Johnson, of course, relies heavily on fellow libelblogger Kejda Gjermani's guilt-by-association pieces purporting to establish that I am a "religious supremacist." Since this is supposed to be a "hidden agenda" of mine, it is impossible to respond to -- no one can prove that he doesn't hold various positions secretly. But it is also ridiculous: I travel around the country giving talks calling upon people to defend the freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, equality of rights of all before the law, and the concept of non-establishment of religion.
The horror. Spencer is being accused of... taqiyya. The last time Spencer and I debated this issue (taqiyya) he had nothing but questions for me after I clearly explained that Muslims have no sanction under any orthodox interpretation of Islamic law to lie to a non-Muslim government that they live under to further some jihadist plot. Spencers response? Just questions:
All right. So if a Muslim believes he will be persecuted if he does not speak well of a non-Muslim ruler, he should lie. Does this allow him to lie if he fears he will be persecuted if he does not speak well of non-Muslim rule in general? In other words, may he lie if he fears that he will face difficulties if he declares his preference for Sharia rather than for democratic pluralism? And may he lie if he is working for the institution of Sharia in a non-Muslim, democratic and pluralist state, but doesn't want the non-Muslim rulers to find out that that is what he is doing, because he may then face persecution?
Isn't he the Islamic expert? I thought he knew everything there was to know about taqiyya. I just told him the orthodox meaning of taqiyya in Sunni Islam. Spencer just ends up asking me a bunch of questions and then tells me there is no distinction between what I said and what he said. No, that's just avoiding the facts, as Spencer usually does when he knows he's stuck.
I doubt there is any Islamic legal material that discusses what Spencer is thinking, i.e. a justification for a Muslim to work under cover while actively trying to overthrow a government he lives under. The fact of the matter is, there were not many Muslims living in non-Muslim lands when most of the corpus of fiqh was developed. The taqiyya the Qur'an discusses is within the context of the Muslims who lived under the persecution of the Quraysh during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and prayers be upon him. They were tortured and beaten because of their beliefs (a side note: this is something Spencer rarely mentions in his writings). The Qur'an gave these early Muslims a way out of being beaten and tortured: just lie. Say whatever the evildoers want you to say to avoid the torture.
Now, do these verses somehow translate into giving sanction to Muslims who live in the West to lie to their governments in order to secretly over throw them from within? As I said to Spencer when discussing these verses, I don't know where or how such a sanction can be derived. If he can show us some evidence of this in Sunni sources, that say explicitly what he refers to, then maybe we can all benefit (interestingly, when I was discussing this in light of what Hugh Fitzgerald said about taqiyya, Spencer chimed in with direct quotes from tafsirs discussing taqiyya. What he pasted said exactly what I told him later on, namely what I am currently discussing in this post. Leave it to Spencer to leave things ambiguous and unclear when he can't prove what he wants to prove). Otherwise, this game about taqiyya is what we all think it is: a nasty game of accusations meant to defame all Muslims, no matter their ideological or religious attitudes. I mean, does Spencer have any Muslim friends? And if he does, does he ever wonder if they're practicing taqiyya? It's a terrible way to live a life. Especially for his Muslim friends.
In any case, the episode between him and Johnson is fun to watch. As for Spencer's accusations against Muslims for practicing taqiyya? What comes around, goes around.
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