The recent bombing of a Christian hospital in the West Bank has resulted in a controversy, as Hamas has blamed Israel for the bombing.

Watching the controversy unfold has been fascinating, as details came out that show that matters may be far different from what Hamas has claimed.

For one thing, the hospital has not been bombed. It wasn’t even damaged. The bomb went off in a parking lot. The death toll of about 500 may have been exaggerated. What’s more, it’s looking likely that Israel is not responsible for the bombing, but it’s becoming increasingly evident that the bomb was an attempt on the part of Hamas to launch a rocket, which backfired.

In spite of all the evidence that’s adding up that goes against the Hamas narrative, their sympathizers have flown into a frenzy, storming embassies, and Hamas leadership has called for yet another “day of rage” to be observed around the world, with a clear implication of blind idiocy that’s on brand for that particular faction.

How Hamas handles truth is yet another illustration for why the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas is yet another manifestation of an ongoing clash of cultures and civilizations that are totally incompatible with one another.

As a disclaimer, I’ll point out now that the purpose of this post is to inform and increase understanding. Sometimes, achieving this requires pointing to matters that may be uncomfortable to consider. This can sometimes be necessary to get to the truth of a matter.

To get started, let’s consider how Christianity views lying. It’s impermissible. The Bible tells us that liars will have no place in the kingdom of Heaven. God Himself is incapable of lying, doing so would be against His nature. Lies are considered by Christians to be beneath the dignity of God. Christians are so firmly against lying that, if given the option to tell a lie that could save someone’s life, they’d still worry about whether it was the right thing to do.

The Islamic religion, which is the religion of Hamas, handles lying differently.

In the Islamic religion, there is a concept called taqiyya. The word itself literally means “prudence” or “fear”, but has come to refer to “feigning unbelief”, or more broadly, it’s considered to be “divine lying”.

Basically, in the Islamic religion, it is considered permissible to tell a lie if that lie were to further the cause of the Islamic religion, such as it’s expansion.

In practice, Muslims have used taqiyya to appear to be Christian, even going as far as undergoing the Christian practice of baptism, while concealing their sincere belief as a Muslim. Others have used the concept to deny that certain practices are Islamic if those practices are against the sensibilities of their host society.

There’s an enormous and fatal problem with the concept of taqiyya. That being, the concept of a god that considers it acceptable to lie should be horrifying to you. After all, if that god tells you that it’s permissible to lie, how do you know that that god isn’t lying to you?

Such a god may tell you that doing something would guarantee your entry into heaven, when the act might be so immoral that the person who does so might instead go straight to hell!

Like with the concept of the “suicide bomb”, where a Muslim attempts to ensure that they’ll die in battle, because they want those 72 virgins. They’d be little aware that the Islamic prophet Mohammad was so opposed to suicide that he wrote a passage ridiculing a Muslim man who committed suicide, but that’s beside the point. We all know that murder is immoral. Of course, even murder can be forgiven. But suppose that murder is a person’s final act, and they didn’t seek or want forgiveness. A suicide bomb would ensure that, for the killer, this would be the case.

Returning to my point, if a god tells you how to stay out of hell, but they say that lying is permitted, how do you know that you can trust anything that that god says? After all, they said that lying is okay, so they might be lying to you!

Knowing what Hamas believes about taqiyya, or lying, consider the choice that Hamas is faced with. On the one hand, they could admit that one of their rockets misfired, destroying a parking lot, and in so doing they inspire less confidence on the global stage. On the other hand, they could say that a nearby hospital was destroyed, killing hundreds, blame Israel, and call for Islamic militants the world over to lash out in furtherance of their cause.

It looks like they’ve already made their choice. And with the Islamic practice of taqiyya, most of what they say can be counted on to be self-serving.

Now, here’s where it gets really uncomfortable. Once you know about Islamic taqiyya, when you’re speaking with a Muslim about their religion, it’s possible that they may be lying to you. It’s possible that they believe what they’re telling you, but they themselves may have been lied to. In any case, it’s likely that you can’t take their word for it, as much of what Muslims say about their religion is curated to serve the religion’s interests.

As sobering as that may be in consideration of your interactions with Muslims, the implications are much worse for Muslims themselves. After all, in line with the point I made above, you can never trust a god who tells you that lying is permissible. What’s more, in their religion, they’re not so much concerned with what they say, but with the sincerity with which they say it.

For example, one can convert to Islam at the drop of a hat by reciting the shahada with sincerity, the shahada being a specific phrase that expresses monotheism and Mohammad’s prophethood. But the problem is, how does anyone but the speaker have an awareness of a person’s sincerity?

What’s more, in the Islamic religion, it’s considered an unpardonable sin to ascribe companions to the Islamic god, Allah, whom Muslims suppose is the same as the Christian God. If someone says that they are a Christian, they are saying that Jesus is the Son of God. How are Muslims sure that their god would forgive them for saying something that he said he would not pardon them for saying? Does the doctrine of taqiyya extend to some phrases and not others? And if sincerity is taken into consideration, how is another Muslim within earshot to know whether someone is being sincere?

These are questions that become all the more sobering when you consider that the religion that practices taqiyya wishes to bring about a worldwide theocratic empire. If the foundation of a society is a lie, the expectation is that society cannot thrive in the long term, which most of the Islamic world certainly hasn’t, where only a few people have prospered, while most people live in abject destitution. What’s more, the world would be a dark place if everyone practiced a religion whose priesthood simply cannot be trusted.

As much as one might like to think that the Israel/Hamas conflict is something that doesn’t affect them, and they can simply ignore, the fact is, it’s another manifestation of a clash of cultures and civilizations that are incompatible, and is already being fought in the U.S. and Europe, whether you realize it or not. Hamas is just one arm of a continuing struggle to bring about a change in society and a change in virtues, right down to every society’s very foundations. As flawed as western civilization may be, humanity is still yet to come up with anything better with its own thinking, and is certainly worth defending.

But if it’s just the truth of any matter that interests you, then your interests certainly don’t align with Hamas.