Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 09:56 am CET
Email Email | Print Print | rss RSS | comments icon Comment |   font decrease font increase

   


post divider

Wednesday, October 7, 2015 | By Raymond Ibrahim

The following article originally appeared on website of RaymondIbrahim.com under the title ““Muslims Have the Right to Lie in a Good Cause” — Pakistani President to Reagan.”

us-president-ronald-reagan-pakistan-president-general-muhammad-zia-ul-haq

Muhammad Zia ul-Haq (left) and Ronald Reagan

Ben Carson recently created controversy by warning against the Muslim doctrine of taqiyya, which allows Muslims to deceive non-Muslims. I already addressed the accuracy of Carson’s statements here, and the media’s attempts to discredit him here.

Soon thereafter, Daniel Pipes, the president of the Middle East Forum, brought an interesting anecdote to my attention.

Back in the 1980s, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the president of Pakistan, explained to Ronald Reagan how it was no problem for the Pakistanis to sign the Geneva agreements and yet continue supplying weapons to the Afghan jihadis (“freedom fighters”) combating the Soviet Union.

Why wasn’t it a problem? According to Zia, “We’ll just lie about it. That’s what we’ve been doing for eight years.” He added, “Muslims have the right to lie in a good cause.” (From the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983-1991, p.280. Image below)

taqiyya

Don Oberdorfer, The Turn: From the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983-1991, p.280

Compare this casual statement from the president of a Muslim nation with the claims of UCLA’s Abou El Fadl, whom the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler quoted at length in an effort to prove Carson wrong about taqiyya. According to the Muslim professor, “there is no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a complete invention.”

So which Muslim do you believe? The strong and secure Muslim who said that “Muslims have the right to lie in a good cause” — in this case, jihad against “infidels.” Or the Muslim minority surrounded by American “infidels” who claims that there is “no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal”?

Apparently it never occurred to the WaPo’s Kessler that El Fadl himself may have been exercising, in Zia’s words, his Muslim “right to lie in a good cause” — in this case, to prevent Americans from ever being suspicious of Muslim individuals and organizations in the U.S.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum.


Posted in: Global IslamPakistanTaqiyyaU.S. Middle East Policy  Tagged with:  

Comments are closed.


avatar

Quotes and Sayings

About the Region, Islam and cultural totalitarianism...

    There are clerics who oppose martyrdom operations in Palestine. By these operations Allah has compensated the Palestinians for their lack of strength. They do not, as the Zionists do, have Apache helicopters, warplanes, tanks, missiles. Allah has compensated them for this with these human bombs. This is divine justice.

    — Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, In Favor of Suicide Operations, April 2004.

Weather Forecast

Middle East region weather forecast...

CRETHIPLETHI.COM - ONLINE MAGAZINE COVERING the MIDDLE EAST, ISRAEL, the ARAB WORLD, SOUTHWEST ASIA and the ISLAMIC MAGHREB - since 2009