Readers of Jihadwatch ought to google the word "taqiyya" -- and then the word "kitman." Many people lie; only in Islam is lying, for the good of the faith,and of the Believers, religiously-sanctioned deception. "War is deception" Muhammad once said (now part of the Hadith). Taqiyya, which is officially identified as coming from Shi'a Islam, is simply a version of "kitman" (the word, incidentally, was used -- spelled as "ketman" as the title of one of the chapters in Czeslaw Milosz's book of essays The Captive Mind. Not surprisingly, Milosz appropriated the word taken from Islam (see the Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd) for a practice also symptomatic, as he noted, of the Communists of his day.

The innocence or wilful ingenuousness of non-Muslims -- such as a lady noted in the Boston Globe the other day, now a stout supporter of a Muslim school project in Medford, who admitted she had "known little about Islam" but HAD LEARNED ABOUT IT BY TALKING WITH MUSLIMS and realized she had nothing to worry about -- is fantastic.

The complete failure of those who ought to be studying, and reporting, on the tenets of Islam -- such as NPR, where mere mention of Islam is almost verboten, and certainly never pursued, or the BBC, or the New York Times -- all of which are engaged in a conspiracy of wilful ignorance. Why? Why is it impossible to study the role of taqiyya or kitman? And if Islam is a religion of "peace" and "tolerance" as we are endlessly told, then what is the problem in learning the precise doctrines of Qur'an and Hadith, and the activities of that role-model Muhammad, with his conquests, his savage killings of prisoners, the assassinations of perceived enemies, his child-bride Aisha, and so on.

When the words "taqiyya" and "kitman"
enter the language -- along with the word "dhimmi" and "dhimmitude" (it will be fascinating to see how the English dictionaries will define "Jihad") then one will know that progress has been made in the widespread understanding of Islam.

Meanwhile, perhaps more attention ought to be paid to the defectors from Islam, beginning with Ibn Warraq, his collection of testimonies, Leaving Islam, and his own analyses at www.secularislam.org.

The Western or rather non-Muslim public, alas, will have to educate itself. Neither the government, nor the hyper-circumspect media, will be of much help. But at least this Australian article dares to note the bifurcated tongue of one imam, Hilaly, and his apologist, Trad. They are simply specific cases of a general problem. The refusal of soi-disant "moderate" Muslims to tell the truth aboutr Muslim doctrine entitles us to strip them of the adjective "moderate" -- for objectively, by helping to mislead unwary Infidels, they weaken our resolve, and damage the effort at countermeasures against the still-imperfectly understood world-wide phenomenon of the Jihad (which consists, as always, of lots of local Jihads, all directed to the same end -- expanding the territory of the dar al-Islam at the expense of non-Muslims, and wherever Islam is already a presence, forcing non-Muslims to accept the Shari'a or other measures that will cause their own way of life to be constrained, changed, and endangered).

Hugh has it exactly right - lying is sanctioned in Islam to further the Islamic commmunity.
There needs to be more of these imams' speeches recorded and then translated - sorry guys, it gets to a point that "taken out of context" just does not work anymore....how many meanings are there to "kill the infidel", "death to the Jews!", "death to America".....Derrida would be proud!

jihan