Washington Post quotes Islamic apologists’ taqiyya to “prove” Ben Carson wrong about taqiyya

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/09/washington-posts-fact-checker-quotes-dishonest-islamic-apologists-taqiyya-to-prove-ben-carson-wrong-about-taqiyya

September 22, 2015 2:27 pm By Robert Spencer 18 Comments

The Washington Post, as credulous and eager to be misled by Islamic supremacists as ever, offers up taqiyya about taqiyya from some of the nation’s leading taqiyya artists.

Qur’an 3:28 warns believers not to take unbelievers as “friends or helpers,” “unless that you but guard yourselves against them.” This is a foundation of the idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure. The word used for “guard” in the Arabic is tuqatan, the verbal noun from taqiyyatan — hence the increasingly familiar term taqiyya.

Ibn Kathir says that the phrase “unless that you but guard yourselves against them” means that “believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers” may “show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, ‘We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.’ Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, ‘The Tuqyah [taqiyya] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.” Abu Ad-Darda’ was a companion of Muhammad.

While many Muslim spokesmen today maintain that taqiyya is solely a Shi’ite doctrine, shunned by Sunnis, the great Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher points out that while it was formulated by Shi’ites, “it is accepted as legitimate by other Muslims as well, on the authority of Qur’an 3:28.” The Sunnis of Al-Qaeda practice it today.

Also, there is Muhammad’s statement, “war is deceit.” He also allowed for lying in battle and between a husband and wife. And when he gave permission to one of his followers, Muhammad bin Maslama, to murder one of his critics, Ka’b bin al-Ashraf, he also gave Muhammad bin Maslama permission to lie to Ka’b in order to lure him close enough to be killed.

And Muhammad is the “excellent example of conduct” for Muslims (Qur’an 33:21).

“Ben Carson’s claim that ‘taqiyya’ encourages Muslims ‘to lie to achieve your goals,’” by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, September 22, 2015 (thanks to Neil):

…As he put it, “Taqiyya is a component of Shia that allows, and even encourages you to lie to achieve your goals.” (This is how the quote appeared in the Hill newspaper, but “Shia” may be a typo for “Sharia.”)In other words, he appeared to be saying that this tenet of Islam offered some kind of loophole that would allow the Muslim to lie about his or her religious beliefs in order to pursue other objectives. Is this the case?
The Facts
If you scroll across the Internet, or just stick “taqiyya” into a Twitter search, you will stumble across many videos and articles from groups hostile to Islam arguing that “taqiyya” is central to Islam and permits a Muslim to lie with impunity to nonbelievers. The argument largely stems from two parts of the Koran:
“Whoever expresses disbelief in God after having accepted belief [will suffer greatly] – except him who is forced while his heart is still at peace in belief” (16:106)
“Let not the believers take unbelievers for their allies in preference to believers. Whoever does this has no connection with God, unless you but guard yourselves against them as a precaution.” (3:28)
But experts in Islamic law say that these Internet scholars have completely corrupted the meaning of the words.

No kidding, really? The “experts” say that? What a surprise! And of course the Washington Post wouldn’t dare quote anyone who disagreed. That would be “Islamophobic.”

The word “taqiyya” derives from the Arabic words for “piety” and “fear of God” and indicates when a person is in a state of caution, said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles and a leading authority on Islam.

And Khaled Abou El Fadl is as honest as the day as long, no? Well, let’s see: Andrew Bostom accuses him of “disingenuous revisionism,” and Daniel Pipes calls him a “stealth Islamist.”

Essentially, the Koran suggests that a person who faces religious persecution can withhold the identity of their faith in order to avoid bodily harm or death. The concept was particularly embraced by Shiites, who took steps to hide their religious beliefs from the majority Sunnis. But some Sunnis also practiced taqiyya, particularly the Moriscos, Muslims who were forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain during the 1500s.
The concept is also not unknown to other religions. Jews in Spain during the Inquisition also pretended to convert to Catholicism.
“Yes, it is permissible to hide the fact you are Muslim” if a person is under threat, “as long as it does not involve hurting another person,” Abou El Fadl said. “But there is no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a complete invention. Any Muslim is raised on the idea that lying is a sin.”

Khaled Abou El Fadl is choosing his words carefully. What constitutes enough of a “threat” to allow for lying? What “goal” would be unacceptable for a Muslim to pursue by lying? He doesn’t explain; he just wants Kessler to get the impression that Carson is wrong. The 20th-century Pakistani Islamic scholar and politician Syed Abul Ala Maududi was clearer and more honest. He wrote this about Qur’an 3:28: “This means that is lawful for a believer, helpless in the grip of the enemies of Islam and in imminent danger of severe wrong and persecution, to keep his faith concealed and to behave in such a way as to create the impression that he is on the same side as his enemies.” What constitutes “severe wrong and persecution” is a subjective judgment. Might a Muslim spokesman or politician in the U.S. conceal certain elements of Islam and of his own intentions out of a desire to protect the Muslim community from “Islamophobia” and the foster the growth of Islam in the U.S.? Why not?

“It is a dispensation within some aspects of Shia law, which was developed out of the experience of a persecuted religious minority,” said Omid Safi, director of the Duke University Islamic Studies Center. “In brief, it states to value human life over declaration of faith. It is the proverbial question: If a Shia is being persecuted, and someone holds a gun to your head asking ‘are you a Shia?’ you are allowed to say ‘no’ in order to save a human life.”

Your own, that is. In any case, the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler is consulting quite a rogue’s gallery of dishonest Islamic supremacists: first Khaled Abou El Fadl, and now Omid Safi. Omid Safi is supremely arrogant and dishonest — to such an appalling extent that he has even falsely claimed that I threatened to kill him and his family, and of course refused to retract. This came after I dared to challenge his smear of me with the manipulative Muslim Brotherhood neologism of “Islamophobe” and offered to come to the class where he was slandering me and engage in discussion and debate with him and his students.

Another expert on Islamic law, Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, agreed that Carson’s comment was “very much oversimplified to the point of misrepresentation.” As Feldman put it, “taqiyya is dissimulation when one is being oppressed or tortured or having one’s views banned, a bit like Jesuit dispensation to lie under oath when your life is in danger.”

Can’t Kessler find even one honest person to quote? Feldman helped create the Iraqi constitution that enshrined Sharia as the highest law of the land. At the time, he published a lengthy exposition of what Sharia was all about in the New York Times. In it, he never once mentioned the Sharia provisions mandating second-class status (dhimmitude) for Christians and conversion or death for non-Muslims not considered “People of the Book,” such as Yezidis.

Safi said “the Taqiyya conversation is today part and parcel of the Islamophobic attack against American Muslims,” in which no matter what a Muslim says, he or she can’t be trusted.
“If an American Muslim (or Muslim more generally) says that they want to kill Americans, we take them at face value,” said Safi as an example of the Catch-22. “If an American Muslim (or Muslims more generally) says that they are committed to American democratic principles and pluralism, we state that they are of course lying, and hoping to achieve nefarious goals.”
Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, said that the claim made little sense because Islam is a proselytizing religion, like Christianity. “You’re supposed to preach it from the rooftops and the minarets” in order to gain adherents, not keep the religion a secret, he said. Advocates of the alternative version of taqiyya have “dragged a rather obscure and marginal concept out of the corner” to make broad-brush accusations against Muslims, he said.

Apparently Kessler cannot indeed find even one honest man to quote. Way back in 2002 or 2003 I was on a radio show with Ibish. When I mentioned that the Qur’an calls disobedient Jews apes and pigs, Ibish said flatly, “That’s not in the Qur’an.” Well, you lying Islamic apologist, check 2:63-65; 5:59-60; and 7:166.

Abou El Fadl said it “amazes me” that although careful and balanced scholarship on Islam is being done at leading universities by scholars who have learned to read medieval Arabic texts, such research increasingly is ignored in favor of material published by “crazy ideologues, clowns and jokers” who often do not know how to read Arabic….

Ad hominem attacks are always easier than reasoned refutation for crazy ideologues, clowns and jokers like Abou El Fadl.