women who speak of intuition, prayer, or divine femininity are marginalized, mocked, branded as backward. The enlightened have their own no-go zones - not for clothing, but for worldviews.

Everywhere the same dynamic: Culture is elevated to religion. And religion - whether divine or ideological - becomes a tool of control. But that was never its purpose.

True revelation was always an act of purification. Moses shattered the Golden Calf. Jesus drove the merchants from the temple. Their "cancel culture" never targeted people - only systems of lies.

Spiritual cancel culture targets habits of thought. It doesn’t ask: "Who’s wrong?" but: "What was a lie?" It seeks not to divide but to clarify. It calls us back - not to old dogmas, but to the source:

• To a God who doesn’t control but liberates.

• To a religion where a woman’s voice isn’t scandalous but a sign of truth.

• To a spirituality where obedience isn’t submission but a revolt against falsehood.

Perhaps religion’s greatest historical error is confusing culture with revelation. Two concepts could not be more different, yet they’ve become so entangled they now seem inseparable. What passes for "God’s will" is often just the echo of patriarchal power structures wearing religious paint.

Culture is a society’s memory. It shows in clothing, language, family models, concepts of honour, shame, and decency. It isn’t static. It can be poetic, creative, deeply rooted - but also violent, exclusionary, toxic. Culture shifts with time, place, climate, and power.

Religion, in its pure sense, isn’t man-made. It’s revelation - direct communication from God to humanity. Its goal is never control, but liberation. It speaks not to origin, but to the soul. It doesn’t subjugate - it elevates. It’s universal, not tribal. It’s truth, not consensus.

So what happened? Culture put on religion’s robes. And religion was degraded to culture’s handmaid. In Pakistan, dowry is sold as religious duty. In Saudi Arabia, women’s rights are restricted in God’s name. In Europe, churches deny women priesthood citing "holy tradition."

Result: Millions believe God wills it. That women must obey, cover themselves, make themselves small. But this isn’t revelation. It’s training in religion’s name. A cultural lie painted holy.

No one names this error more clearly than Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq:

"God created men and women equal. Some men are better than some women - and some women are better than some men. And there are women higher than most prophets."

This single sentence shatters millennia of male dominance. Aba Al-Sadiq exposes our era’s greatest religious fiction: that authority must be male, that the spiritual has a gender. None of this came from God. All of it came from fear.

In the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, the separation is clear: What did God reveal - and what have humans made of it? This distinction is the first step to liberation.

For whoever confuses religion with culture turns God into a patriarch and faith into a corset. But whoever cleans revelation of cultural dust finds truth: God isn’t a traditionalist. Not a nationalist. Not a patriarch.

Arab World: The Veil of Power

In many Arab nations, religion feels omnipresent: Mosques, calls to prayer, religious holidays. Yet what’s deemed "Islamic" often stems not from the Quran but tribal norms - religiously interpreted by scholars to legitimize existing power.

Example: Forced veiling. Surah 24:31 calls believing women to modesty - but mandates no punishment for unveiling. Yet states construct compulsory veiling. In Iran, this distortion killed Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022. Arrested for "improper hijab" - dead hours later, beaten by morality police.

Another verse, Surah 3:195, is far less known - yet central:

"Your Lord answered them: 'I will never deny any of you - male or female - the reward of your deeds. You are equal to one another.'"

But instead of equality, fear is spread. Control replaces spirituality. Man becomes moral arbiter; woman, walking temptation.

South Asia: Honor and Fear

In Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, the fusion of religion and family honor is especially toxic. Forced marriage, dowry, honor killings - all justified in faith’s name, though rooted in patriarchal culture.

Example: Pakistan’s Islamic Ideology Council declared in 2016 that men may "lightly beat" disobedient wives. No outcry. No internal Islamic resistance. Instead: silence. Acquiescence. Tradition.

Religion becomes a stage for theater of fear. God doesn’t speak - men dictate. And women? Bearers of collective shame.

Africa: Holy Heritage of Violence

In many African societies, pre-Islamic or pre-colonial rituals were later sanctified. Practices like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or child marriage are now "holy," though unrelated to divine revelation.

These rituals aren’t religious - they’re cultural inconveniences. Woman’s role: obey, serve, suffer. Religion amplifies local power structures - doesn’t correct them.

The West: Progress with a Muzzle

The West has its own religiously cloaked culture. Women still can’t be Catholic priests. The reason? Jesus "chose only male apostles." But this is male-interpreted scripture defended by a male-dominated system.

In Europe’s orthodox churches, women are often excluded entirely - no voice, no influence, no spiritual authority. And secular circles? Dogmatism persists there too. Spiritual women speaking of intuition, prayer, or divine femininity are ridiculed as backward or excluded. The new muzzle isn’t religious - it’s ideological. You can be anything - as long as you’re not devout.

The Silent Nonworking Scholars – Accomplices to Control

What unites all these scenarios is scholars’ silence. When they affirm rather than question cultural practices, they become complicit. They defend the status quo - selling it as God’s will. But those who do this steal faith’s soul.

Aba Al-Sadiq states:

"Obedience to God doesn’t mean submitting to people—but to truth. And truth may stand against culture."

This truth shatters cultural chains - calling us back to revelation. Not tradition. To the source. And there, the revolution begins.

Toppling a system requires more than outrage. It demands truth. And truth needn’t be reinvented - it must be uncovered. This is the mission of Aba Al-Sadiq, spiritual leader of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. What he embodies isn’t reform - but restoration. Not modernization - but return to the divine source beyond cultural distortions.

His goal is clear: radically distinguishing revelation from cultural conditioning. Liberating faith from tradition, dogma, and male dominance. Restoring woman - not as symbol but as active, God-authorized voice.

God created men and women equal. Some men are better than some women - and some women are better than some men.

This simple sentence is a frontal assault on 1,400 years of religious distortion. Aba Al-Sadiq strips male-dominated religious culture of its hypocritical authority - not with anger, but evidence. Revelation. Truth.

Example: Most Islamic schools teach only men hold spiritual authority. But Aba Al-Sadiq recalls a transmitted truth: that Fatimah Al-Zahra - the Prophet’s daughter - ranks spiritually above all Imams.

"We are the proofs of God over His creation, and our grandmother Fatimah is the proof of God over us." (Al-Intiṣār, Kūrānī ʿĀmilī, vol. 7, p. 237)

This shatters the notion of male leadership. It clarifies: A woman - mother, teacher, lover - can stand divinely higher than any male leader.

In Aba Al-Sadiq’s teaching, women aren’t just believers - they’re full recipients of divine revelation. Maryam. Zaynab. Nusaybah bint Ka’ab. Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene - often mislabelled a sinner - was, per apocryphal texts, Jesus’s most faithful disciple. She recognized him first after crucifixion. She understood him deeply. And for this, she suffered most. In Islam: At the Battle of Uhud, Prophet Muhammad looked left and right - and saw only Nusaybah wielding her sword to defend him.

These stories were suppressed. Not because they were insignificant - but because they were too powerful. A woman with a sword - or with revelation? That threatens every patriarchal structure.

A core principle of Aba Al-Sadiq is the "empty vessel" - a poetic image with radical consequence: To receive truth, one must be empty. Free of dogma, family traditions, cultural beliefs.

This liberation isn’t gentle. It demands unlearning. Stripping childhood religion. Courage to say: "I may have been wrong." Here true maturity begins - not through holding on but letting go.

For revelation is alive. It speaks not to those who already know everything - but to the empty. Ready to receive anew.

This emptiness isn’t loss.

It’s the beginning of freedom.

The Seventh Covenant: Dawn of a New Era

What we’re witnessing isn’t just a religious movement. It’s a rupture with all prior history. Aba Al-Sadiq speaks of the Seventh Covenant - the final phase of divine revelation on earth. A covenant disregarding tribe, nation, or gender. Its measure isn’t conformity but light. Not obedience to people but allegiance to God’s truth.

In this new covenant, man is no longer central - humanity is. Woman is no longer religion’s moral object but divine power’s subject. This isn’t symbolic. It’s a sword - not against men, but against any structure seeking to diminish women. It calls the spiritually awakened - women and men - to break chains of human dogma and cultural training.

The Seventh Covenant isn’t elite secrecy. It’s open to all willing to shed old identities. Those who walk this path aren’t thrust back into old roles - but called into a new truth.

This truth isn’t nice. It isn’t compliant. It questions everything - while giving all that truly matters: light, guidance, certainty.

The woman in this covenant isn’t a follower. She’s a pioneer. Bearer of revelation. Witness of light. And what she always was - only now, finally spoken.

The Seventh Covenant is the dawn of a new era. An era where God is represented no longer by men -but by the truthful.