A barrister acting for Ben Roberts-Smith has alluded to an obscure Islamic juridical concept — popularised by anti-Muslim alt-right figures — to discredit an Afghan witness describing alleged war crimes committed by Australian troops.
Amid the marathon defamation proceedings against Nine for reporting on Roberts-Smith which the former soldier has denied, there was an odd moment during cross-examination of Darwan farmer Man Gul last week.
Bruce McClintock SC, acting for Roberts-Smith, reportedly asked whether Islam followers are permitted by their faith to deceive others: “It’s in fact permissible to lie to infidels under your religion, isn’t it?”
“No, I haven’t seen anything like that, one should not tell a lie,” Gul replied.
McClintock has been casting doubt on the motives and credibility of witnesses called in defence of Nine throughout the trial, as he’s no doubt been directed to do.
But knowingly or not, this seemingly bizarre line of questioning has foundations in a little-known Islamic reference that’s been repurposed to demonise Muslims.
Taqiyya is an term taken from the Koran and other Islamic literature that means the act of concealing or falsely denying faith when faced with potential persecution, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Islam, used to avoid “periodic persecution” of Shia Muslims by Sunnis.
This is not a core tenet of Islam. Scholar and author Dr HA Hellyer pointed out the idea — similar to the Jewish concept pikuach nefesh that states that preserving human life overrules almost any other religious rule — is barely known among adherents.
“It used to be that the very word taqiyya was scarcely known, even among Muslims,” he wrote in a piece published by the ABC.
This, however, has changed since the mid-2010s. Taqiyya has been distorted and harnessed by people stoking anti-Muslim sentiment to argue that Islamic citizens across the Western world cannot be trusted.
In 2015, University of Melbourne’s national centre for excellence for Islamic studies honorary fellow Dr Shakira Hussein argued taqiyya had been falsely redefined by critics of Islam fearmongering in a post-9/11 era to expand the justification of lying to to include “serves the expansionist agenda of their religious community”.
“It is part of a wider trend in which Muslims are not criticised for their beliefs, as much as they are assigned spurious beliefs on the basis of a sometimes very tenuous religious affiliation,” she wrote.
Hussein pointed to the rumours of US president Barack Obama being a “secret Muslim” as the logical conclusion of this idea.
Hussein’s sounding of the alarm was prescient. The emergence of the alt-right — which has since become swallowed into the broader, populist right — embraced this concept as a meme to discredit Muslims.
“I mean, 99.99% of Muslims don’t even understand what taqiyya is, but every alt-right Twitter troll is an expert on Islamic theology now, which is completely absurd,” Imraan Siddiqi, a state executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told BuzzFeed News at the height of the term’s popularity in the US in 2018.
This incorrect interpretation of the concept was cited by alt-right media figures to undermine the high-profile accounts of the Texas teenager who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school in 2015, the parents of a US army captain killed during the Iraq War who criticised Trump in a 2016 Democratic Convention speech, and to dispute that British terrorist Usman Khan could ever be rehabilitated.
Even then-frontrunner for the 2016 Republican nomination Ben Carson said that no Muslim should be allowed to be the president because of taqiyya.
So the argument that Islamic faith allows Muslims to lie to non-Muslims for any reason isn’t a small aside from one of Australia’s most eminent barristers in a marathon trial. It’s also an anti-Muslim meme that’s been used to stoke hatred and fear of a faith that, perhaps, could play a part in determining the outcome of a high stakes legal battle over Roberts-Smith’s reputation.
I cannot understand how anyone claiming a hotline to sky fairies is not laughed out of public life, let alone allowed in Parliament.
We have freedom of religion which is as important as the right of freedom to choose a footy code or kitchen colour.
What we desperately need is freedom from religion in the public sphere.
Those beholden to such deluded notions should keep it to themselves, as most do other weird fetishes.
Faith is a substitute for reason when claiming to believe something one knows to be untrue.
Selkie, I am very annoyed with you!! You ‘stole my thunder’!!
Just joking!
I could not have put it better myself Selkie!!.
A great post!! I totally support your sentiments!
The last line was not original original, I was paraphrasing Samuel Clemens.
Still sounds pretty good!!
Ahh Selkie, I’d be careful about preaching against ‘deluded notions . . . substituting for reason’ if I were you. A few short days ago you were using the taqiyya concept (the alt-Right distortion of it, I assume) to justify the Minister’s decision to strip Australian citizenship from an ISIS bride and to imply that it was naive to believe that any former jihadi who has experienced the horrors of ISIS could have seen the error of their ways and be useful in de-radicalisation programs.
Your faith in our hard-head spooks not being fooled is so touching –
would they be the same secret squirrels who fell for WMD or the corrupt
ones who happily bugged the nascent Timor cabinet?
In Islam, Taqiya or Taqiyya is a precautionary dissimulation or denial of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution. A related term is Kitmān, which has a more specific meaning of dissimulation by silence or omission.
Dr HA Hellyer pointed out the idea — similar to the Jewish concept pikuach nefesh that states that preserving human life overrules almost any other religious rule which was the basis for the Spanish Inquisition, after the Moors were driven from Spain.
The Jews, as People of the Book – like Christians, had resided there for centuries with no problem but Ferdinand & Isabella were not so tolerant.
WMD lies and the Timor bugging were not naive mistakes – they were quite calculated and deliberate. And deradicalisation programs don’t generally involve spooks – they’re funded, planned and implemented by people like police, lawyers (AGD) and academics. And I’m sure none of them rely on alt-Right memes like your taqiyya for their evidence.
Hardly mine, it’s only effective on woolly minded, woke bien pensants such as abound here.
Those beholden to such deluded notions should keep it to themselves, as most do other weird fetishes.
Faith is a substitute for reason when claiming to believe something one knows to be untrue.
Wiki
Stages of faith
1 Intuitive-Projective: a stage of confusion and of high impressionability through stories and rituals (pre-school period).
2 Mythic-Literal: a stage where provided information is accepted in order to conform with social norms (school-going period).
3 Synthetic-Conventional: in this stage the faith acquired is concreted in the belief system with the forgoing of personification and replacement with authority in individuals or groups that represent one’s beliefs (early-late adolescence).
4 Individuative-Reflective: in this stage the individual critically analyzes adopted and accepted faith with existing systems of faith. Disillusion or strengthening of faith happens in this stage. Based on needs, experiences and paradoxes (early adulthood).
I think stage 4 is where most MAN MADE tax exempt ponzi scam belief systems prefer their willingly duped to remain.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/sa-government-considers-scrapping-religious-oaths-in-court
Well, yes, swearing on a bible or other religious document is meaningless for an increasing number of us. (30% last census)
Could not agree more, Mike.
I would add too (and you may disagree with me – and if you don’t then I can safely predict that there will be plenty of others around here who certainly will), that bringing migrants/refugees into this country who hold strong religious beliefs is a major mistake. Doing this tends to reverse the very favorable trend that you refer to in your post.
Starting with the Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons, and so on, right?
Definitely markle!
And the “so on” to whom you refer markle, would especially include one or two other notables as well!) Do you get my drift? (Or as Sir Les would say, “Are you with me?”)
Do you have any particular religions in mind?
Hmmm … basically the proselytizing ones JMNO.
But especially the devout and fanatical followers of any religion who, for example, hold up placards suggesting that ‘non-believers’, etc. should be be-headed.
Why “beheaded”?
Surely someone suggesting that “non-believers” should have socks shoved down their throats or that they should be shoved in a chaff bag and tossed out to sea, or even calling “non-believers” witches are equally contemptible.
But of course beheading is a practice attributable by the ultra-right wing nut jobs… to particular followers of one religion, eh? What religion is that?
Attributed?
Have you not followed the news lately… or for the last 30odd years?
There are any number of examples, with photographs, of excitable young men marching and carrying signs demanding precisely that for “insulting” their proclivities, ironically protected in their right to do so by British bobbies.
Right on the money Selkie!!
Perhaps Zeke might benefit from reviewing the SMH (hardly a right-wing news source) article (just one of many from various news sources) at:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fury-at-sydney-protests-20120915-25z0a.html
His claims are as absurd as they are outrageous.
Zeke, my apologies for taking so long to reply to your post.
I am not sure whether you are joking or not but I will assume that you are being serious.
Clearly you are having a ‘crack’ at a certain Sydney shock jock and other ‘ultra-right wing nut jobs’ (as you so delicately describe them).
Zeke, let me tell you, and this may come as a complete surprise to you, that Sydney shock-jocks and other right wing nut jobs do not have a history of actual extreme violence against those who reject their belief systems. To think that you try to equate radio shock jocks, as objectionable as they may be, to these Islamic terrorists is beyond contemptible.
How about ones which claim that anyone not of their faith are apostates on the grounds that everyone is born one of the ummah?
Waleed Ali often uses the word ‘reverts’ to describe people who “return” – Susan Carland refers to herself as such.
Thank heavens for ‘conversion’, but not ‘conversion’ therapy as espoused by the haters here in Australia.
You don’t have to look far to see examples of even ‘devout’ christians lying through their back teeth! Scomo took an oath on the bible, yet hasn’t stopped lying ever since…
Abbott too.
If I were in court and an officer insisted I take a Bible, I’d certainly start swearing.
About 30% of witnesses in Australian courts affirm that they will tell the truth.
Let’s get McClintock to the next Morrison presser :- “It’s in fact permissible to lie to infidel voters under your religion, isn’t it?”
Of course it is. The evil opposition must be kept out of power by any means.
Ours is the righteous cause.
He wouldn’t accept the premise of the question. Next!
According to the Catholic catechism I was taught, it is ok to steal lie or whatever if the intention is to save an innocent life that would otherwise be lost. This concept is not confined to Islam
I remember that line. In other words often taken as “the ends justify the means”. Apparently Adopted enthusiastically by church leadership protecting pedophiles for centuries for the greater good of their institutions holy reputation. Didn’t work out to well for the churches. But then it rarely does for anyone who falls for that delusion thinking.
I am an aging altar boy with 12 years of Catholic education.
It wasn’t in my catechism.
The one that started ‘ I believe in God ….’
The “defence” for Australia’s favourite “knight crusader” is turning into an ugly festival of racism, as rich white lawyers are paid truckloads to insinuate that swarthy Afghan farmers are, well, naturally inclined to falsehood and extremism. How could you possibly believe them, up against a feted graduate of Perth’s richest school for Christian lads?
Imagine the same situation in reverse. “Mr Roberts-Smith, you say you are a Christian. Is it true that your prophet was betrayed for as little as 30 silver pieces, and what does that say about your capacity for honesty?”