A Concise Guide to the Quran by Ayman S. Ibrahim

Author:Ayman S. Ibrahim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Islam;Qur’an;REL037000;REL017000;REL041000
ISBN: 9781493429288
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Are Jews and Christians Infidels?

In Islam, an infidel is an unbeliever. Infidel is mostly known through its Arabic form: kafir. No one should want to be identified as a kafir because of the stigma attached to the term. It emphasizes an individual’s exclusion from the believing community of Muslims. People are either believers or infidels (Q 64:2). Not surprisingly, some Sunnis and Shiites view each other as infidels, as they do not agree on specific religious teachings. While non-Muslims are by default infidels, learned Muslims are very careful not to label any Muslim a kafir. The label can get a Muslim murdered, as they are viewed as apostates.

You may wonder whether the members of ISIS are regarded as believers or infidels. This is a problematic question for Muslims. In December 2014, ISIS was very visible on the worldwide scene of radical terrorism. Muslims had to wrestle with the fact that the terrorist organization had performed all kinds of atrocities in the name of the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. The Azhar, the Egyptian university that is the seat of Sunni Islam, organized a two-day conference titled “Fighting Extremism and Terrorism” and invited Muslims from all over the world to attend. Everyone hoped for a good outcome, including the denunciation of ISIS and its atrocities against non-Muslims. At one point, a Muslim cleric attending the conference called on conference leaders to declare ISIS and its members infidels, as “a Muslim who fights another Muslim is an infidel.”1 This created a huge dispute among the Muslim leaders, as they rejected the idea of referring to a Muslim as an infidel. The Azhar released a statement: “We cannot infidelize a Muslim regardless of his sins.”2 For the Azhar, anyone who recites the Islamic creed—“There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger”—must be considered a Muslim. This statement is called the Shahada in Arabic—that is, the testimony. Anyone can state it to become a Muslim. People can be Muslims without having “true faith” in their hearts, as long as they state the Shahada. Thus, regardless of ISIS’s evil deeds, the Azhar considered its warriors to be true believers. In its official statement, the Azhar affirmed that ISIS’s acts were unacceptable but stated that Muslims can be identified as infidels only if they reject the oneness of Allah and the prophethood of Muhammad (i.e., denounce the Shahada). The Azhar’s response was troubling to many, especially to Middle Eastern Christians and Jews, who are usually labeled infidels by many of their Muslim neighbors. This raises a question: Does the Quran identify Jews and Christians as infidels? Let’s examine the text.

The Quran identifies Muslims as believers. They are not infidels. The Quran warns Muslims, “The infidels are your manifest enemies” (Q 4:101). They are the enemies of Allah, his angels, and his apostles (Q 2:98; 4:37). Satan is one of the infidels (Q 2:34; 38:74). Muslims “are not to take infidels for friends instead of believers” (Q 3:28), because “Allah does not love the infidels” (Q 3:32).

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