[lit-ideas] Re: Takiyyah
- From: Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 14:28:09 -0500
Thanks, Austin for your long and thoughtful post.
"We have been talking about a religious concept of
Takiyyah, according to which the Shi'a Moslem
considers it to be good, and appropriate, to lie
to a person of another faith so long as the lie
benefits a Shi'a Moslem, or is of benefit to Shi'a
Islam in general."
Don't we privilege this practice by referring to
it as a "truth culture"? It's lying. Non-Muslim
people lie for exactly the same reasons. Lawyers,
for example, are tasked with defending their
clients, and consider it good and appropriate to
position and shape statements that benefit their
clients.
To call it a culture seems to give it a status it
doesn't deserve. To say, "All Cretans are liars"
doesn't make the lies into non-lies. Doesn't it
make sense to talk about different attitudes
toward lying?
Further, isn't the example of lying you give more
a linguistic convention lie?
If you tell the annoying stranger that your father
"is not at home," it really means he "is not at
home" for the stranger. A more direct, non-lying,
linguistic convention would be the old-fashioned
Britishism, "My father is not receiving visitors
at the moment."
And aren't there a wide variety of lies? From the
lies we tell ourselves and aren't even aware of,
to the lies that are tacitly assumed to mean
something else, there's a big stretch.
Eric
(as far as you know)
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