“Taqiyya, taqiyya, taqiyya. Liars, liars, liars.”

This is precisely what anti-Muslim haters vomit forth when they talk about Muslims. It is as if the term has become the only word for such haters which repeats itself much like that which takes place with a stuck record. It is truly amazing how many anti-Muslim haters feel empowered because they manage to mention this term or worst still, try to interpret what it actually means. In fact, spelling the word may give the perpetrator a sense of achievement, possibly because by regurgitating a foreign sounding term, they somehow understand terminology that Muslims use, or at least that is what they believe. To such individuals, Muslims sit around talking about taqiyya whilst eating their family size KFC chicken buckets.

It is also as if by saying the term, these haters know Muslims, so beware you Hijab and Niqab wearing ladies; what they are trying to say is ‘we get it, we know what you are thinking.’ In fact, not only is this so far from the truth, it actually reflects on the perpetrator stating the term. That they are more than likely, prejudiced anti-Muslim bigots who like nothing better than to live in a fantasy world in which they thrive on fear and insecurity.

So let us review this term. Wikipedia gives a fairly accurate description of the term which was developed because of Shia persecution and it provided dispensation to those Shias who were under the real threat of death and only in those circumstances. It was a way of preserving life rather than losing it when the community was under the mortal danger of persecution and targeted hate and intolerance many hundreds of years ago. This was the context in which this concept was born and anyone suggesting that Shia communities as a whole lie and cheat for the wider goal of self-preservation in the UK must either be seeing things that the rest of us don’t or maybe they live in different planes of consciousness compared to the rest of us.

Thankfully, there is no Shia persecution in the UK and there is no grand plan to take over the UK, though we are realists. We know that those who truly believe that taqiyya is a theological ‘say what you want’ ticket, are more than likely to believe that Muslims, as a whole, are not to be trusted. You see, within this extreme, mainly Far Right ideology, the caricaturing of a group of people seems to be the norm, a reality which is re-enforced time and time again as perpetrators search out and consume on-line material that simply says what they want to hear. In effect, this self re-enforcement of extreme anti-Muslim ideas and terms means that any critical thinking is snuffed out and the concepts are not seen as the bigoted, irrational, delusional and paranoid nonsense that they are.

Furthermore, imagine saying this about any other faith – that a whole group of people are potential liars and are religiously sanctioned to lie so that they can gain positions of power. We heard this nonsense before and it was circulated by the National Socialists in the early 1930’s when they talked about integrated German Jewish communities, many of whom had served and given their lives in military service for Germany in the Great War of 1914-1918. In fact, the dehumanization of people by the targeted use of language was written about just a few days ago by the Chief Executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and her words should be a clarion and wake-up call for those of us who work against intolerance, hate and bigotry in the United Kingdom.

Lastly, remember, if you hear the term taqiyya thrown at you, it really says more about the person saying this bigoted anti-Muslim term. Your response may well be, ‘get some help.’