Islam teaches that lying is acceptable, when it is done to:
- Save oneself
Unless the lie involves denying Islam/“false converting”, in which case jurists are divided on whether it is a sin.
Islam teaches that lying is a duty, both in word and in action (even if one must deny Islam, drink alcohol, eat pork, fornicate, so on and so forth) and is honourable when it is done to:
- Save one’s family.
- Protect the ummah (all Muslims/the Muslim religion)
- To further the interests in any way of the ummah.
This is commonly called in the West by the name
taqiya, and, although in Egypt I did not hear it called by that name, the practice was the same. Now, look closely at (3): lying is a
duty when it furthers the interest of the Islamic religion; therefore, lying (more accurately, “bending the truth” or being a heavy spin-doctor) is a duty when talking to unbelievers about the Shariah, jihad, the proper interpretation of the Koran and applications of
naskh and al-nasikh wa mansukh (or
anything else which may reflect poorly on the Islamic religion or decrease the desire of individuals to convert: think of the American Army Recruiting Officer, who will say almost anything to get one to sign up).
Naskh is a hermeneutical or exegetical principle which is most widely known for effecting the abrogation of supposedly peaceful verses, or verses allowing alcohol in moderation, or any contradictory verses, by verses which are chronologically later - Surah 9 is considered the latest surah in the Koran, surah 5 the second-latest (with a few statements, such as ayah 32, coming from Muhammad’s farewell address), so any statements in these two surat, as a rule, over-ride and abrogate any other contradictory statement in the Koran.
I don’t know where the question about lying, specifically, came from, but I learned it, as I learned most of my Islamic knowledge, from professors at al-Azhar in Cairo (I was a dawi, or Islamic apologist/proselytizer, and a student of the “Islamic sciences”, i.e. the science of ahadith, the science of tafsir, the science of fiqh), and especially from Faqih Hafidh Amin al-Badawi, professor at said university, who traced his lineage all the way through Sheikh al-Islam Nawawi himself.
Such matters and rulings can be confirmed in the book
Umdat al-Salik, which is the standard manual of Shafi’i fiqh, and which has been translated in to English under the name of
Reliance of the Traveller by apostate and convert to Islam, fellow Shafi’i jurist, Nuh Ha Mim Keller.
Shafi’i are not the most conservative nor the most liberal of the four (or five) madhahib (schools of fiqh). About half of all Muslims are Hanafi, which are the most liberal in many ways (this liberalism would be such conservatism even in Fundamentalist Christianity that one would be considered a loon, for a culturally-relative “liberal-conservative” spectrum placement), and the strictest in food laws. Shafi’i is just a bit less liberal, along with Maliki, in different ways (about 1/4 of Muslims are Shafi’i and about 1/10 Maliki), and the most conservative of the traditional schools are the Hanbali, of which about 1/5 of Muslims are, at least nominally. However, Hanbalism has a decent sized overlap with Salafism/Wahhabism (ultra-conservative Islam: the level of conservatism implied is not one that I can express, in a way that a Western mind can understand, as even our most reactionary conservatism is rank liberalism in comparison - it is foreign to the post-Enlightenment Western mind), which, if counted as a maddhab (it normally is not), is the most conservative.
Note, as I have tried to imply above, that “conservative” and “liberal” are relative terms, and as used above, have no relation whatsoever in any way, shape, sense, or form to the way those terms are used in Western political discourse. They indicate, moreover, the level of literalism in interpretation of the Koran (Wahhabis literally believe that Allah has nineteen right hands and nine eyes, etc., by merely enumerating the times each aspect is listed in the Koran - at the same time, they claim such is not an anthropomorphism, and that the world was created in
both six and eight days [the Koran includes two contradictory creation stories]: thus, their hermeneutical principle,
bi la kayfa - “without asking the how or the why”, whereas Hanafi, Shafi’i, and Maliki allow for some inclusion of context and, something kind of analogous to what Christian exegetes would call “literary form”* in interpretation), the strictness of the application of the whole Shariah, the proper penalties, when dispensations can be granted, and similar matters.
*I say “somewhat analogous”, as, since every single syllable of the Koran is directly co-eternal with and uttered by Allah from all eternity (completely analogous to how Christ is co-eternal with Jehovah God), they admit no such things as literary forms proper - it is considered
qiyas, or analogy - not to be confused with the method for deriving new laws from old ahadith that goes by the same name.
