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The doctrinally sanctioned lying in Islam is subject to much debate and confusion. Some claim that it is almost non-existent, limited only to the minority Shia sect. Others, that all Muslims routinely lie, even to each other. Neither are exactly true, but each has at least one foot in the truth.
While religiously sanctioned deception in Islam takes many forms and names, taqiyya is the name everyone is familiar with, even though it strictly only refers to Shia doctrine. Numerous fatwas and scriptural sources, meanwhile, lay out the many circumstances in which Muslims may indulge in what would normally be regarded as a sin. Generally, lying is excused in the case of what we would call ‘white lies’: little lies intended to lubricate the social gears, or, more ominously, to gain a strategic upper hand over enemies, unbelievers especially, by lulling them into false trust.
Exactly how the latter works is amply illustrated by many recent cases, where Muslims have sought to infiltrate the West. Sometimes with the worst intentions.
Federal officials on Sunday revealed to Fox News Digital that immigration agents arrested a suspected illegal immigrant who allegedly entered the United States under a “fraudulent” asylum claim before later becoming employed as a taxpayer-funded corrections officer in Portland, Indiana.
Investigators later discovered he had married a woman. Not just any woman, either: the daughter of the county sheriff, whose office then hired him as a corrections officer at the Jay County Jail in Indiana. “His pending asylum application is believed to be fraudulent,” DHS noted with magnificent understatement. He is now in ICE custody pending deportation.
This is not an isolated case. A whistleblowing asylum seeker, Iraqi Kurd Bilal Jaf, told the Express that faking conversion to Christianity or claiming to be homosexual or transgender has become a well-known tactic among certain migrant groups to secure the right to stay in Britain.
“The best way to get a paper [giving you the legal right to stay] in Europe is if you can convert from Muslim to Christian,” he told the Express. “If they know you are atheist and convert there it’s not [as effective]. They will visit a church until they get a paper [to stay in Britain]. After that they don’t care and don’t go.
“The second way [to boost claims] is to change their sexuality to be gay or lesbian or to say they identify [as a different gender].”
Immigration tribunal decisions examined by the Telegraph reveal repeated instances where judges found that church leaders had accepted conversion claims with insufficient scrutiny. In one case, a vicar claimed to have had “in-depth” conversations with an Iranian convert baptised five weeks after arrival. The migrant later told authorities he had barely spoken to the clergyman. In another, a judge ruled that a young Iranian had misled a pastoral assistant at an evangelical church in Wiltshire. The migrant could not even name the church. Judges have noted a pattern of uncritical acceptance by some clergy.
This tilty-headed gullibility has consequences. Afghan Abdul Shokoor Ezedi, for instance, tried to bolster his previously unsuccessful asylum claims by professing conversion to Christianity. His criminal record in Britain included sexual assault, indecent exposure and, horrifically, an acid attack on a mother and child. Emad Al Swealmeen made the same claims, before trying to blow up a hospital in Liverpool.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Apostasy remains a capital offence under most schools of Islamic jurisprudence. In many Muslim-majority countries, attempting to convert Muslims is itself a crime. A sudden, convenient profession of Christian faith by someone facing deportation therefore demands rigorous verification, not reflexive belief.
The too-ready acceptance by many Christian clergy of these claims is a textbook example of what psychologist Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy” – the reflexive instinct to assume the best of everyone, especially those presenting as victims, even when the evidence points the other way. Many people desperately want to believe that all asylum seekers are ‘nice’ and that any claim of persecution must be genuine. That instinct is being systematically exploited.
There is also a glaring cognitive dissonance in the frequent claim that homosexual Muslim asylum seekers face unique danger in their home countries. If Islam were genuinely as “LGBT friendly” as some activists insist, there would be no need for such claims in the first place. The two narratives cannot both be true.
It may well be that some homosexuals and genuine Christian converts are fleeing Muslim countries and deserve protection. Such people have a genuine claim to shelter. But when the evidence shows repeated, documented cases of fraudulent claims, then a higher standard of scepticism is not bigotry. It is basic self-preservation.
Western institutions, from immigration tribunals to church hierarchies, have been repeatedly played. Continuing to treat every claim at face value is not compassion. It is gullibility with foreseeable consequences.
