Dr. Ben Carson’s recent assertion that the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages Muslims “to lie to achieve your goals” has prompted the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler to quote a number of academics to show that the presidential candidate got it wrong:

The word “taqiyya” derives from the Arabic words for “piety” and “fear of God” and indicates when a person is in a state of caution, said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles and a leading authority on Islam.

[…]

“Yes, it is permissible to hide the fact you are Muslim” if a person is under threat, “as long as it does not involve hurting another person,” Abou El Fadl said.

The other academics whom Kessler quotes—including Omid Safi, director of the Duke University Islamic Studies Center, and Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School—make the same argument: yes,taqiyya is in the Koran but it only permits deception in the case of self-preservation, nothing more.

Not exactly.

Although the word taqiyya is related to the Arabic word “piety” and its root meaning is “protect” or “guard against”—and the Koran verses that advocate it (3:28 and 16:106) do so in the context of self-preservation from persecution—that is not the whole story.

None of the academics quoted by Kessler bothered to acknowledge that the Koran is not the only textual source to inform Muslim action.  They ignore the Hadith, the collected words and deeds of Muhammad.  Koran 33:2, for instance, commands Muslims to follow Muhammad’s example, and his example—also known as the prophet’s Sunna—is derived from the many volumes of Hadith.                          source