Don't be fooled by Taqiyah.

Original Thinking from Barry Shaw.

Taqiyah is the Islamic ruse that permits lying and deceit for short or long term gain.

Quoted in the Ahmad ibn Nagib al-Misri handbook is an explanation of the use and benefits of taqiyah. It concludes that “when it is possible to achieve an aim by lying, but not telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible.”

Taqiyah is old hat in the Islamic world. It is as old as Mohammed. He signed a peace agreement with the Jews of Medina after he had been unable to defeat them in battle. This truce lasted only as long as he was able to muster sufficient force to inflict defeat on them. He conquered Medina and publicly executed all the Jewish men, eight hundred in number.

So much for Islamic signed contracts and commitments.

We recently saw taqiyah used by Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian leader, during his visit to the United Nations and his media charm offensive in which he apparently fooled naïve Western ears. One example was highlighted by Israel’s Prime Minister at the annual Bar Ilan Conference when he referred to Rouhani’s comments that Zionists should take advantage of Nazi crimes to inflict suffering on the Palestinians. This insidiously implied link between Nazi crimes and Israeli actions was designed to implant a false narrative into naïve listeners. We, who are involved with Israeli advocacy, experience this type of reference all the time. 

Using historic facts Benjamin Netanyahu, quoted the deeds of Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who met Hitler on November 28, 1941, as an example of Palestinian Arab complicity with Nazi crimes against the Jews. Al-Husseini visited the death camps of Auschwitz, Majdenek, Treblinka, and Mauthausen, in his role as representing Palestinian Pan-Arabism.

One of Adolph Eichmann’s deputies, Dieter Wisliceny, at the Nuremburg trials, stated that al-Husseini had encouraged the extermination of European Jews and that he had had elaborate meeting with Eichmann on the subject during which Eichmann had given him a detailed look at the current state of the “Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe.”

Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, in his memoirs, recorded that al-Husseini had been impressed when Heinrich Himmler told him that, by the summer of 1943, over three million Jews had been exterminated. He went on to recall that al-Husseini had publicly declared that Muslims should follow the example Germans set for a "definitive solution to the Jewish problem."

The Mufti complained to Hitler that he was not expending sufficient resources to stop the Jews, especially Jewish children, from freeing from the Balkans. He wanted to see them all annihilated. Here we had a Jerusalem-based Palestinian religious figure working feverishly to destroy European Jewry.

Contrary to what is heard at the United Nations, in the American media, on many Western campuses, and even from Mahmoud Abbas himself, the Zionists did not use the Nazis as a tool. It was the Palestinian Mufti and the Arabs who helped and encouraged Hitler to destroy the Jews.

It is worth noting that the Mufti is still a revered figure in Palestinian society. Despite all the taqiyah to the contrary, this is the real core of the Palestinian narrative. It is not settlements, or occupation. It is the ninety year old ambition to kill Jews and reject the notion of a Jewish state.

Examining Palestinian use of taqiyah, we see it applied by Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn at the signing of the Oslo Accords which was witnessed by President Clinton and the European Quartet. Arafat went on to say, during a visit to Johannesburg, that “I am not considering it more than the agreement signed between Mohammed and Quraish (the Jews of Medina). Mohammed accepted it, and we are accepting it now.” (Emphasis on the word “now.”)

In a Palestinian TV interview on July 22, 2009, Muhammed Dahlan, admitted that Arafat deceived the world when he condemned terror.

“I lived with Arafat for years. Arafat would condemn terror by day while, at night, he would do the ‘honorable thing.’ I don’t want to say more about this.”

In more recent times we continue to see Palestinian leaders practicing taqiyah. One of the most notable was when, in an Israeli television interview, Mahmoud Abbas said that he is willing to give up his right to return to Tsfat in Israel, where his ancestors originated. When met with a storm of criticism in Ramallah at this apparent renouncement of the much vaunted Palestinian “right of return”, one of Abbas’s spokesmen said his statement was “just for Israeli consumption.”

Can anyone trust the words and promises of Palestinian leaders? Not really.  What they tell CNN and BBC in English is not what they say to their own people in Arabic.  What they tell their own people is that all of Israel is Palestine and they have not given up on the plan to liberate all of Palestine.

This form of taqiyah is truly at the heart of the Palestinians and the Islamic world. How is peace possible when this is the basis of Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic belief?

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’ www.israelnarrative.com  He is also the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College.