Instead of trying to be “bold” and tackling a “controversial” topic, innate apologists would do better to simply remain silent.
In “Secret Muslims: Are Muslims allowed to hide their faith?” in Slate, July 3, Juliet Lapidos wonders "whether there's a history of Muslims who deny their faith publicly while maintaining it privately.” She concludes:
Yes, if you're a Shiite; maybe, if you're a Sunni. According to Chapter 16, Verse 106 of the Quran, "Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters Unbelief—except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in Faith—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 justify taqiyya, a religious dispensation by which persecuted Muslims may hide their beliefs. But Sunni scholars have a more equivocal take. Some reject taqiyya as unacceptable hypocrisy and evidence of cowardice: Muslims shouldn't fear other humans, only Allah. Others argue that concealment is warranted under life-threatening circumstances.
This is inaccurate. For starters, the author quotes a secondary verse to justify taqiyya; the primary verse (to say nothing of some very straightforward hadiths) that all the ulema have relied on to articulate doctrines of deception states: “Let believers not take for friends and allies infidels rather than believers; whoever does so shall have no relationship left with Allah—unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions” (3:28).
Note: 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—that and nothing else.
She goes on to claim that “Sunni scholars have a more equivocal take” regarding the validity of taqiyya, 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.
As for the notion that “some [Sunnis] reject taqiyya as unacceptable hypocrisy and evidence of cowardice…. Others argue that concealment is warranted under life-threatening circumstances,” the very first lines of one of the few Arabic books wholly dedicated to treating the doctrine of taqiyya, called al-Taqiyya fi al-Islam (“Taqiyya in Islam”), by Islamic studies professor Sami Makarem, unequivocally states in its opening page:
Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam. Nearly every Islamic sect has agreed to it and practices it….Indeed, we can go so far as to say that mainstream Islam practices taqiyya, and that those few sects that do not practice it are aberrant, diverging from the mainstream. (p.7)
Lapidos continues later on in her article:
Outside the Islamic world, there are two major historical examples of Muslims practicing taqiyya. 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—an Arabic alphabet for transcribing Romance languages—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.
Lapidos maintains that the “two major historical examples of Muslims practicing taqiyya” were when Christians tried to forcefully convert them—again, as if that’s the sole purpose of Muslim deceit. (Of course, subtly injecting the image of “intolerant,” “slave-driving” Christians goes a long way in justifying, or at least further clouding, the issue of taqiyya—especially for an audience such as Slate’s.) But aside from the fact that current events are full of Muslims engaging in taqiyya, and not because they fear for their faith—from “reneged” peace treatises with Israel and other infidel entities to terrorist-linked organizations and people like CAIR and Tariq Ramadan constantly proclaiming that “Islam means peace”—history in fact furnishes numerous anecdotes where Muslims deceived, and not because anyone was trying to force them into another religion, starting with Islam’s prophet Muhammad himself:
Apart from his famous assertion that “War is deceit,” Muhammad allowed his followers to feign goodwill towards infidels, solely in order to treacherously strike them down, as in the following hadith:
“Allah'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."
As for Islam’s ulema, Taqiyya in Islam quotes from a number of the most prominent, the vast majority of whom agree that taqiyya is not just limited to preserving one’s faith. Here, for instance, is the premiere exegete al-Tabari: “Allah Almighty has forbidden the believers from being friendly with infidels or from taking them as confidants in place of other beliers—except when they are clearly outnumbered by the infidels, in which case let them display outward friendliness, while holding onto their faith” (p.22).
After quoting from a number of other authoritative ulema, Makarem concludes that “There is no major difference between what al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, al-Baydawi, and al-Jilalan all say in regards to taqiyya” (p.26).
Note: 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, taqiyya is to be practiced when Muslims are in the minority and living among majority infidels—precisely the scenario we have today in the West.
The Slate article tries to pull a fast one: it admits to taqiyya, but then quickly portrays it as “controversial” 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 taqiyya—not to mention the plain words of al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, al-Baydawi, indeed, Muhammad himself—as opposed to half truths coming from one Juliet Lapidos.
"...as opposed to half truths coming from one Juliet Lapidos."
I used to go to Slate, but that ended a while ago.
MoonBat Central. I'm sure "Juliet Lapidos" is, like, up on her, like, Islam, like, you know, like, let's not offend anyone, 'k? esp. Muslims.
Also, Raymond, is this true:
"In antebellum America, slaves from West Africa, many of whom were Muslim, were forced to convert to Christianity."
Tribal Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries were Mohammedan?
You see ISLAM is the acronym for I Steal Lie and Murder. It does not mean peace. So it lives up to its name for the past 1400 years.
"Muhammad allowed his followers to feign goodwill towards infidels, solely in order to treacherously strike them down"
I certainly believe this is what we see today when our leaders listen to the Mulims leaders promising everything to keep the jizzah flowing.
Raymond:
Many thanks for this excellent post. Ibn Kathir's tafsir on Qur'an 3:28 is particularly worthy of note:
"Allah said next,
[إِلاَ أَن تَتَّقُواْ مِنْهُمْ تُقَـةً]
(unless you indeed fear a danger from them) meaning, except those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to 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 is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.' "
Emphasis mine. This passage may be seen in its entirety at
http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=3&tid=8052
How ironic. An article on taqiyya that uses taqiyya to dismiss taqiyya. Written by dhimmis, for dhimmis.
http://www.bravenewsworld.blogspot.com
The more pious and devout old Muslims have to wash themselves after defiling themselves by touching you in order to pray. You, infidel, are filth. I have never quite 'recovered' from this fact from when I lived in Egypt in the '70's. The entire interaction between infidel and Muslim is one BIG lie.
Taqiyya is on full display in the border region of Pakistan. It seems the Pakistanis are merely putting on a show and that nothing of substance has been achieved.
Pakistan's government sent troops into the region Friday, June 27, but there have only been half a dozen deaths reported, a handful of arrests and no actual clashes. Residents said terrorists threatening the northwestern city of Peshawar have simply melted into the hills
At one checkpoint at the entrance to the Khyber district, only four armed soldiers and some policemen were present. Another police post nearby was empty, while at a third four officers lounged on a bed frame under a tree to avoid the hot sun.
"It was a drama to make the Americans happy," said a resident of Hayatabad. Another resident described the operation as "theatrical."
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=68671
Gee, makes me wonder if BHO is a closet Muslim, after all.
"The Slate article tries to pull a fast one: it admits to taqiyya, but then quickly portrays it as “controversial” and only used as a last resort from Muslims trying to escape (Christian) persecution. Depicting an incomplete picture is worse than no picture"
The bolded part above describes another type of deceit Muslims practice, called "kitman", which is telling partial truth in order to deceive. (I used to think that famous phrase from American law was silly and redundant, but now it makes sense to me: "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".)
From a pro-Islam website:
In order to be saved from their traps, we should keep hush-hush on things that are still in preparation. To this type of hiding, kitman is the best policy. In this regard, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, says in the hadith: “Seek fulfillment for things you want to finish in kitman.”
He himself gave the best example of such a type in the early days of Islam. When the number of Muslims was still small and the community was still weak, there was a big need for concealment or secret call (kitman) so as to save the cause of da`wah (inviting people to Islam) from the fierce enemies.
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1123996016204&pagename=IslamOnline-English-AAbout_Islam/AskAboutIslamE/AskAboutIslamE
By the way, the author Juliet Lapidos writes for a Jewish news site, The Jewish Daily Forward, and she seems to have a Leftish orientation, the latter of which explains why she is doing the kitman work for Muslims. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
http://www.forward.com/authors/juliet-lapidos/
Good point, Darcy. Do fill us in.
"An article on taqiyya that uses taqiyya to dismiss taqiyya" - Max Publius
I was struggling mentally while reading the article, but I think Max's summary hits the nail on the head.
What might be good news is that the fact that she felt the need to right this justifying piece at all. Awareness of taqiyya getting out into the infidel public domain, the camoflage is running in the rain and down the drain, and this is an attempt to recover the situation.
And nice to see thoughtful posts. There has, imho, been too much rant recently.
>>By the way, the author Juliet Lapidos writes for a Jewish news site, The Jewish Daily Forward, and she seems to have a Leftish orientation..." --DenverRodeo
Of course she does! That's why I don't go to Slate anymore! MoonBat Central! God Forbid we should *offend* anyone!
Good point, Darcy. Do fill us in.
Posted by: Raymond at July 4, 2008 2:52 PM
But, I'm asking you, Raymond, an expert, re:
Also, Raymond, is this true:
"In antebellum America, slaves from West Africa, many of whom were Muslim, were forced to convert to Christianity." (Slate)
Tribal Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries were Mohammedan?"
Posted by: darcy at July 4, 2008 9:47 AM
BTW, I'm enjoying barbecued pork chops from the grill my husband just cooked - PORK chops, Mohammedans! Accompanied by some ripe avocado slices - I assume Mohammedans don't eat avocado, either?
Happy 4th, People!
Darcy, from what I've read, Muslims began making imperialist inroads on subsaharan Africa in the 8th century A.D., and they were enslaving black Africans centuries before Europe started exploring Africa in the 17th century. The black Africans that were sold to Europeans and Americans were sold by Muslim slave-traders in the 17th & 18th century and those slaves were probably not Muslims (Muslims probably wouldn't enslave and sell fellow Muslims). I don't know much about this whole issue, but these are my preliminary guesses from the little I've read.
Probably not. Avocados are native to Mexico, Central and South America. So most likely, buried deep in the mythical sayings of the Chief Pedophile, there is something along the line of:
"You are forbidden what allah has not granted to you...to eat of the trees not growing in Mecca.."
Sorry, bad attempt to add humor to an otherwise creepy subject.
Have a great holiday everyone!
We know the source of this subject. It was written 500 to 600 years before Islam.
By contrast if you do a word search on 'your father'. Dozens and dozens of verses speak of our Heavenly Father and what he feels, desires and wants for our well being. Quite a contrast from a being mascaraing as allah.
John 8:44
You belong to your father (Allah), the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
يوحنا 8:44
انت تنتمي الى والدك (الله) ، الشيطان ، وانت تريد ان تضطلعون رغبة الاب. وقال انه قاتل من البداية ، ولم يثبت في الحقيقة ، لأنه ليس هناك في الحقيقة له. عندما تقع ، وقال انه يتحدث لغة وطنه ، لأنه هو الكذاب والأب من الاكاذ
"In antebellum America, slaves from West Africa, many of whom were Muslim, were forced to convert to Christianity." (Slate)
Tribal Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries were Mohammedan?"
darcy,
Happy 4th! I found a discussion thread that talks about this. It seems many African-Americans convert to Islam thinking it was the religion of their ancestors. It may have been for some but not for the overwhelming majority.
Muslims began coming in number (as slaves) in the 18th and 19th centuries. A lot of the Muslim slaves from southern Sudan were sent to the Caribbean because the US had already prohibited importation of new slaves. Most of the ones who came here held traditional African beliefs.
Just a guess, but given even the African tribes' habit of selling their enemies into slavery some Muslims must have made it to America. Someone suggested tens of thousands.
http://www.h-net.org/~africa/threads/islamslavery.html
"the very first lines of one of the few Arabic books wholly dedicated to treating the doctrine of taqiyya, called al-Taqiyya fi al-Islam (“Taqiyya in Islam”), by Islamic studies professor Sami Makarem, unequivocally states in its opening page:
'Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam. Nearly every Islamic sect has agreed to it and practices it….Indeed, we can go so far as to say that mainstream Islam practices taqiyya, and that those few sects that do not practice it are aberrant, diverging from the mainstream.' (p.7)"
-- from the article above
This is very important and useful.
Denver,
It is known that Muslims did in fact enslave other Muslims but most were sold in South American countries such as Brazil and Argentina. In fact only 5% of the 17th century slaves came to America, it is know that Thousands of the slaves, captured and sold by the Muslims, were in fact Muslims themselves...there is no honor in Islam despite their wretched claims..There are many good books availiable that tell the life stories of black Muslim slaves that ended up in America and South America. Muslim upon Muslim violence and mistreatment continues even today..
November 24, 2005
Fitzgerald: Black Africa and the Arab Muslim slave trade
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the peculiar dhimmi attitude that black African states have up to now displayed toward Arab states, and why this must be changed:
Even though, under Western pressure, slavery has been officially abolished in Muslim countries (which cannot permanently reject slavery, as it is recognized in Islam) the blacks of sub-Saharan Africa are, whenever they come into contact with Arab or even local Muslims, still being exploited, massacred (as the Biafrans) or sold into slavery (as in the Sudan). This is happening most notably in the Sudan, which a hundred years ago was still mainly black and overwhelmingly non-Muslim, but thanks to steady Jihad encroachments has been taken over by the dominant northern Arabs.
It was not Muslims, but the British who suppressed the Arab slave trade in East Africa. That trade had supplied black slaves for many uses, but particularly sought were male children who were castrated on sight where they were seized. Those who survived the primitive operation (with of course no anesthetic) were then taken by slave coffle from the interior and marched either all the way up to the Muslim slave-markets of Egypt and North Africa from Tripolitania to Mauritania, or taken by dhow to the coast, often to Muscat, and from there to the slave-markets of Arabia, Riyadh and Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, even as far as Constantinople and Smyrna. In “The Hideous Trade” Jan Hogedoorn has calculated that the mortality rate due to the castration and subsequent forced marches, ended with barely 10% of those initially taken actually managing to reach those slave markets alive.
This wreaked havoc all over East and Central Africa, and even had consequences in West Africa. V. S. Naipaul has noted that the Muslim conquest of Hindustan left the Indians with a “wounded civilization.” Similarly, in his short monograph on “The Wanderings of Peoples” the British historian A. C. Haddon notes that in Africa “the slave trade, as carried on under Arab influence...contributed powerfully to the dislocation of tribes."
Such dislocation followed upon the activities of the Arab slavers. Think of Tippoo Tib, whom Stanley writes about. His depredations have received little attention, though those of him and other Arab slavers were by far the worst of the calamities visited by outsiders upon black Africa. Unlike the European colonialists, the Arabs who use Islam as the vehicle for their own imperialism have never had to account for this. Yet they have never ceased to press forward, to make demands on black Africa. They helped encourage the “Jihad” – as Colonel Ojukwu called it in his Ahiara Declaration – that led the Christian Ibo in Nigeria to fight for their independence from the Muslim north; with Egyptian pilots strafing Ibo villages, and the entire Western world ignoring the Biafrans. Only Ghana and Israel recognized Biafra diplomatically. And with a million civilians massacred, the Muslims of the north, with that Egyptian help, managed to suppress the Biafran movement. They continue to this day to divert the oil wealth from the largely Christian south to support the Muslim-controlled army and the depressed, inshallah-fatalistic economy of the Muslim north.
Why then do not, at long last, the countries of black Africa make some demands for reparations on the Arabs, awash in money? Black Africa is poor; it is made poorer still by the cutting off of relations with the most successful foreign aid program, one based on encouraging self-sustaiining agricultural development,that of Israel, which was cut off at Arab insistence after the Six-Day War. It is made poorer still by the rise in oil prices, and made yet even poorer by the havoc played by the Arabs wherever they can -- from Khadafy’s pressure on Chad to the Sudanese government’s massacre of blacks in the Sudan, to the enslavement of black by Arab Muslims in Mali and Mauritania, to the Muslims from outside who are putting steady pressure on the Christians in such formerly secure Christian countries as the Ivory Coast and Togo.
If Black Africa is poor, the Muslim Arabs are fantastically rich. They have done nothing to deserve that wealth; it is merely a question of sitting on top of oil and gas reserves. An accident of geology. The black Africans have for nearly forty years done the diplomatic bidding of the Arabs. What have they gotten for it? A few of the Big Men may have been paid off to become Muslims – one thinks of Idi Amin, turning Muslim and then retiring for life to Saudi Arabia. Similar stories of others who “reverted” for a payoff could be told. But what about the permanent damage done to black Africa by that “dislocation” and that vast slave trade, and the continuing pressure of the Arabs -- which one can see, for example, in the not-so-veiled threats made by Egypt to Ethiopia, a country that has endured intermittent famine, and that wishes, quite naturally, to at long last divert some of the headwaters of the Nile for irrigation projects? But Egyptian officials mutter darkly that this must not be attempted, that the Nile belongs to Egypt alone, and Egypt will deign to “permit” Ethiopia only so much water, only so much prosperity.
Is it beyond the wit of the Infidels in the West, in Europe and America, to back up black Africa as it makes demands for reasonable reparations from the Arabs? The Arab slave trade did so much damage; yet Arabs, unlike Americans and Europeans, have never publicly recognized their own role, much less attempted to offer the kind of grants to Africa that have come from Europe and America. Why should the billionaires of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Kuwait be allowed to pretend to be members of the “Third World,” as they have ever since Bandung? Why is the farce not exposed, and demands made, and unless those demands are met, the states of black Africa end their imposed role of dutifully echoing whatever those rich Arabs demand of them?
Somewhere, in all of those schemes and pan-African dreams, there must be some black African leaders willing and able to demand that the Arabs make up for their slave trade in black Africa, which began earlier, ended (if it ended at all) later, and was far more extensive, than the European slave trade -- and to do in the only coin that is now recognized – that is, coin.
If Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., were forced to disgorge, as pentitential pence, to black Africa every year, say, $50 billion (for the three of them together, that is only about 2-3 weeks income from oil, it would be at least one way of compensating for the damage inflicted by the Arab slave trade on black Africa. It would also use up some of the money that otherwise, inevitably, goes to fund mosques, madrasas, propaganda, Da’wa, arms acquisition, and other instruments of the Jihad.
Suppose the Arabs refuse to come through with the sums requested. The very act of raising the issue may force them to come through with something. In any case, the truth about Arab supremacism, and the continued Muslim recognition, validation and permanent legitimization of slavery (because of its appearance in the Qur’an and its being practiced by Muhammad), may make it just a bit harder for Da’wa to be conducted quite so successfully as it is now among carefully identified black populations both in Africa, and still more important, within Europe and North America. And that result would be highly desirable. It requires only the truth.