In this episode of Raw Islam Podcast, B.C. Dodge and Imam Azhar discuss a scary word: kafir.
B.C. starts by sharing a Twitter exchange he had with a fellow Navy veteran who was shocked to find out he was Muslim. The man asked, “Are you a sharia Muslim or a Quranic Muslim?”
B.C. says, “In my head, I heard, ‘Are you a good witch or are you a bad witch?’ And I’m like, I’m a sandwich—that’s what I’m into.” Out loud, he said, “By your standards, I guess I’m a Quranic Muslim?”
The man then asked, “Don’t you think all infidels have to be killed?” B.C. says, “And I’m like Noooooooo!”
After countering the “which witch” idea with a laugh about sheikhs and shakes (strawberry or chocolate), Imam Azhar gets right down to it.
If you were to Google “What is a kafir,” he points out, you’ll find more from people who don’t understand Islam than from those who do.
Kafir doesn’t mean infidel, and it definitely doesn’t mean a Jew or Christian, he says. Infidel isn’t a correct translation at all. The word kafir comes from the root k-f-r, which means to conceal or cover up. A farmer is a kafir in a way — he’s covering up a seed in the ground.
In the Quran, the word referred to the type of people who would go listen to the Quran in secret but they rejected it in public out of pride. A kafir is someone who knows something, benefits from it, but then denies it, rejects it and condemns it, even works against it.
The Quran doesn’t refer to all people who aren’t Muslim as kafirs. It calls on people as mankind, Jews, Christians, and so on, Imam Azhar says.
“In the sight of Allah, every single human is a creation of Allah,” he says. “God didn’t send us down so we can fight or quarrel … we don’t demonize each other because of those differences.”
He continues, “We as Muslims have no right to call [another] person a kafir, forget retaliating or killing them. In Islam we’re taught to see the other as a human, not to see the other as a kafir.”
Imam Azhar tells a story of meeting a man who spoke his fears: “In ya’ll book I’m an infidel so you all are going to kill my family and burn my farm down.”
The imam points out that there IS one chapter of the Quran that is dedicated to kafirs. It tells the prophet Muhammad how to deal with them — what to say…but you will have to Listen to the podcast to hear what it says?
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.