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Lying about
Islam's Doctrine of Deception
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Originally published under the title "MSM Lies about Muslim
Lies (Taqiyya)."
Dr. Ben Carson's recent assertion that the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya
encourages Muslims "to lie to achieve your goals" has prompted
the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler to quote
a number of academics to show that the presidential candidate got it wrong:
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.... "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.
The other academics whom Kessler quotes—including Omid
Safi, director of the Duke University Islamic Studies Center, and Noah Feldman
of Harvard Law School—make the same argument: yes, taqiyya is in
the Koran but it only permits deception in the case of self-preservation,
nothing more.
Not exactly.
Although the word taqiyya is related to the Arabic word
"piety" and its root meaning is "protect" or
"guard against"—and the Koran verses that advocate it (3:28 and
16:106) do so in the context of self-preservation from persecution—that is
not the whole story.
It is careless or disingenuous for
"experts" to ignore the Hadith in their discussion of taqiyya.
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None of the academics quoted by Kessler bothered to acknowledge that the
Koran is not the only textual source to inform Muslim action. They ignore
the Hadith, the collected words and deeds of Muhammad. Koran 33:2,
for instance, commands Muslims to follow Muhammad's example, and his
example—also known as the prophet's Sunna—is derived from the many
volumes of Hadith.
The importance of Muhammad's example is seen in that the Sunnis,
approximately 90% of the world's Muslim population, are named after his
Sunna. As one Muslim cleric puts
it, "Much of Islam will remain mere abstract concepts without
Hadith [whence the Sunna is derived]. We would never know how to pray,
fast, pay zakah, or make pilgrimage without the illustration found
in Hadith..."
It is therefore careless or disingenuous for Kessler and his
"experts" to ignore Muhammad's example as recorded in the Hadith
in their discussion of taqiyya.
As usual, for the complete truth, one must turn to scholarly books
written in Arabic. According to Dr. Sami Mukaram, an Islamic studies
professor specializing in taqiyya, and author of the only academic
book exclusively devoted to it, "Taqiyya in order to deceive
the enemy is permissible."
This sounds similar to Carson's assertion that taqiyya allows
Muslims "to lie to achieve your goals."
As proof, Mukaram documents two canonical anecdotes from Muhammad's
Sunna—his example to Muslims—that make clear that the prophet allowed his
followers to lie and deceive non-Muslims above and beyond the issue of
self-preservation.
The Assassination of Ka'b ibn Ashraf
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The
Prophet Muhammad permitted one of his companions, Ibn Maslama, to lie in
his plot to murder Jewish leader Ka'b ibn Ashraf.
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An elderly Jewish leader, Ka'b ibn Ashraf, mocked
Muhammad, prompting the prophet to exclaim, "Who will kill this man
who has hurt Allah and his messenger?" A young Muslim named Ibn
Maslama volunteered on condition that to get close enough to Ka'b to murder
him, he needed permission to lie to the Jew.
Allah's messenger agreed.
Ibn Maslama traveled to Ka'b and began to complain about Muhammad until his
disaffection from Islam became so convincing that Ka'b eventually dropped
his guard and befriended him.
After behaving as his friend for some time, Ibn Maslama eventually
appeared with another Muslim also pretending to have apostatized. Then,
while a trusting Ka'b's guard was done, they attacked and slaughtered him,
bringing his head to Muhammad to the usual triumphant cries of "Allahu
Akbar!"
The Disbanding of the Confederates
In another account, after Muhammad and his followers had attacked,
plundered, and massacred a number of non-Muslim Arabs and Jews, the latter
assembled and were poised to annihilate the Muslims once and for all (at
the Battle of the Trench, 627). But then Naim bin Mas'ud, one of the
leaders of these "confederates," as they became known in history,
secretly went to Muhammad and converted to Islam. The prophet asked him to
return to his tribesmen and allies—without revealing that he had joined the
Muslim camp—and to try to get them to abandon the siege. "For,"
Muhammad assured him, "war is deceit."
In early Islamic history, Muslims
deceived non-Muslims not to escape persecution, but in order to make
Islam supreme.
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Mas'ud returned, pretending to be loyal to his former kinsmen and
allies, and began giving them bad advice. He also subtly instigated
quarrels between the various tribes until, no longer trusting each other,
they disbanded.
Mas'ud became a hero in Islamic tradition. He is often seen as being
responsible for helping an embryonic Islam grow at a time when its
existence was threatened. One English language Muslim site even recommends
his actions as illustrative
of how Muslims can subvert non-Muslims.
In the two examples above, Muslims deceived non-Muslims not because they
were being persecuted for being Muslim—according to the Washington
Post's definition of taqiyya—but in order to make Islam supreme. (The
Arabs and Jews met Muhammad at the Battle of the Trench because Muhammad
and his followers first attacked them at the Battle of Badr and massacred
hundreds of them on other occasions.)
Despite these stories being part of the Sunna to which Sunnis adhere,
UCLA's Abou El Fadl—the primary expert quoted by the Washington Post
to show that Islam does not promote deceit—claims that "there is no
concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a
complete invention."
Tell that to Ka'b ibn Ashraf, whose head was cut off for believing
Muslim taqiyya. The prophet of Islam allowed his followers to lie to
the Jew to slaughter him—just as he encouraged Mas'ud to lie to his
non-Muslim family and allies for the sake of Islam.
Thus, Dr. Ben Carson got it right when he said that taqiyya
"allows, and even encourages you to lie to achieve your goals."
The all-important example of the prophet makes that clear.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith
Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the
David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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