Bismillāh
وَلَا تَلْبِسُوا الْحَقَّ بِالْبَاطِلِ وَتَكْتُمُوا الْحَقَّ وَأَنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ
Do not mix the truth with falsehood, nor conceal the truth while you know.
Surat al-Baqarah, No. 2, Āyat 42
During the time of the Prophet (s), the leaders of other faiths recognized him and knew that he was sent by Allah. They had read the signs in their own scriptures. But they feared losing their positions and institutions, and that fear prevented them from accepting the new faith and its leader. They did not just reject Islam; they made sure their followers rejected it too. To protect their status, they had to convince their people that this new religion was false and its prophet an imposter.
The verse above describes one of the ways they misled their people. They mixed up truth with falsehood. In Tafsīr Tasnīm, Āyatullāh Javādī Āmulī explains that the word تَلْبِسُوا can carry more than one meaning. It can mean to confuse or mix up, in which case the command is “do not make the truth confused or mixed up with falsehood.” It can also mean to cover, in which case the command is “do not cloak the truth in falsehood and so hide it.” People then see only the covering (falsehood) and not see the thing covered (truth).
The leaders of that time used two strategies;
- They dressed truth in the garments of falsehood, distorting it so that people would not incline towards it.
- They adorned falsehood in the garments of truth, embellishing it so that their people would stay with it.
Both strategies present an exterior that contradicts the inner reality. They are layers of hypocrisy that show truth as falsehood at one moment and falsehood as truth at another. The Quran exposes such people, elsewhere telling the Prophet (s) that they pervert words from their meanings and have forgotten part of what they were reminded of, and that he will not cease to learn of some of their treachery, except for a few of them (5:13).
Āyatullāh Javādī gives examples of both strategies. The earlier scriptures warned about false prophets, but they also gave good news of a Prophet who would come with the truth, along with the signs by which he could be recognized. The leaders of those faiths classed the Prophet of Islam (s) among the false prophets they had been warned about. The signs he carried were ignored and buried under false accusations.
The same approach, mixing truth with falsehood and falsehood with truth so that people never reach the pure truth, is still used today, and for various reasons. Some people are themselves confused. Others have an agenda to keep people from seeing the whole truth. Others act from a colonial mentality that fears that knowing the truth will liberate people and make them resist every form of falsehood. Throughout history, leaders, politicians, and speakers have used their positions to distort the truth, and they do it cleverly so that people do not see through it. As Imam Ali (a) says:
If falsehood had been pure and unmixed it would not be hidden from those who are in search of it. And if truth had been pure without admixture of wrong those who bear hatred towards it would have been silenced. What is, however, done is that something is taken from here and something from there and the two are mixed. (Nahjul Balāghah, Sermon 50).
May the Almighty give us the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood and to see through those who seek to distort it.
Sources: Āyatullāh Javādī Āmulī, Tafsīr Tasnīm (https://eheyat.com)