comes to you a disobedient one with information, investigate, lest you
harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done,
regretful."]Quran 49: 6[
Deception is a necessary tool for the success of wickedness.
Fortunately, most of us are not so corrupted that we could support
naked injustice and brutality, but must be, to one extent or another,
fooled into supporting it once it is camouflaged in an illusion of
justice and benevolence.
While it is certainly true that the art of deception has become
tremendously sophisticated and indeed, pervasive, in modern society;
it is equally true that the fundamental nature of deception, that is,
the types of tricks generally used, the methods, the aims, and the
qualities that make people susceptible to deception, have not really
changed in millennia.
The various forms of deceit and manipulation that provide the basis
for modern propaganda and public relations ruses are pointed out by
Allaah Almighty in the Quran in numerous passages, providing the
believers of all eras with the means by which to inoculate themselves
against being fooled, misled, and deceived into accepting a distorted
version of reality.
Let us examine only a few select examples of the tactics of deceit
exposed in the various stories Allaah narrates in the Quran to warn
and instruct the believers, and hence concentrate on only two
particularly relevant and informative cases.
The treachery of Yousuf )Joseph( brothers
Two of the most audacious and sinister, and in many respects, modern,
instances of lying occur in the story of Prophet Yousufand these will
be the focus of our analysis.
Yousuf's brothers, envious of their father Yaqoob's )Jacob(great love
for Yousufplotted to kill or expel him. Allaah narrates to us that
they said )what means(:"Kill Yousuf or cast him out to ]another[ land;
the countenance of your father will ]then[ be only for you..."]Quran
12: 9[
Yaqoobapparently was wary of his other sons' intentions toward Yousuf;
earlier warning the young boy not to relate to them the prophetic
dream he had for fear that they would become jealous; and they
themselves refer to Yaqoob'sdestruct of them, and this provides our
first example of deceit:
Allaah Says )what means(:"They said, 'O our father, why do you not
entrust us with Yousuf while indeed, we are to him sincere
counselors?'"]Quran 12: 11[
This statement alone demonstrates two of the cleverest and most
frequently employed techniques of manipulation, now apparent in
persuasive media from governmental propaganda to product advertising,
and is worth looking at closely.
The brothers begin by insinuating that there is something wrong with
their father; not only suggesting that he does not trust them, but
that this distrust indicates a flaw in his judgment and not in their
trustworthiness. They then declare the purity of their intentions, as
Yousuf's"sincere counselors," thereby, not only self-defining and
defending their own characters, but also making the idea of their
untrustworthiness all the more apparently offensive; intensifying the
underlying rebuke of their fatherwho, it should be mentioned, has
actually said nothing until now about distrusting them. They have
begun with an accusation, immediately seeking to create a defensive
posture in their fathera feeling perhaps of guilt, that will incline
him to grant them their request if only to prove their accusation
untrue.
This technique is so widely applied in modern society that it can
scarcely be catalogued. Whether it can be observed on the scale on the
national politics where, for instance, a population is perhaps
persuaded that they are unsafe or threatened, and should acquiesce to
certain restrictive policy measures of the state, which after all, is
only tying to protect them; or whether it is applied in so mundane a
matter as product advertising where consumers are convinced that they
have bad breath, body odor, or insufficiently white teeth, all of
which 'faults' can only be corrected by purchasing merchandise; the
tactic is the same.
Having declared themselves to be good-intentioned and trustworthy, the
brothers then suggest that Yaqooballow them to take Yousuf,away with
them, to allow him to 'play' and 'enjoy' himself; more subtly
affirming their status as 'well-wisher's', even as they are seeking to
create the circumstances that will allow them to harm Yousuf. They
reiterate to their fathera more specific assurance that they are to
their prophet brother"good guardians." They have so framed their
request to take Yousufaway that for Yaqoobto refuse would be a direct,
and apparently unjustified, condemnation of their character.
The wolf
The reason given by Yaqoobfor not allowing Yousuf's brothers to take
him with them was that hefeared they would neglect him and hewould be
left alone and attacked by a wolf. We will see that Yousuf's brothers
subsequently use this pre-existing fear to diver suspicion from
themselves and what they have done to Yousuf; unknowingly, Yaqoobhas
provided them with not only the means to carry out their plot against
Yousufbut also the means by which to conceal it. After they have
dropped their brother in the well, as we know, they return to
Yaqooband validate for him what hehad feared; that Yousufhad been
attacked by a wolf; thereby making even less likely the chances of
being exposed. They tell him what hewas ready to believe, activating
the pre-existing fear, thus preemptively canceling out any inquiry
into what happened.
Once again, this tactic of manipulation is an almost ever-present
facet of modern social engineering and the propaganda system. An
important difference, of course, is that the fear of the proverbial
'wolf' in modern societies is more often than not a manufactured fear,
not one that is present naturally, but one that has been created,
promoted in the public, unlike the quite realistic and rational fear
of Yaqoob. Nevertheless, the exploitation of this fear is identical.
We can look for instance, at the entire Cold War period to find
numerous examples of the manipulation of fears, the utility of
pre-existing fears as unquestioned explanations for subsequent events.
We can also, of course, look at more recent history. Once a particular
fear has been established in the public, whether it has been implanted
in them or is in fact a rational anxiety, its existence can serve to
mobilize necessarily irrational blame for nearly any unpleasant
circumstance or happening.
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