Taqiyya (alternate spellings taqiya, taqiyah, tuqyah), meaning religious dissimulation, This means a legal dispensation whereby a believing individual can deny his faith or commit otherwise illegal or blasphemous acts while they are under those risks.

This practice emphasized in Shi'a Islam whereby adherents may conceal their religion when they are under threat, persecution, or compulsion.Taqiyya was developed to protect Shi'ites who were usually in minority and under pressure. In the Shi'a view, taqiyya is lawful in situations where there is overwhelming danger of loss of life or property and where no danger to religion would occur thereby.

The majority Sunni Muslims rarely found it necessary to hide their beliefs. However, there are examples of practicing Taqiyya among Sunnis where it was necessary. In the Sunni view, denying your faith under duress is "only at most permitted and not under all circumstances obligatory".

The term taqiyya (Arabic: تقیة‎ taqiyyah/taqīyah) (pronounced as tagiyeh by speakers of Persian) is derived from the Arabic triliteral root waw-qaf-ya, denoting "piety, devotion, uprightness, and godliness, and it means the brightest star". In Arabic taqiyya literally means caution, but came to be used as a technical term by some jurists meaning dissimulation.Kitman is used synonymously and means concealment.

Keith Maurice Ellison (born August 4, 1963) is the U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district, serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. The district centers on Minneapolis. He was re-elected in 2010. Ellison is a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

He is the first Muslim to be elected to the United States Congress. He is also the first African American elected to the House from Minnesota.

Keith Ellison, the third of five sons, was born and raised a Roman Catholic in Detroit, Michigan by his parents Clida (née Martinez) and Leonard Ellison, a social worker and a psychiatrist, respectively. Ellison and three of his siblings became lawyers while the other became a doctor. One of his brothers is also the pastor of the Baptist "Church of the New Covenant" in Detroit. Ellison's youth was influenced by the involvement of his family in the civil rights movement, including the work of his grandfather as a member of the NAACP in Louisiana.

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik (Urdu: ذاکر عبدالکریم نائیک; born 18 October 1965) is an Indian public speaker on the subject of Islam and comparative religion. He is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), a non-profit organisation that owns the Peace TV channel based in Dubai, UAE. He is sometimes referred to as a televangelist. Before becoming a public speaker, he trained as a doctor. He has written two booklets on Islam and comparative religion. He is regarded as an exponent of the Salafi ideology; he places a strong emphasis on individual scholarship and the rejection of "blind Taqlid", which has led him to repudiate the relevance of sectarian or Madh'hab designations, all the while reaffirming their importance.

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik was born on 18 October 1965 in Mumbai, India. He attended St. Peter's High School in Mumbai. Later he enrolled at Kishinchand Chellaram College, before studying medicine at Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital and later the University of Mumbai, where he obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS). His wife, Farhat Naik, works for the women's section of the IRF.