Another Missing Element in the AfPak Analysis By Douglas Farah

Another Missing Element in the AfPak Analysis
By Douglas Farah

To build on my CTB colleague Walid Phares recent post, there is another missing element in the analysis of the Taliban's recent advances in Pakistan.

It is the concept or religious precept of taqiyya in Islam and fully embraced by radical Islamists (including the Muslim Brotherhood.

It blesses the concept of disguising one's beliefs, intentions, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions or strategies from the enemy and the infidel. In practical terms it is manifested as dissimulation, lying, deceiving, vexing and confounding with the intention of deflecting attention, foiling or pre-emptive blocking. See this paper for a deeper look at what the term implies.

So, when the Taliban negotiates certain terms of its taking over parts of Pakistan and promises certain behaviors in return for limited power there, they have no intention of keeping to the terms of the agreement.

Under the terms of taqiyya, such behavior, which we widely view as duplicitous, is simply part of the accepted ways to spread sharia law and the caliphate. It has no moral consequence except to raise the esteem of the practitioner of this art in the eyes of his cohorts. My
April 24, 2009 11:31 AM Link http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/another_missing_element_in_the.php