In Islam, there are two ways that a Muslim may express his consent to an action or deed. The first is by declaring it. The second is by non-declaration. This goes back to, most interestingly, one of the most infamous events in early Islamic history- when Mohammed said he was permitted to marry (i.e. molest) Aisha, who was six years old at the time:
Narrated ‘Aisha: Allah’s Apostle said, “It is essential to have the consent of a virgin (for the marriage). I said, “A virgin feels shy.” The Prophet; said, “Her silence means her consent.” Some people said, “If a man falls in love with an orphan slave girl or a virgin and she refuses (him) and then he makes a trick by bringing two false witnesses to testify that he has married her, and then she attains the age of puberty and agrees to marry him and the judge accepts the false witness and the husband knows that the witnesses were false ones, he may consummate his marriage.” (source)
In this example, Aisha did not directly say that she consented to Mohammed’s advances- her lack of an answer was her consent.
Interestingly, this technique was on display in an Editorial piece published in the Washington Times entitled Stop asking me to condemn terrorists just because I’m Muslim. The writer, Rana Elmir, is a Muslim and deputy director of the ACLU’s Michigan Chapter. Notice also that she said “Terrorists” and not “terrorism” in the title of her article. Via the Washington Post:
Rana Elmir
As an American Muslim, I am consistently and aggressively asked — by media figures, religious leaders, politicians and Internet trolls — to condemn terrorism to prove my patriotism.
I emphatically refuse.
Not surprisingly, she attempts to redirect the question by saying that because she was never asked to condemn other violent incidents, she does not need to condemn one involving Muslims. This then turns into a condemnation of “American nativism,” which is a code phrase for “racism” or “discrimination,” as the reason why people are asking her to apologise.
Therefore, just as I have never been asked to condemn Dylann Storm Roof’s attack on parishioners of a historic black church in South Carolina, Robert Dear’s attack on a Planned Parenthood facility, the murder of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, or the slaughter of moviegoers in Colorado or Louisiana, I will not be bullied into condemning terror perpetrated by psychopaths who misrepresent and distort Islam for their deranged purposes.
Not surprisingly, nativist rhetoric and policies targeting American Muslims always start with the same feral calls for condemnation. Asking us to apologize for violence that has orphaned generations of Muslims has the perverse effect of re-victimizing us by erasing our humanity and experiences. There is no other acceptable scenario in which the media, politicians and even our president would urge and expect victims to apologize publicly and rout out the ideology that contributed to their own persecution.
Toward the end of her piece, she suggests that condemning terrorism is useless and should not be done because the evil “white men” alluded to in her article are just full of hate and will never listen:
But these calls for condemnation serve only zealots who will never be satisfied. They thrive and profit off of the fear-mongering, hate and violence generated by othering and silencing an entire community who has lived and contributed to our nation since its founding.
…
But terrorism is not mine. I will not claim it, not even through an apology.
This article is an excellent example of how deception, commonly known as taqiyya (although I would say this is more accurately a form of kitman, as kitman involves the use of ambiguous statements to conceal true intentions) works with the Islamic concept of consent to deceive the unassuming public.
Nowhere does she say that she supports terrorism explicitly. She does make certain true statements about how Muslims are (understandably) not trusted by the greater non-Muslim American society. She opines throughout the article that she feels that she should not have to continually apologize for the actions of others. At most, she says that the terrorism caused by ISIS “and other groups is just as foreign to me as the terror advanced by mostly white men at the alarming rate of one mass killing every two weeks in this country”, which again attempts to re-direct the emphasis from Muslims to “white men.”
But nowhere in her article does she say that she explicitly condemns Islamic terrorism.
This is the reason why she is so angry and uncomfortable about condemning terrorism by Muslims, and instead tries to talk about issues unrelated to this topic. Unless she condemns terrorism explicitly, her answer is simply word gymnastics to prevent her from giving a direct answer- it is the same technique used by politicians where they answer by not answering (i.e. “That’s a great question, which reminds me of…” kind of answer). Her refusal to directly condemn the terrorism is her consent to it just as was Aisha’s silence to Mohammed her consent to his advances.
Remember: Unless there is a direct, explicit, clear answer (like a simple YES or NO), silence is consent.
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