Kafir
[14][15] One type of kafir is a mushrik (مشرك), another group of religious wrongdoer mentioned frequently in the Quran and other Islamic works.
[12] Historically, while Islamic scholars agreed that a mushrik was a kafir, they sometimes disagreed on the propriety of applying the term to Muslims who committed a grave sin or the People of the Book.
[10][11] The Quran distinguishes between mushrikūn and People of the Book, reserving the former term for idol worshippers, although some classical commentators considered the Christian doctrine to be a form of shirk.
[20] The act of declaring another self-professed Muslim a kafir is known as takfir,[21] a practice that has been condemned but also employed in theological and political polemics over the centuries.
[24][23][25]: 470 Dhimmis were exempt from certain duties specifically assigned to Muslims if they paid the jizya poll tax, but otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation according to some scholars,[26][27][28] whereas others state religious minorities subjected to the status of dhimmis (such as Hindus, Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Gnostics, Mandeans, and Zoroastrians) were inferior to the status of Muslims in Islamic states.
[24][29][30][31][32] In 2019, Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest independent Islamic organization, issued a proclamation urging Muslims to refrain from using the word kafir to refer to non-Muslims because the term is both offensive and perceived as "theologically violent".
[33][34] The word kāfir is the active participle of the verb كَفَرَ, kafara, from root ك-ف-ر K-F-R.[11] As a pre-Islamic term it described farmers burying seeds in the ground.
[43] The most fundamental sense of kufr in the Quran is 'ingratitude', the willful refusal to acknowledge or appreciate the benefits that God bestows on humankind, including clear signs and revealed scriptures.
[10] According to the E. J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936, Volume 4, the term first applied in the Quran to unbelieving Meccans, who endeavoured "to refute and revile the Prophet".
2:62[45] Charles Adams writes that the Quran reproaches the People of the Book with kufr for rejecting Muhammad's message when they should have been the first to accept it as possessors of earlier revelations, and singles out Christians for disregarding the evidence of God's unity.
[49] Some Muslim thinkers such as Mohamed Talbi have viewed the most extreme Quranic presentations of the dogmas of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus (5:19, 5:75, 5:119) as non-Christian formulas that were rejected by the Church.
[citation needed] Cyril Glasse criticizes the use of kafirun (plural of kafir) to describe Christians as "loose usage".
[16] The Quran distinguishes between mushrikun and People of the Book, reserving the former term for idol worshipers, although some classical commentators considered Christian doctrine to be a form of shirk.
[16] Thus, in the early Islamic debates on free will and theodicy, Sunni theologians charged their Mutazila adversaries with shirk, accusing them of attributing to man creative powers comparable to those of God in both originating and executing actions.
[51] Following destruction of major Hindu temples during the Muslim conquests in South Asia, Hindus and Muslims on the subcontinent came to share a number of popular religious practices and beliefs, such as veneration of Sufi saints and worship at Sufi dargahs, although Hindus may worship at Hindu shrines also.
[53] In the 18th century, followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, known as Wahhabis, believed kufr or shirk was found in the Muslim community itself, especially in "the practice of popular religion": [S]hirk took many forms: the attribution to prophets, saints, astrologers, and soothsayers of knowledge of the unseen world, which only God possesses and can grant; the attribution of power to any being except God, including the power of intercession; reverence given in any way to any created thing, even to the tomb of the Prophet; such superstitious customs as belief in omens and in auspicious and inauspicious days; and swearing by the names of the Prophet, ʿAlī, the Shīʿī imams, or the saints.
[22] The most strict view (that of Kharidji Ibadis, descended from the Kharijites) was that every Muslim who dies having not repented of their sins was considered a kafir.
[58][59] Dhimmī are exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation according to some scholars,[26][27][28] whereas others state that religious minorities subjected to the status of Dhimmī (such as Jews, Samaritans, Gnostics, Mandeans, and Zoroastrians) were inferior to the status of Muslims in Islamic states.
Failure to produce an up-to-date jizya receipt on the request of a Muslim could result in death or forced conversion to Islam of the dhimmī in question.
[60][failed verification] Various types of unbelief recognized by legal scholars include: Muslim belief/doctrine is often summarized in "the Six Articles of Faith",[62] (the first five are mentioned together in the 2:285).
[22] A tolerance toward unbelievers "impossible to imagine in contemporary Christendom" prevailed even to the time of the Crusades, particularly with respect to the People of the Book.
[22] However, there was extensive religious violence in India between Muslims and non-Muslims during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (before the political decline of Islam).
"[81] In 2019, Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest independent Islamic organization in the world, issued a proclamation urging Muslims to refrain from using the word kafir to refer to non-Muslims, as the term is both offensive and perceived to be "theologically violent".
[92] Some of the earliest records of European usage of the word can be found in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) by Richard Hakluyt.
[95] The 16th century explorer Leo Africanus described the Cafri as "negroes", and he also stated that they constituted one of five principal population groups in Africa.
