Deceiving him was acceptable for the good of Islam. Islamic law does not provide for leniency to the blasphemer if he confesses. This is related to the concept of taqiyya, which as a concept is specifically Shi’ite, although Sunnis have doctrines regarding deceiving unbelievers as well. Taqiyya as a specific concept by that name was developed during the time of the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, in middle of the eighth century, when the Shi’ites were being persecuted by the Sunni caliph al-Mansur. Taqiyya allowed Shi’ites to pretend to be Sunnis in order to protect themselves from Sunnis who were killing Shi’ites. Until the conversion of Persia to Shi’ism, taqiyya was an important element of Shi’ite survival, for Sunnis, in the majority almost everywhere, would not infrequently take it upon themselves to cleanse the land of those whom they referred to as Rafidites, that is, rejecters — those who rejected the caliphates of Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman.
Some Shi’ite thinkers turned the secrecy that had become a necessity into a virtue. The medieval Shi’ite scholar Ali ibn Musa ibn Tawus, who died in 1266, taught that Allah had revealed Shi’ism secretly, and it was incumbent upon the believers to practice it in secret. At the end of days, Allah will admit them secretly into Paradise. Some secrets were never to be revealed under any circumstances. The fifth imam, Muhammad al-Baqir, who died in 732, once gave a book to one of his disciples, telling him, “If you ever transmit any of it, my curse and the curse of my forefathers will fall upon you.”
The sixth Imam, Jafar Al-Sadiq, who died in 765, had a servant who was suspected of having revealed some of the secrets of the faith. The Imam lectured, “Whoever propagates our tradition is like someone who denies it.…Conceal our doctrine and do not divulge it. God elevates in this world one who conceals our doctrine and does not divulge it and he turns it in the next world into a light between his eyes which will lead him to Paradise. God abases in this world one who divulges our tradition and our doctrine and does not conceal it, and in the next world he removes the light from between his eyes and turns it into darkness which will lead him to hell. Taqiyya is our religion and the religion of our fathers; he who has no taqiyya has no religion.”
Other Imams also emphasized the cardinal importance of taqiyya, apparently not only because Shi’ites were under constant threat from Sunnis, but because Shi’ite Islam contained doctrines that must stay hidden from outsiders. Some sayings of the Imams include, “He who has no taqiyya has no faith”; “he who forsakes taqiyya is like him who forsakes prayer”; “he who does not adhere to taqiyya and does not protect us from the ignoble common people is not part of us”; “nine tenths of faith falls within taqiyya”; “taqiyya is the believer’s shield (junna), but for taqiyya, God would not have been worshipped.”
Taqiyya is ultimately practiced in order to protect Islam and the Muslim community. In this case, it was employed to protect the community from this “blasphemer.”
“Iran sentences a 21-year-old man to DEATH for ‘insulting Islam’ on an instant messaging app after confessing when police promised he would be pardoned if he came clean,” by Kelly Mclaughlin, Mailonline, March 30, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
An Iranian 21-year-old has been sentenced to death after ‘insulting the prophet’ of Islam on an instant messaging app.
Sina Dehghan was 19 when he was arrested by the Iranian revolutionary guard at a military barracks in Tehran in October 2015 for insulting the national religion on the messaging app LINE.
Human rights activists claim that Dehghan was fooled into singing his own confession under the belief that he would be released without punishment if he did so.
But after signing the confession, prosecutors dropped the agreement and kept Dehghan incarcerated at Arak Prison.
His death penalty was confirmed in January when it was upheld in the country’s Supreme Court, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
‘During his interrogation, Sina was told that if he signed a confession and repented, he would be pardoned and let go,’ a source told CHRI. ‘Unfortunately, he made a childish decision and accepted the charges. Then they sentenced him to death.’
The content of Dehghan’s messages is unknown.
The source said that authorities got Dehghan to confess on camera as well, and that authorities told his family that if they kept quiet about the charges, Dehghan would be more likely to be freed.
‘Unfortunately, the family believed those words and stopped sharing information about his case and discouraged others from sharing it as well,’ the source said.
Branch 1 of the Criminal Court in Arak had asked that Dehghan be sentenced to death for ‘insulting the prophet’ as well as 16 months in prison for ‘insulting the supreme leader’….