Deception in Islam: A Foundation for Pragmatic Wariness in the West In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City we have seen an increase in the number of Muslims in the United States. This has created a new subculture in major metropolitan areas of the United States, many of which are closed off to the outside world and institute their own Islamic law, or Shari’a law, within their bounds, ignoring completely the common law that bounds our nation. What is our nation’s response? By and large, politicians afraid to offend any member of their potential constituency echo their cries of racism and support their right to operate outside the confines of our laws. The bottom line is that Islam seeks not to be held in equal esteem with other religions, as outlined in our Constitution, but to become the dominant religious and political force in order to implement a policy of non-tolerance towards non-Muslims and stamp out the presence of all other religions. This essay is not designed to put down Muslims, as I believe that Muslims are overall well-intentioned people. The issue at hand is the greater institution of Islam. There are key aspects of Islam which I believe make it more than practical to be wary of our Muslim counterparts, but the very foundation of all of these aspects of Islam is the exercise of the concept of Al-Taqiyya, which can be translated accurately as “dissimulation.” In this piece I will endeavor to stray from the strong eschatological evidence for maintaining at least a leery distance from Islam, as it pertains primarily to those who subscribe to a religious base, though one would be remiss in ignoring the mountains of evidence in Islam’s propensity to clash with western values found in the Qoran, the Suna’a, and the Hadith (Islam’s holy books: The readings/recitations, the teachings, and the