Taqiyya
Encyclopedia
Taqiyya meaning religious dissimulation
Dissimulation
Dissimulation is a form of deception in which one conceals the truth. It consists of concealing the truth, or in the case of half-truths, concealing parts of the truth, like inconvenient or secret information. Dissimulation differs from simulation, in which one exhibits false information...

, is a practice emphasized in Shi'a Islam
Shi'a Islam
Shia Islam is the second largest denomination of Islam. The followers of Shia Islam are called Shi'ites or Shias. "Shia" is the short form of the historic phrase Shīʻatu ʻAlī , meaning "followers of Ali", "faction of Ali", or "party of Ali".Like other schools of thought in Islam, Shia Islam is...

 whereby adherents may conceal their religion when they are under threat, persecution
Persecution of Muslims
Persecution of Muslims is the religious persecution of Muslims as a consequence of professing their faith, both historically and in the current era.-Anatolia:...

, or compulsion. This means a legal dispensation whereby a believing individual can deny his faith or commit otherwise illegal or blasphemous acts while they are under those risks.

Taqiyya was developed to protect Shi'ites who were usually in minority and under pressure. In the Shi'a view, taqiyya is lawful in situations where there is overwhelming danger of loss of life or property and where no danger to religion would occur thereby.

The majority Sunni
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites....

 Muslims rarely found it necessary to hide their beliefs. However, there are examples of practicing Taqiyya among Sunnis where it was necessary. In the Sunni view, denying your faith under duress is "only at most permitted and not under all circumstances obligatory".

Etymology

The term taqiyya ( /) ' onMouseout='HidePop("52649")' href="/topics/Persian_language">Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

) is derived from the Arabic triliteral root waw-qaf-ya, denoting "piety, devotion, uprightness, and godliness, and it means the brightest star". In Arabic taqiyya literally means caution, but came to be used as a technical term by some jurists meaning dissimulation. Kitman is used synonymously and means concealment.

Origin

The practice of concealing one's beliefs in dangerous circumstances originates in the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

, which deems blameless those who disguise their beliefs in such cases. The practice of taqiyya in difficult circumstances is considered legitimate by Muslims of various sects. Sunni and Shi'a commentators alike observe that verse 16:106 refers to the case of 'Ammar b. Yasir
Ammar ibn Yasir
ʻAmmār ibn Yāsir al-Ansi was one of the companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He was one of the Muhajirun, and referred to as by Shia Muslims as one of the Four Companions....

, who was forced to renounce his beliefs under physical duress and torture.

enjoins Muslims not to take the company of non-Muslims unless as a means of safeguarding themselves. "Let not the believers take those who deny the truth for their allies in preference to the believers – since he who does this cuts himself off from God in everything – unless it be to protect yourself against them in this way…" Regarding 3:28, Ibn Kathir
Ibn Kathir
Ismail ibn Kathir was a Muslim muhaddith, Faqih, historian, and commentator.-Biography:His full name was Abu Al-Fida, 'Imad Ad-Din, Isma'il bin 'Umar bin Kathir, Al-Qurashi, Al-Busrawi...

, a prominent authority writes, "meaning, except those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly." He quotes Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

's companion, Abu Ad-Darda', who said "we smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them," and Al-Hasan who said "the Tuqyah is acceptable till the Day of Resurrection."

Twelver Shi'a view

The doctrine of taqiyya was developed at the time of Ja'far al-Sadiq
Ja'far al-Sadiq
Jaʿfar ibn Muhammad al-Sādiq was a descendant of Muhammad and a prominent Muslim jurist. He is revered as an Imam by the adherents of Shi'a Islam and as a renowned Islamic scholar and personality by Sunni Muslims. The Shi'a Muslims consider him to be the sixth Imam or leader and spiritual...

 (d. 148 AH/765 AD), the sixth Imamiya Imam. It served to protect Shi'ites when Al-Mansur
Al-Mansur
Al-Mansur, Almanzor or Abu Ja'far Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Mansur was the second Abbasid Caliph from 136 AH to 158 AH .-Biography:...

, the Abbasid
Abbasid
The Abbasid Caliphate or, more simply, the Abbasids , was the third of the Islamic caliphates. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphate from all but the al-Andalus region....

 caliph, conducted a brutal and oppressive campaign against Alids and their supporters. Religious dissimulation or Taqiyya while maintaining mental reservation is considered lawful in Shi'ism "in situations where there is overwhelming danger of loss of life or property and where no danger to religion would occur thereby". Shi'is lived mostly as a minority among a frequently-hostile Sunni majority- until the rise of Safavid dynasty
Safavid dynasty
The Safavid dynasty was one of the most significant ruling dynasties of Iran. They ruled one of the greatest Persian empires since the Muslim conquest of Persia and established the Twelver school of Shi'a Islam as the official religion of their empire, marking one of the most important turning...

. This condition made taqiyya doctrine important to Shi'is.

Taqiyya holds a central place in Twelver Shi'a Islam. This is sometimes explained by the minority position Shi'ites had under the political dominance of Sunni Muslims, requiring them to protect themselves through concealment and dissimulation. In Shi'a legal literature, there is a range of situations in which taqiyya may be used or even required. For Shi'a Muslims, taqiyya is to conceal their association with their faith when revealing it would result in danger. Taqiyya is done for reasons of safety. For example, a person may fear that he might be killed or harmed if he does not observe taqiyya. In this case, taqiyya is allowed. However, in some circumstances taqiyya may lead to the death of an innocent person; if so, it is not permissible; it is haraam
Haraam
Haraam is an Arabic term meaning "forbidden", or "sacred". In Islam it is used to refer to anything that is prohibited by the word of Allah in the Qur'an or the Hadith Qudsi. Haraam is the highest status of prohibition given to anything that would result in sin when a Muslim commits it...

 (forbidden) to kill a human being to save one's own life. Some Shi'ites, though, advance taqiyya as a form of jihad
Jihad
Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...

, a sort of fighting against their adversaries.

Others relate it to the esoteric nature of early Shi'a Islam. The knowledge (Ilm
Ilm
Ilm or ILM can refer to:*Ilm, Arabic for knowledge, referring to knowledge of Islam*I Love Music, an Internet music forum*Ilmr, a goddess in Norse mythology, sometimes written as Ilm- Acronyms :...

) given to the Imams by God had to be protected and the truth would have to be hidden before the uninitiated or their adversaries until the coming of the Twelfth Imam, when this knowledge and ultimate meaning can become known to everyone.

Religious rulings of the Shi'a Imams was also influenced by taqiyya. Without it, basic articles of early Shi'ism do not make sense and lose coherence because of contradictions. Some of the traditions from the Imams make taqiyya a central element of Shi'ism: "He who has no taqiyya has no faith"; "he who forsakes taqiyya is like him who forsakes prayer"; "taqiyya is the believers shield, but for taqiyya, God would not have been worshipped". It is unclear whether those traditions only refer to taqiyya under risk or also taqiyya to conceal the esoteric doctrines of Shi'ism. Many Shi'ites today deny that taqiyya has any significance in their religion.

There is a second type of Taqiyya which shall be called "dissimulation" which is use of word or actions tending to mislead one's opponents.

Ismaili Shi'a view

For the Ismailis in the aftermath of the Mongol onslaught of the Alamut
Alamut
Alamut was a mountain fortress located in the South Caspian province of Daylam near the Rudbar region in Iran, approximately 100 kilometres from present-day Tehran, Iran...

 state in 1256 CE, the need to practice taqiyya became necessary, not only for the protection of the community itself, which was now stateless, but also for safeguarding the line of the Nizari
Nizari
'The Shī‘a Imami Ismā‘īlī Tariqah also referred to as the Ismā‘īlī or Nizārī , is a path of Shī‘a Islām, emphasizing social justice, pluralism, and human reason within the framework of the mystical tradition of Islam. The Nizari are the second largest branch of Shia Islam and form the majority...

 Ismaili Imamate during this period of unrest. Accordingly, the Shi'a Imam
Imam
An imam is an Islamic leadership position, often the worship leader of a mosque and the Muslim community. Similar to spiritual leaders, the imam is the one who leads Islamic worship services. More often, the community turns to the mosque imam if they have a religious question...

 Ja'far al-Sadiq
Ja'far al-Sadiq
Jaʿfar ibn Muhammad al-Sādiq was a descendant of Muhammad and a prominent Muslim jurist. He is revered as an Imam by the adherents of Shi'a Islam and as a renowned Islamic scholar and personality by Sunni Muslims. The Shi'a Muslims consider him to be the sixth Imam or leader and spiritual...

 stated "Taqiyya is my religion and the religion of my ancestors", a tradition recorded in various sources including Kitāb al-Maḥāsin of Aḥmad b. Muhammad al-Barqī and the Da‘ā’im al-Islām of al-Qāḍī al-Nu‘mān
Qadi al-Nu'man
Abu Hanifa al-Nu‘man ibn Muhammad ibn Mansur ibn Ahmad ibn Hayyun al-Tamimi, generally known as al-Qāḍī al-Nu‘mān was an Isma'ili jurist and the official historian of the Fatimid caliphs...

. Such periods in which the Imams are concealed are known as satr, however the term may also refer to times when the Imams were not physically hidden from view but rather when the community was required to practice precautionary dissimulation. During satr the Imam could only be accessed by his community and in extremely dangerous circumstances, would be accessible only to the highest ranking members of the Ismaili hierarchy (ḥudūd), whose function it was to transmit the teachings of the Imam to the community.

According to Shi'a scholar Muhammad Husain Javari Sabinal, Shi'ism would not have spread at all if not for taqiyya, referring to instances where Shi'a have been ruthlessly persecuted by the Sunni political elite during the Umayyad
Umayyad
The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the four major Arab caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the...

 and Abbasid
Abbasid
The Abbasid Caliphate or, more simply, the Abbasids , was the third of the Islamic caliphates. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphate from all but the al-Andalus region....

 empires. Indeed for the Ismailis, the persistence and prosperity of the community today owes largely to the careful safeguarding of the beliefs and teachings of the Imams during the Ilkhanate
Ilkhanate
The Ilkhanate, also spelled Il-khanate , was a Mongol khanate established in Azerbaijan and Persia in the 13th century, considered a part of the Mongol Empire...

, the Safawid dynasty, and other periods of persecution.

Druze view

Because of the Druze
Druze
The Druze are an esoteric, monotheistic religious community, found primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, which emerged during the 11th century from Ismailism. The Druze have an eclectic set of beliefs that incorporate several elements from Abrahamic religions, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism...

's Ismaili Shi'ite origin, they have also been associated with taqiyya. When the Druze were a minority being persecuted they took the appearance of another religion externally, usually the ruling religion in the area, and for the most part adhered to Muslim customs by this practice.

Sunni Islam view

Over the course of time, the majority Sunni Muslims, who maintained political hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...

 in most areas of the Islamic world, rarely found it necessary to hide their beliefs. In the Sunni view, denying your faith under duress is "only at most permitted and not under all circumstances obligatory". Al-Tabari
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari
Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari was a prominent and influential Sunni scholar and exegete of the Qur'an from Persia...

 comments on sura XVI, verse 108 (Tafsir, Bulak 1323, xxiv, 122): "If any one is compelled and professes unbelief with his tongue, while his heart contradicts him, in order to escape his enemies, no blame falls on him, because God takes his servants as their hearts believe." This verse was revealed after Ammar Yasir was forced by the idolaters of Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...

 to recant his faith and denounce the Islamic Prophet Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

. Al-Tabari explains that concealing one's faith is only justified if the person is in mortal danger, and even then martyrdom is considered a noble alternative. If threatened, it would be preferable for a Muslim to migrate to a more peaceful place where a person may practice their faith openly, "since God's earth is wide."

No term such as taqiyya is used in Sunni jurisprudence. Protecting one's belief during extreme or exigent circumstances is called idtirar (إضطرار), which translates to "being forced" or "being coerced", and this word is not specific to concealing the faith. Sunnis believe that it is allowed to deny faith under compulsion, threat, or fear of injury, as long as the heart remains firm in faith, but they also greatly disagree with some of the Shi'a points of view. While one is allowed to consume prohibited or haraam food to protect one's life under the jurisprudence of idtirar, some Sunni sources emphasize the fact that a person who prefers to proclaim their faith in the face of death will have a greater reward than they who deny their faith to save their lives. For example, in the Sunni commentary of Sahih al-Bukhari
Sahih al-Bukhari
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī , as it is commonly referred to, is one of the six canonical hadith collections of Islam. These prophetic traditions, or hadith, were collected by the Persian Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, after being transmitted orally for generations. Muslims view this as one of...

, known as the Fath al-Bari
Fath al-Bari
Fath ul-Bari fi Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari is the most valued Sunni commentary of Sahih al-Bukhari, written by Ibn Hajr Asqalani...

, it is stated that:
Which translates to:

Examples

When Mamun became caliph, he tried to impose his religious views on the status of the Qur'an over all his subjects, in an ordeal called the mihna
Mihna
The Mihna refers to a test instituted by the Abassid Caliph al-Ma'mun in 218 AH/833 AD, in which religious scholars were required to answer whether or not the Qu'ran was a created text. Those who answered in the affirmative were retained; those who answered in the negative were dismissed...

, or "inquisition". His views were disputed, and many of those who refused to follow his views were imprisoned, tortured, or threatened with the sword. Some Sunni scholars chose to affirm Mamun's view that the Qur'an was created, in spite of their beliefs.

In 16th century Spain, following the end of the Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...

of the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...

 in 1492, Muslims and Jews were persecuted by the Catholic Monarchs
Catholic Monarchs
The Catholic Monarchs is the collective title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; they were given a papal dispensation to deal with...

 and forced to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. The principle of taqiyya became very important for Muslims during the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...

 in sixteenth century Spain, as it allowed them to convert to Christianity while remaining crypto-Muslims, practicing Islam in secret. In 1504, Ubayd Allah al-Wahrani, a Maliki
Maliki
The ' madhhab is one of the schools of Fiqh or religious law within Sunni Islam. It is the second-largest of the four schools, followed by approximately 25% of Muslims, mostly in North Africa, West Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and in some parts of Saudi Arabia...

 mufti
Mufti
A mufti is a Sunni Islamic scholar who is an interpreter or expounder of Islamic law . In religious administrative terms, a mufti is roughly equivalent to a deacon to a Sunni population...

 in Oran
Oran
Oran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest...

, issued a fatwā
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...

 allowing Muslims to make extensive use of taqiyya in order to maintain their faith. This is seen as an exceptional case, since Islamic law prohibits conversion except in cases of mortal danger, and even then requires recantation as quickly as possible, and al-Wahrani's reasoning diverged from that of the majority of earlier Maliki Faqīh
Faqih
A Faqīh is an expert in fiqh, or, Islamic jurisprudence.A faqih is an expert in Islamic Law, and, as such, the word Faqih can literally be generally translated as Jurist.- The definition of Fiqh and its relation to the Faqih:...

s. Because at that time the jurists agreed that Muslims were not permitted to live in the lands of non-Muslims, Dar al-Harb, by submitting themselves to infidels instead of Islam and had to emigrate if unable to take up Offensive Jihad
Offensive jihad
Offensive Jihad is armed Jihad meant to expand the realm of Islam at the expense of the House of War . Although these world divisions was derived by jurists, they are not mentioned in the Qur'an and hadith....

. It was better returning to Muslim lands, Dar al-Islam, to take up the fight there. Al-Wahrani allowed for an inner jihad instead, by taqiyya.

See also

  • Crypto-Christianity
    Crypto-Christianity
    Crypto-Christianity commonly refers to the secret practice of the Christian religion, usually while attempting to camouflage it as another faith or observing the rituals of another religion publicly...

  • Crypto-Islam
    Crypto-Islam
    Crypto-Islam is the secret adherence to Islam while publicly professing to be of another faith; people who practice crypto-Islam are referred to as "crypto-Muslims"...

  • Crypto-Judaism
    Crypto-Judaism
    Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews"...

  • Pikuach nefesh#Exceptions, Jewish law that forbids analogous pragmatic behavior
  • Denial of Peter
    Denial of Peter
    The Denial of Peter refers to three acts of denial of Jesus by the Apostle Peter as described in the three Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament....

  • Doctrine of mental reservation
    Doctrine of mental reservation
    The doctrine of mental reservation, or the doctrine of mental equivocation, was a special branch of casuistry developed in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and most often associated with the Jesuits.- Secular use :...

  • Doublethink
    Doublethink
    Doublethink, a word coined by George Orwell in the novel 1984, describes the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts. It is related to, but distinct from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Its opposite is cognitive dissonance, where...

  • Kitman

Further reading

  • Bar-Asher, Me'ir Mikha'el (1999). Scripture and Exegesis in Early Imami Shiism. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-11495-5
  • Cook, Michael (2003). Early Muslim Dogma: A Source-Critical Study. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-54572-2
  • Daftary, Farhad (1992). The Isma'ilis: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42974-9
  • Emadi, Hafizullah
    Hafizullah Emadi
    Hafizullah Emadi is a development consultant for Focus Humanitarian Assistance.He was born in the Shibar District, Bamiyan Province of Afghanistan. Most recently, he lives in California and works in Kabul, Afghanistan. After receiving his Ph.D...

     (1998). The end of taqiyya: reaffirming the religious identity of Ismailis in Shughnan, Badakhshan – political implications for Afghanistan. Middle Eastern Studies. 34(3): 103–120.
  • Emadi, Hafizullah
    Hafizullah Emadi
    Hafizullah Emadi is a development consultant for Focus Humanitarian Assistance.He was born in the Shibar District, Bamiyan Province of Afghanistan. Most recently, he lives in California and works in Kabul, Afghanistan. After receiving his Ph.D...

     (2000). Praxis of taqiyya: perseverance of Pashaye Ismaili enclave, Nangarhar, Afghanistan. Central Asian Survey. 19(2): 253–264.
  • Firro, Kais (1999). The Druzes in the Jewish State: A Brief History. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-11251-0
  • Gleave, Robert (2000). Inevitable Doubt. Two Theories of Shi'i Jurisprudence. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-11595-1
  • Misri, Ahmad ibn Naqib al- (1997). The Reliance of the Traveler, translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller
    Nuh Ha Mim Keller
    Nuh Ha Mim Keller is an American Muslim translator of Islamic books and a specialist in Islamic law, as well as being authorised by Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri as a sheikh in sufism in the Shadhili Order...

    , Amana Publications.
  • Makarem, Sami
    Sami Makarem
    Sami Makarem is a Druze Lebanese scholar, writer, poet and artist; he was born in the village of Aitat in Aley district and is best known for his academic contributions in the fields of Islamic studies, Sufism, and Islamic history....

     (2004). Al-Taqiyya Fi Al-Islam (Dissimulation in Islam), Druze Heritage Foundation. ISBN 978-1904850021 (in Arabic)

External links

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