Oh, right. Speaking as someone who’s actually read the damn Koran, let’s have a lesson. The doctrine of “taqqiya” is based on Sura 3:28: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers. If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them.”
Contemporary Islamic scholarship suggests that the primary message here is that one is encouraged to maintain friendships within the religion first–similar sentiments are found in Orthodox Jewish thought, in point of fact. One is only permitted, and this is coming from the highest-ranking cleric in freakin’ Iraq (Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani), to lie about your status as a Muslim under taqqiya if you are either A) in fear of persecution for your religion or B) if you are working to engender peace between yourself and non-Muslims who fear Islam. Note that taqqiya, at least as expressly practiced by Shiites, is limited to saying "I am not a Muslim.
For the record, al-Sistani is a pretty progressive guy–he’s issued edicts that among other things, Muslim women in Iraq are compelled to vote even if their husbands are backwards and forbid it. He’s consistently worked to keep elections free and fair, and asks that the Shiites do not retaliate in kind against Sunni Salafist terrorist attacks. He’s also pretty stridently opposed to the spread of fundamentalist Wahabbist Islam.
Hell, some of the Wahabbists have referred to him as an atheist, which is a good enough endorsement for me.
Let’s see, he’s also ruled that Christians and Jews must be treated as ritually pure by those Muslims who are sufficiently orthodox that it’s important to not, for example, eat with a person who is ritually unclean. Hell, he’s in favor of birth control and rules that it’s acceptable for pious Muslim women.
Finally, he’s been quoted as saying that he views Islam and the Quran as “providing of values and guidelines for social order”, instead of “Instead of rule by Islamic clerics or ‘The Quran as constitution’”.
But I suppose in your worldview, Valteron, everything known about this man, including his disputes and calling out of his ostensible co-religionists who are committing acts of terror or spreading fundamentalism, are all “taqqiya” and he secretly wants to burqa up your women and forcibly convert your shaggy ass to Islam. I did in fact type out all his credentials just to see what you’d say about seeing one of the actual faces of modern Islam, in Iraq no less.