Jagdish Roza is wrong. Taqiyah is not an Islamic concept.

Submitted by Hussein (Saudi Arabia), Oct 26, 2005 at 04:55

Jagdish,

The concept of Taqiyah does not originate in Islam. It is purely a Shi'ah concept. There is no such concept of deception in Islam. The mainstream Muslims view Shia's to be outside the pale of Islamic teachings and do not accept this practice.

Lying is considered a big sin in Islam since it leads to dissention among the people. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) mentioned three instances in which a person can tell a lie.

1) A man may tell a white lie to his wife so as not to hurt her feelings. For example if a wife asks her husband how dinner was or if she looks pretty, it is acceptable to lie under these circumstances, because telling the truth may hurt her feelings and compromise their relationship. Since a marriage is the fundamental building block of a family and, ultimately for society, it is permissible to lie to maintain the sanctity of the marriage.

2) A believing Muslim may tell a lie to maintain brotherhood between two Muslims. This applies if there is a quarrel between two people. A Muslim can say good things about each person to mend the ties between the two.

3) In time of war, if a person is threatened to be killed if he does not give up his/her Islamic faith, it is permissible to claim to give up Islam.

Other than these three instances, there is no lying or deception in Islam. When Muslims say that terrorism is not permitted in Islam, it's because it isn't permitted in Islam. There is no deception involved.

Truth is clear and falsehood is clear. In this case, it is true that murder is strictly prohibitted in Islam. Use common sense. If terrorism was permitted and there are 1.9 billion Muslims in the world, don't you think we would be seeing many more acts of terrorism?

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".