by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
Jihad Watch<\/em><\/p>\n I<\/span>nstead of trying to be \u201cbold\u201d and tackling a \u201ccontroversial\u201d topic, innate apologists would do better to simply remain silent.<\/p>\n In \u201cSecret Muslims: Are Muslims allowed to hide their faith?\u201d in\u00a0Slate<\/a>, July 3, Juliet Lapidos wonders “whether there’s a history of Muslims who deny their faith publicly while maintaining it privately.\u201d She concludes:<\/p>\n Yes, if you’re a Shiite; maybe, if you’re a Sunni. According to Chapter 16, Verse 106 of the Koran, “Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters Unbelief \u2014 except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in Faith \u2014 but such as open their breast to Unbelief, on them is Wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful Penalty.” Shiites cite this verse to justifytaqiyya<\/i>, a religious dispensation by which persecuted Muslims may hide their beliefs. But Sunni scholars have a more equivocal take. Some reject\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u00a0as unacceptable hypocrisy and evidence of cowardice: Muslims shouldn’t fear other humans, only Allah. Others argue that concealment is warranted under life-threatening circumstances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is inaccurate. For starters, the author quotes a secondary verse to justifytaqiyya<\/i>; the primary verse (to say nothing of some very straightforwardhadiths<\/a>) that all the\u00a0ulema<\/i>\u00a0have relied on to articulate doctrines of deception states: \u201cLet believers not take for friends and allies infidels rather than believers; whoever does so shall have no relationship left with Allah \u2014 unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions\u201d (3:28).<\/p>\n Note that this verse says nothing about forced conversions. So why does Lapidos evoke 16:106, the one that does? As the remainder of her article makes clear, she wants to portray Islam as justifying dissembling only when non-Muslims try to forcefully convert Muslims \u2014 that and nothing else.<\/p>\n She goes on to claim that \u201cSunni scholars have a more equivocal take\u201d regarding the validity of\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>, as opposed to Shias. While it is true that, historically, Shia minorities living among Sunni majorities have had more need to dissemble (tells you something about residing with Sunnis, no?), that is simply a quirk of circumstance. In other words, now that Sunnis are minority groups living among infidel majority groups, such as in the West, they, like Shias surrounded by Sunnis, have developed perhaps an even greater need to hide their true beliefs.<\/p>\n As for the notion that \u201csome [Sunnis] reject\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u00a0as unacceptable hypocrisy and evidence of cowardice\u2026. Others argue that concealment is warranted under life-threatening circumstances,\u201d the very first lines of one of the few Arabic books wholly dedicated to treating the doctrine of\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>, called al-Taqiyya fi al-Islam (\u201cTaqiyya<\/i>\u00a0in Islam\u201d), by Islamic studies professor Sami Makarem, unequivocally states in its opening page:<\/p>\n Taqiyya<\/i>\u00a0is of fundamental importance in Islam. Nearly every Islamic sect has agreed to it and practices it\u2026.Indeed, we can go so far as to say that mainstream Islam practices\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>, and that those few sects that do not practice it are aberrant, diverging from the mainstream. (p.7)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n L<\/span>apidos continues later on in her article:<\/p>\n Outside the Islamic world, there are two major historical examples of Muslims practicing\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>. During the 16th century, Catholic authorities in Spain gave the local (predominantly Sunni) Muslim population an ultimatum: Convert or leave the country. Some of the converts (called Moriscos by the Spanish) became sincere Catholics while others perpetuated their faith in private. Crypto-Muslims attended church services on Sundays but used Aljamiado \u2014 an Arabic alphabet for transcribing Romance languages \u2014 to secretly pass down Islamic traditions. In antebellum America, slaves from West Africa, many of whom were Muslim, were forced to convert to Christianity. As in medieval Spain, some slaves converted sincerely while others maintained their religion in secret.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Lapidos maintains that the \u201ctwo major historical examples of Muslims practicing\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u201d were when Christians tried to forcefully convert them \u2014 again, as if that\u2019s the sole purpose of Muslim deceit. (Of course, subtly injecting the image of \u201cintolerant,\u201d \u201cslave-driving\u201d Christians goes a long way in justifying, or at least further clouding, the issue of\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 especially for an audience such as\u00a0Slate<\/i>\u2019s.) But aside from the fact that current events are full of Muslims engaging in\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>, and not because they fear for their faith \u2014 from \u201creneged\u201d peace treatises with Israel and other infidel entities to terrorist-linked organizations and people like CAIR and Tariq Ramadan constantly proclaiming that \u201cIslam means peace.\u201d History in fact furnishes numerous anecdotes where Muslims deceived others, and not because anyone was trying to force them into another religion, starting with Islam\u2019s prophet Muhammad himself:<\/p>\n Apart from his famous assertion that \u201cWar is deceit,<\/a>\u201d Muhammad allowed his followers to feign goodwill towards infidels, solely in order to treacherously strike them down, as in\u00a0the following hadith<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cAllah’s Apostle said, “Who is willing to kill Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?” Thereupon Muhammad bin Maslama got up saying, “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” The Prophet said, “Yes,” Muhammad bin Maslama said, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab). “The Prophet said, “You may say it.”<\/p>\n As for Islam\u2019s\u00a0ulema<\/i>,\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u00a0in Islam quotes from a number of the most prominent, the vast majority of whom agree that\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u00a0is not just limited to preserving one\u2019s faith. Here, for instance, is the premiere exegete al-Tabari: \u201cAllah Almighty has forbidden the believers from being friendly with infidels or from taking them as confidants in place of other believers \u2014 except when they are clearly outnumbered by the infidels, in which case let them display outward friendliness, while holding onto their faith\u201d (p.22).<\/p>\n After quoting from a number of other authoritative\u00a0ulema<\/i>, Makarem concludes that \u201cThere is no major difference between what al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, al-Baydawi, and al-Jilalan all say in regards to\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u201d (p.26).<\/p>\n Notice that Tabari recommends that Muslims feign goodwill towards infidels not when the latter are trying to forcefully convert them, but because they are natural enemies, at least from a Muslim perspective. So, far from being a question of preserving their faith,\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u00a0is to be practiced when Muslims are in the minority and living among majority infidels \u2014 precisely the scenario we have today in the West.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Slate<\/i>\u00a0article tries to pull a fast one: it admits to\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>, but then quickly portrays it as \u201ccontroversial\u201d and only used as a last resort from Muslims trying to escape (Christian) persecution. Depicting an incomplete picture is worse than no picture, and Slate would have been more objective to stay silent on the matter. At any rate, I am more inclined to heeding the words of Islamic scholar Sami Makarem, who has written an entire book on\u00a0taqiyya<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 not to mention the plain words of al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, al-Baydawi, indeed, Muhammad himself \u2014 as opposed to half truths coming from one Juliet Lapidos.<\/p>\n