I guess I have a problem with being sympathetic with a bunch of Muslims in Iran screaming death to America today, I suppose they are being honest compared to some others;
I see. So because Muslims in Iran are supposedly screaming 'death to America' therefore we should have no sympathy towards the genocide being committed against Muslims in Burma? That's makes about as much sense as saying that because of the way Christians treat Mormons here we should have no sympathy when ISIS slaughters Christians in Libya.
The term is derived from the
Quranic reference to religious dissimulation in
Sura 3:28:
There is no reference to religious dissimulation in Sura 3:28. The only reference to religious dissimulation in the Qur'an is found in 16:106:
"Whoso disbelieveth in Allah after his belief -
save him who is forced thereto and whose heart is still content with the Faith - but whoso findeth ease in disbelief: On them is wrath from Allah. Theirs will be an awful doom."
"Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends rather than believers; and whoever does this, he shall have nothing of (the guardianship of) Allah, but you should guard yourselves against them, guarding carefully (illā an tattaqū minhum tuqāt)."
First off the term wali should not be translated as "friend." What Muslims are being warned against is forming patron/client relationships and alliances with non-Muslims. We are not talking about personal friendships.
The two words tattaqū ("you fear") and tuqāt "in fear" are derived from this root, and the abstract noun taqiyyah refers to the general principle connected with the situation
That makes about as much sense as saying that because inspire and perspire are derived from the same root, they mean the same thing.
Regarding 3:28,
Ibn Kathir
So your evidence is 9th and 14th century Muslim commentators? Do you have any idea what I could make Christianity look like if I relied on medieval sources?
Makes it really hard to trust a Muslim
I don't know who wrote that wiki article, I'm guessing that the parts you posting is someone different than who wrote the first part of that article which makes it explicit that this is a Shi'ite doctrine and used in relationship to Sunni Muslims not in relationship to non-Muslims.
Taqiyyih refers to the practice concealing one's belief in order to avoid persecution. Such behavior is condoned, and even required of Shi'ites who frequently lived among a hostile Sunni majority. I can't think of a single case where it was used to justify deceiving non-Muslims.
During the medieval period of Islamic history taqiyyih came to be practiced by philosophers and mystics as well as Shi'ites in order to protect themselves against persecution on the part of the more bigoted ulama (Islamic clergymen.) Such an approach was encouraged by even the great Sunni theologian al-Ghazali, who argued for what the renowned historian of Islam, Marshall Hodgson, has described as a "pattern of gradation and concealment of knowledge."Ordinary believers were not to be given access to certain types of religious knowledge lest they misunderstand it and stumble as a result. Likewise Avicenna, the greatest of Islamic Aristotileans, would in his capacity as a qadi, or Islamic judge, condemn those who too freely popularized the teachings of Aristotle. Sufis likewise critized al-Hallaj, the famous mystic who was crucified for asserting "I am the truth," not because the sentiment was heretical in itself but because al-Hallaj was revealing secrets' which might incline the common people towards blasphemy. Knowledge in the Islamic world came to be divided into exoteric and esoteric categories. The exoteric knowledge was accessible to all Muslims and tended to be conceived in unambiguous black and white terms. Esoteric knowledge required initiation and works containing such knowledge tended to be worded in such a way as to be unintelligible to those not already familiar with its mysteries. As Marshall Hodgson points out: When all dissenting statements were cast in esoteric form, explicitly acknowledging the correctness of the received exoteric doctrines . . . it became easy to find excuses for doubt about a dissenter. No one denied the official positions; the question was simply whether what else a person said did in fact contradict those positions. But if writing was done with sufficient obscurity, guilt could never be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
While this approach allowed for much more intellectual diversity to exist within the Islamic World than was possible in Christendom at the time, there was a price to be paid for dissimulation. The Muslim intelligentsia, in making themselves incomprehensible to the common people, sacrificed any hope of changing the direction of the community as a whole.
There are all kinds of issues associated with taqiyya but it has nothing to do with whether or not we should love our enemies or whether a Muslims thinks it is okay to lie to you simply because you're not a Muslim.
I hope you realize you have done the same thing to Muslims as Evangelicals have done to Mormons on this forum.
