When He Speaks in Heaven’s Name

On Karim’s phone was a message he had written months ago and never sent. Back at the dorm after a visit home, he unpacked his bag and opened the message: a question for his old study-circle teacher about evidence he had not understood. He read the first line. It ended with the word “why.” At the bottom of the screen was a small button that needed only one tap. The charger was unplugged, and the battery would last another evening.

He remembered a small room in his town. Ten people on the floor, their shoes by the door. Each person knew which shoes were his by where he had left them. Karim would interrupt with a question. The teacher would lift his head and let him finish his sentence. The question needed no long introduction.

Once the teacher had said, “I don’t know this. I’ll look into it.” Karim went home that day having forgotten some of the lesson, but remembering that sentence.

Now his old teacher had an account with more than a hundred thousand followers. Karim opened his latest posts, then the comments: praise after praise, and small photos of people he did not know. He tapped Like, as he always did. He returned to his draft and added “Sorry to bother you” before the question. He reached toward Send, then zoomed in to check the word the teacher would read first.

Karim rewrote the question three times. The first time he filled it with praise for the teacher. The second time he removed the point he disputed. By the third, it had become a question about something whose answer he knew. “Is this what you didn’t understand?” his roommate asked. Karim looked at the draft. “No,” he said. He read his original sentence from an old record, then restored it to the beginning of the message. He chose Wednesday evening to send it. When Wednesday came, he opened the teacher’s post instead of the message and left another like. The appointed time passed. He had not sent the question.

You may feel more attached to a familiar voice than to the argument it makes. The person’s image grows before you, and your question shrinks until “why” disappears from it. Did you stay silent because you understood, or because you do not want to seem to disagree? Respect remains possible when a question is allowed its place.

Making a teacher immune to criticism confuses the standing of the text with the standing of its interpreter. The problem is the suspension of accountability. Teaching religion does not itself prevent questions.

Karim’s teacher once said, “I don’t know this.” But not every voice has room for questions. Three traits may come together in someone seeking power: a constant need for admiration, seeing people as tools, and little concern for the pain he causes others¹. Someone with high levels of these traits may seek the greatest influence with the least accountability. A pulpit whose speaker is never questioned offers a great deal.

These traits do not describe every teacher, nor does a psychological disorder mean someone is seeking power. What we are examining is the immunity an audience grants its teacher.

Why Do We Obey One Voice This Much?

In Milgram’s 1963 experiment, volunteers took the role of “teacher” and were asked to increase electric shocks whenever the “learner” behind the wall made a mistake. The learner was part of the experimental team and the shocks were fake. The participants did not know this.

When the person on the other side banged on the wall, then stopped answering, some objected. A man in a laboratory coat said, “The experiment requires that you continue.” Many continued, without threats or punishment.

26 out of 40, or 65%, reached the highest level². A number from a single experiment, not a verdict on humanity. But it makes obedience to an authority that is hard to question worth examining.

Milgram documented the experiments in Obedience to Authority (1974)³. They provoked wide debate over their ethics and the limits of the conclusions that could be drawn from them.

Why Is It Hard for Him to Reconsider?

Correcting an opinion before ten people costs less than retracting it before a large audience. A retraction may become news that some use against him.

In Deutsch and Gerard’s experiment, those who announced their judgments held to them more firmly than those who wrote them down and erased them without anyone else seeing them⁴. Making a judgment public may make it harder to retract.

A willingness to listen may fade as influence grows⁵⁶. But this is not the fate of everyone with influence. The researchers themselves describe people who preserve their influence by caring about others and accepting their objections. The follower count is not enough to judge by. Look at what happens to the question.

When Words Become Sacred

The book “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism” (1961)⁷ describes “sacred science” in groups that control thought: they treat their doctrine as sacred truth beyond question and claim for it scientific certainty that cannot be wrong.

When a voice reaches this standing, ask: Is this true, or do I want to believe it because its speaker is beyond doubt? The distinction concerns whether the question itself is forbidden, rather than whether a teacher is respected.

Motivated reasoning is the search for justification of what we want to believe, rather than an impartial examination of the truth⁸.

When we separate the message from its messenger, we still have a standard for how we treat one another: “O ‘A’ishah, Allah is gentle and loves gentleness. He grants through gentleness what He does not grant through harshness, or through anything else.” (Muslim 2593)⁹. Gentleness still leaves room for questions, and an honest question still leaves room for respect.

Separate the Message from Its Messenger

You can learn from a teacher without handing over your mind. Respect leaves you the right to ask. Complete submission takes it away.

When the appointed time passed, Karim opened the line “If you fall.” He deleted the praise and apology, kept one point whose evidence he had not understood, and chose the following evening. “Send it before you rewrite it,” his roommate said. Karim read the question once, then tapped. No answer came that night. In the morning he opened the conversation and found nothing. He almost sent an apology, then put the phone away.

Two days later, evidence arrived. Beneath another point was the sentence, “I don’t know this. I’ll look into it.” Karim opened the source, put a small mark beside what he understood, and left a blank line for the other point. He told his roommate, “I ask him about the evidence and give him time.”

If someone speaking in religion’s name has hurt you, separate the message from its messenger. Do not make his voice your only route to understanding it.

Before You Hand Over the Key to Your Mind

1. Whose voice do you dare not disagree with? Why that voice in particular?
2. Do you feel that doubting his words means doubting Allah Himself?
3. When did you last hear him say, “I don’t know,” or “I was wrong”?
4. What question are you afraid to ask him? Exactly why are you afraid?

On the twenty-seventh night of Ramadan, Lina opened the list of recordings on her phone and pressed Record. Before she spoke, an old file of her own voice appeared at the top of the list.