1) Taqiyya as a doctrine of religiously-sanctioned dissimulation originates in Shi’a Islam. And that is something that Sunnis like tell Infidels: “It’s a Shi’a doctrine.” In fact, a good example of this can be found in one of Tariq Ramadan’s soft-spoken (so soft one could barely detect the serpentine hiss underneath his words, unless one already understood, in the well-prepared manner of Magdi Allam or Caroline Fourest, just what Frere Tariq was all about) essentially sinister appearances on “On Point,” with the terminally ignorant (yet briskly self-confident withal) Tom Ashbrook. When a skeptical caller mentioned “taqiyya” Ramadan said quickly, “it is a Shi’a doctrine.”
But if “taqiyya” is a Shi’a doctrine, the same kind of religious dissimulation can and has been derived independently from the texts — Qur’an and Hadith — of Islam. Robert Spencer shows that here.
Indeed, if one googles both “taqiyya” and “kitman” (the practice of “mental reservation” — that is, of deliberately holding back, of not telling the whole story, the full truth, in order to protect the Faith from inquiring Infidels), one realizes that in history “taqiyya” deception has been practiced by Sunni Muslims, with Infidels, whenever they have felt it necessary. And that deception has, nota bene, the repeated sanction of Muhammad’s own words, and his exemplary example.
2) The second thing to note about “taqiyya” being a doctrine that originates in Shi’a Islam is that this demonstrates something important.
What is that something? Well, we are hearing, and shall hear even more when the Americans (thank god) leave Tarbaby Iraq, that “those Americans caused the hostility in Iraq between formerly peaceful Sunnis and Shi’a who had always lived in harmony.” A variant on this is equally false: the statement that “the Sunnis and Shi’a had always lived in harmony until Saddam Hussein came long.” This is a phrase that is actually believed by some Iraqis — even the “moderates,” who also believe, just as dreamily, that “the Jews in Iraq had no problems until the creation of the state of Israel.”
“Taqiyya” is a doctrine that goes back to early Islam and the persecution of Shi’a by Sunnis. The split between Shi’a and Sunni is not something that happened yesterday. It did not happen, like the Reformation in Christianity, after 1500 years of unity in the Western Church. It dates back to the first century of Islam. While some (such as the egregious Dinesh D’Souza) may wish to minimize those differences, or declare them, bizarrely, to be “political” rather than “religious” (apparently D’Souza missed his Master Lewis’ discussion of how there is no split in the belief-system of Islam between the “religious” and the “political”), the depth and duration and above all, murderousness, of those divisions, could be seen a thousand years before the founding of the American Republic.
And the doctrine of “taqiyya” originates among the Shi’a who were told to dissimulate, not because the Americans or Israelis or British were coming, but because the Sunnis were coming, and how.
Taqiyya nonsense about the “real meaning of Jihad” is frequently on view at our nation’s universities. A little less than a year ago I was notified of one such display at the Harvard Divinity School. The public face of that particular public-relations effort was an Ahmadiyya Muslim, who perhaps had decided that his own very marginal and persecuted (as not being true Islam) sect was just the ticket for misleading both Infidels and possibly even a few thoroughly Westernized Muslims who are living in this country — the ones who out of filial piety are eager to believe that the real Islam (that of the billion or so people living in Islamic societies) simply reflects a Big Misunderstanding. If we all pretend that “Jihad” doesn’t mean what it means, will it go away?
No. It will not.
The site www.faithfreedom.org is one to be recommended as an antidote to taqiyya, to those who would like a view of Islam from its defectors. This is just as one would have learned most about Communism and the KGB (or the NKVD, or the Cheka) and the Comintern from defectors. Why are ex-Muslims not consulted? Why don’t the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. have them on the payroll? Why are they not brought in to lecture on how Muslims view the world, or the practice of taqiyya and kitman, and the really very repetitive means by which the nature of Islam is hidden from inspection — through taqiyya and tu quoque, selective quotation, misinterpretation, ignoring of abrogation, and even a little overlooking of the Hadith and the Sira, so that only the Qur’an is discussed? Who can explain all of this better to that Innocent Creature, an FBI or CIA employee, than an ex-Muslim?