128-451: Political Militant [REDACTED] Islam portal Kafir ( Arabic : كَافِر , romanized : kāfir ; plural: كَافِرُون kāfirūn , كُفَّار kuffār , or كَفَرَة kafara ; feminine: كَافِرَة kāfira ; feminine plural: كَافِرَات kāfirāt or كَوَافِر kawāfir ) is an Arabic term in Islam which refers to a person who disbelieves
256-399: A kafir is known as takfir , a practice that has been condemned but also employed in theological and political polemics over the centuries. A dhimmi or mu'ahid is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection. Dhimmis were exempt from certain duties specifically assigned to Muslims if they paid the jizya poll tax, but otherwise equal under
384-703: 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 . 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 . In modern times, kafir is sometimes applied to self-professed Muslims, particularly by members of Islamist movements . The act of declaring another self-professed Muslim
512-656: A sky deity . The worship of sacred stones constituted one of the most important practices of the Semitic speaking peoples , including Arabs . Cult images of a deity were most often an unworked stone block. The most common name for these stone blocks was derived from the Semitic nsb ("to be stood upright"), but other names were used, such as Nabataean masgida ("place of prostration") and Arabic duwar ("object of circumambulation", this term often occurs in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry ). These god-stones were usually
640-525: A Muslim commits a punishable offense if they say to a Jew or a Christian: "Thou unbeliever". Charles Adams and A. Kevin Reinhart also write that "later thinkers" in Islam distinguished between ahl al-kitab and the polytheists/ mushrikīn . Historically, People of the Book permanently residing under Islamic rule were entitled to a special status known as dhimmī , while those visiting Muslim lands received
768-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
896-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
1024-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
1152-410: A different status known as musta'min . The mushrikun are those who believe in shirk 'association', which refers to accepting other gods and divinities alongside God . The term is often translated as polytheist . 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
1280-589: A form of shirk. Shirk is held to be the worst form of disbelief and it is identified in the Quran as the only sin that God will not pardon ( 4:48 , 4:116 ). Accusations of shirk have been common in religious polemics within Islam. 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. Mu'tazila theologians, in turn, charged
1408-556: A free-standing slab, but Nabataean god-stones are usually carved directly on the rock face. Facial features may be incised on the stone (especially in Nabataea), or astral symbols (especially in South Arabia). Under Greco-Roman influence, an anthropomorphic statue might be used instead. The Book of Idols describes two types of statues: idols ( sanam ) and images ( wathan ). If a statue were made of wood, gold, or silver, after
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#17327730746461536-529: A goddess of love. Manāt ( Arabic : مناة) was the goddess of destiny. Al-Lāt's cult was spread in Syria and northern Arabia. From Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions, it is probable that she was worshiped as Lat ( lt ). F. V. Winnet saw al-Lat as a lunar deity due to the association of a crescent with her in 'Ayn esh-Shallāleh and a Lihyanite inscription mentioning the name of Wadd , the Minaean moon god, over
1664-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
1792-537: A lesser impact in the remainder of the peninsula, but did secure some conversions. With the exception of Nestorianism in the northeast and the Persian Gulf , the dominant form of Christianity was Miaphysitism . The peninsula had been a destination for Jewish migration since Roman times, which had resulted in a diaspora community supplemented by local converts. Judaism had largely grown in South Arabia and
1920-638: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
2048-539: A paraphrase of the tafsir by Ibn Kathir , there are eight kinds of Al-Kufr al-Akbar (major unbelief), some are the same as those described by Al-Hilali ( Kufr-al-I'rad , Kufr-an-Nifaaq ) and some different. In Islam, jahiliyyah ('ignorance') refers to the time of Arabia before Islam . When the Islamic empire expanded, the word kafir was broadly used as a descriptive term for all pagans and anyone else who disbelieved in Islam. Historically,
2176-444: A pre-Islamic god called Ailiah and is similar to El , Il, Ilah , and Jehovah . They also considered some of his characteristics to be seemingly based on lunar deities like Almaqah, Kahl, Shaker, Wadd and Warakh. Alfred Guillaume states that the connection between Ilah that came to form Allah and ancient Babylonian Il or El of ancient Israel is not clear. Wellhausen states that Allah was known from Jewish and Christian sources and
2304-476: A receipt of payment, either in the form of a piece of paper or parchment or as a seal humiliatingly placed upon their neck, and was thereafter compelled to carry this receipt wherever they went within the realms of Islam. 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. Various types of unbelief recognized by legal scholars include: Muslim belief/doctrine
2432-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
2560-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
2688-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
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#17327730746462816-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
2944-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
3072-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
3200-452: Is iman ('faith'), and the opposite of kafir ('disbeliever') is mu'min ('believer'). A person who denies the existence of a creator might be called a dahri . One type of kafir is a mushrik (مشرك), another group of religious wrongdoer mentioned frequently in the Quran and other Islamic works . Several concepts of vice are seen to revolve around the concept of kufr in the Quran. Historically, while Islamic scholars agreed that
3328-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
3456-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
3584-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
3712-517: Is also used in reference to the coast of Africa as "land of Cafraria". 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. He identified their geographical heartland as being located in a remote region of southern Africa, an area which he designated as Cafraria . By the late 19th century,
3840-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
3968-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
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4096-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
4224-590: Is limited. One early attestation of Arabian polytheism was in Esarhaddon 's Annals, mentioning Atarsamain , Nukhay , Ruldaiu , and Atarquruma. Herodotus , writing in his Histories , reported that the Arabs worshipped Orotalt (identified with Dionysus ) and Alilat (identified with Aphrodite ). Strabo stated the Arabs worshipped Dionysus and Zeus . Origen stated they worshipped Dionysus and Urania . Muslim sources regarding Arabian polytheism include
4352-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
4480-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
4608-638: Is often summarized in " the Six Articles of Faith ", (the first five are mentioned together in the 2:285 ). According to the Salafi scholar Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali , " kufr is basically disbelief in any of the articles of faith." He also lists several different types of major disbelief, (disbelief so severe it excludes those who practice it completely from the fold of Islam): Minor disbelief or Kufran-Ni'mah indicates "ungratefulness of God's Blessings or Favours". According to another source,
4736-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
4864-405: Is the active participle of the verb كَفَرَ , kafara , from root ك-ف-ر K-F-R . As a pre-Islamic term it described farmers burying seeds in the ground. One of its applications in the Quran has also the same meaning as farmer. Since farmers cover the seeds with soil while planting, the word kāfir implies a person who hides or covers. Ideologically, it implies a person who hides or covers
4992-540: Is the third of three"), among other verses, has been traditionally understood in Islam as rejection of the Christian doctrine on the Trinity , though modern scholarship has suggested alternative interpretations. Other Quranic verses strongly deny the deity of Jesus Christ , son of Mary and reproach the people who treat Jesus as equal with God as disbelievers who will have strayed from the path of God which would result in
5120-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
5248-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
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5376-436: Is unjust), which makes him a kafir . 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. 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
5504-414: Is used directly 134 times in Quran, its verbal noun kufr is used 37 times, and the verbal cognates of kafir are used about 250 times. By extension of the basic meaning of the root, 'to cover', the term is used in the Quran in the senses of ignore/fail to acknowledge and to spurn/be ungrateful. The meaning of 'disbelief', which has come to be regarded as primary, retains all of these connotations in
5632-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
5760-501: The Mu'tazila believed that there was a status between believer and unbeliever called "rejected" or fasiq . The Kharijites ' view that the self-proclaimed Muslim who had sinned and "failed to repent had ipso facto excluded himself from the community, and was hence a kafir " (a practice known as takfir ) was considered so extreme by the Sunni majority that they in turn declared
5888-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
6016-556: The jinn of west and central Arabia. Unlike jinn in modern times, ginnaye could not hurt nor possess humans and were much more similar to the Roman genius . According to common Arabian belief, soothsayers , pre-Islamic philosophers, and poets were inspired by the jinn. However, jinn were also feared and thought to be responsible for causing various diseases and mental illnesses. Aside from benevolent gods and spirits, there existed malevolent beings. These beings were not attested in
6144-688: The Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (before the political decline of Islam). In their memoirs on Muslim invasions, enslavement and plunder of this period, many Muslim historians in South Asia used the term kafir for Hindus , Buddhists , Sikhs and Jains . Raziuddin Aquil states that "non-Muslims were often condemned as kafirs , in medieval Indian Islamic literature, including court chronicles, Sufi texts and literary compositions" and fatwas were issued that justified persecution of
6272-684: The God in Islam , denies his authority, rejects the tenets of Islam, or simply is not a Muslim —one who does not believe in the guidance of Muhammad , the Islamic prophet . Kafir is often translated as ' infidel ', ' pagan ', 'rejector', ' denier ', 'disbeliever', 'unbeliever', 'nonbeliever', and 'non-Muslim'. The term is used in different ways in the Quran , with the most fundamental sense being ungrateful toward God. Kufr means 'disbelief', 'unbelief', 'non-belief', 'to be thankless', 'to be faithless', or 'ingratitude'. The opposite term of kufr ('disbelief')
6400-598: The Kaaba with them, erected them, and circumambulated them like the Kaaba. This, according to al-Kalbi led to the rise of idol worship. Based on this, it may be probable that Arabs originally venerated stones, later adopting idol-worship under foreign influences. The relationship between a god and a stone as his representation can be seen from the third-century Syriac work called the Homily of Pseudo-Meliton where he describes
6528-777: The Kharijites to be kuffar , following the hadith that declared, "If a Muslim charges a fellow Muslim with kufr , he is himself a kafir if the accusation should prove untrue". Nevertheless, in Islamic theological polemics kafir was "a frequent term for the Muslim protagonist" holding the opposite view, according to Brill's Islamic Encyclopedia . Present-day Muslims who make interpretations that differ from what others believe are declared kafirs ; fatwas (edicts by Islamic religious leaders) are issued ordering Muslims to kill them, and some such people have been killed also. Another group that are "distinguished from
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#17327730746466656-703: The Mahdist War , the Mahdist State used the term kuffar against Ottoman Turks, and the Turks themselves used the term kuffar towards Persians during the Ottoman-Safavid wars . In modern Muslim popular imagination, the dajjal ( Antichrist -like figure) will have k-f-r written on his forehead. However, there was extensive religious violence in India between Muslims and non-Muslims during
6784-542: The Sinai Peninsula . Allāt ( Arabic : اللات) or al-Lāt was worshipped throughout the ancient Near East with various associations. Herodotus in the 5th century BC identifies Alilat ( Greek : Ἀλιλάτ) as the Arabic name for Aphrodite (and, in another passage, for Urania ), which is strong evidence for worship of Allāt in Arabia at that early date. Al-‘Uzzá ( Arabic : العزى) was a fertility goddess or possibly
6912-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
7040-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
7168-399: The "Lord of heaven and Earth". Aaron W. Hughes states that scholars are unsure whether he developed from the earlier polytheistic systems or developed due to the increasing significance of the Christian and Jewish communities, and that it is difficult to establish whether Allah was linked to Rahman. Maxime Rodinson , however, considers one of Allah's names, "Ar-Rahman", to have been used in
7296-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
7424-926: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia included indigenous Arabian polytheism , Buddhism , ancient Semitic religions , Christianity , Judaism , Mandaeism , and Zoroastrianism . Arabian polytheism,
7552-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
7680-423: 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
7808-519: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
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#17327730746467936-779: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
8064-538: The Church. On the other hand, modern scholarship has suggested alternative interpretations of verse Q. 5:73 . Cyril Glasse criticizes the use of kafirun (plural of kafir ) to describe Christians as "loose usage". According to the Encyclopedia of Islam , in traditional Islamic jurisprudence , ahl al-kitab are "usually regarded more leniently than other kuffar [plural of kafir ]" and "in theory"
8192-578: The Last Day and do good, will have their reward with their Lord and they will not fear, nor grieve." 2:62 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. The Quranic verse 5:73 ("Certainly they disbelieve [ kafara ] who say: God
8320-591: The Meccans and the other settled inhabitants of the Hejaz worshiped their gods at permanent shrines in towns and oases, the Bedouin practiced their religion on the move. In South Arabia, mndh’t were anonymous guardian spirits of the community and the ancestor spirits of the family. They were known as 'the sun ( shms ) of their ancestors'. In North Arabia, ginnaye were known from Palmyrene inscriptions as "the good and rewarding gods" and were probably related to
8448-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
8576-611: The Muslims. Ibn Hajar is of opinion that none of the Muhammad's parents who were non-prophets were kafirs (disbelievers) and all the hadiths on this subject (although some hadiths seem to contradict it) mean that. Ibn Hajar says about Muhammad saying his ab is in the Hell, that the ab in the hadith refers to the paternal uncle and that Arabs widely use ab to refer to 'amm (paternal uncle). Most Sunni scholars hold
8704-461: The Prophet". A waiting attitude towards the kafir was recommended at first for Muslims; later, Muslims were ordered to keep apart from unbelievers and defend themselves against their attacks and even take the offensive. Most passages in the Quran referring to unbelievers in general talk about their fate on the day of judgement and destination in hell . According to scholar Marilyn Waldman, as
8832-639: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
8960-417: The Quran "progresses" (as the reader goes from the verses revealed first to later ones), the meaning behind the term kafir does not change but "progresses", i.e. "accumulates meaning over time". As the Islamic prophet Muhammad 's views of his opponents change, his use of kafir "undergoes a development". Kafir moves from being one description of Muhammad's opponents to the primary one. Later in
9088-466: The Quran, kafir becomes more and more connected with shirk . Finally, towards the end of the Quran , kafir begins to also signify the group of people to be fought by the mu'minīn ('believers'). Khaled Abou El Fadl argues that Quran 2:62 supports religious pluralism, implying that some non-Muslims are not kafirs: "Those who believe, Jews, Christians, Sabians --whoever believes in God and
9216-443: The Quranic usage. In the Quranic discourse, the term typifies all things that are unacceptable and offensive to God. Whereby it is not necessary to deny the existence of God, but it suffices to deviate from his will as seen in a dialogue between God and Iblis , the latter called a kafir . According to Al-Damiri (1341–1405) it is neither denying God, nor the act of disobedience alone, but Iblis' attitude (claiming that God's command
9344-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
9472-573: The Sunnis with shirk because under their doctrine a voluntary human act results from an "association" between God, who creates the act, and the individual who appropriates it by carrying it out. In classical jurisprudence, Islamic religious tolerance applied only to the People of the Book, while mushrikun, based on the Sword Verse , faced a choice between conversion to Islam and fight to the death, which may be substituted by enslavement. In practice,
9600-458: The attitude toward unbelievers in Islam was determined more by socio-political conditions than by religious doctrine. 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. However, due to animosity towards Franks , the term kafir developed into a term of abuse. During
9728-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
9856-539: The daughters of Allah. Regional variants of the word Allah occur in both pagan and Christian pre-Islamic inscriptions. References to Allah are found in the poetry of the pre-Islamic Arab poet Zuhayr bin Abi Sulma , who lived a generation before Muhammad, as well as pre-Islamic personal names. Muhammad's father's name was ʿAbd-Allāh , meaning "the servant of Allah". Charles Russell Coulter and Patricia Turner considered that Allah's name may be derived from
9984-518: The designation of People of the Book and the dhimmī status was extended even to non-monotheistic religions of conquered peoples, such as Hinduism. 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. In
10112-445: The different rulings of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence , might be required to convert to Islam, pay the jizya , exiled, or subject to the death penalty . 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". The word kāfir
10240-418: The different rulings of the four madhhab , might be required to accept Islam, pay the jizya, be exiled, or be killed under the Islamic death penalty. Some historians believe that forced conversion was rare in Islamic history, and most conversions to Islam were voluntary. Muslim rulers were often more interested in conquest than conversion. Upon payment of the tax ( jizya ), the dhimmī would receive
10368-424: The divine world reflected the society of the time. Trade caravans also brought foreign religious and cultural influences. A large number of deities did not have proper names and were referred to by titles indicating a quality, a family relationship, or a locale preceded by "he who" or "she who" ( dhū or dhāt respectively). The religious beliefs and practices of the nomadic Bedouin were distinct from those of
10496-521: The dominant form of religion in pre-Islamic Arabia , was based on veneration of deities and spirits. Worship was directed to various gods and goddesses, including Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt , al-‘Uzzā , and Manāt , at local shrines and temples such as the Kaaba in Mecca . Deities were venerated and invoked through a variety of rituals, including pilgrimages and divination, as well as ritual sacrifice. Different theories have been proposed regarding
10624-597: The eighth-century Book of Idols by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi , which F.E. Peters argued to be the most substantial treatment of the religious practices of pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as the writings of the Yemeni historian al-Hasan al-Hamdani on South Arabian religious beliefs. According to the Book of Idols , descendants of the son of Abraham ( Ishmael ) who had settled in Mecca migrated to other lands carried holy stones from
10752-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
10880-469: The entrance of hellfire . While the Quran does not recognize the attribute of Jesus as the Son of God or God himself, it respects Jesus as a prophet and messenger of God sent to children of Israel. 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
11008-520: The epigraphic record, but were alluded to in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and their legends were collected by later Muslim authors. Commonly mentioned are ghouls . Etymologically, the English word "ghoul" was derived from the Arabic ghul , from ghala , "to seize", related to the Sumerian galla . They are said to have a hideous appearance, with feet like those of an ass. Arabs were said to utter
11136-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
11264-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
11392-402: The following couplet if they should encounter one: "Oh ass-footed one, just bray away, we won't leave the desert plain nor ever go astray." Christian Julien Robin notes that all the known South Arabian divinities had a positive or protective role and that evil powers were only alluded to but were never personified. Some scholars postulate that in pre-Islamic Arabia, including in Mecca, Allah
11520-436: The form of Rahmanan earlier. Al-Lāt , Al-‘Uzzá and Manāt were common names used for multiple goddesses across Arabia. G. R. Hawting states that modern scholars have frequently associated the names of Arabian goddesses Al-lāt , Al-‘Uzzá and Manāt with cults devoted to celestial bodies, particularly Venus , drawing upon evidence external to the Muslim tradition as well as in relation to Syria , Mesopotamia and
11648-432: The fourth century, almost all inhabitants of Arabia practiced polytheistic religions at which point pre-Islamic Arabian monotheism had begun to spread. From the fourth to sixth centuries, Jewish , Christian , and other monotheistic populations developed. Until recent decades, it was believed that polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre-Islamic Arabia, but recent trends suggest that henotheism or monotheism
11776-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
11904-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
12032-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
12160-404: 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". According to Islamic sources, none of forefathers of Muhammad were kafirs . According to Ibn Hajar, the Quran clearly declares that Ahl al-Fatrah were among
12288-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
12416-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
12544-412: The laws of property, contract, and obligation according to some scholars, 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. Jews and Christians were required to pay the jizya and kharaj taxes, while others, depending on
12672-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
12800-403: The mass of kafirun " are the murtad , or apostate ex-Muslims, who are considered renegades and traitors. Their traditional punishment is death, even, according to some scholars, if they recant their abandonment of Islam. Dhimmī are non-Muslims living under the protection of an Islamic state . Dhimmī are exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid
12928-782: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
13056-708: The non-Muslims. Relations between Jews and Muslims in the Arab world and use of the word kafir were equally as complex, and over the last century, issues regarding kafir have arisen over the conflict in Israel and Palestine . Calling the Jews of Israel, "the usurping kafir ", Yasser Arafat turned on the Muslim resistance and "allegedly set a precedent for preventing Muslims from mobilizing against 'aggressor disbelievers' in other Muslim lands, and enabled 'the cowardly, alien kafir ' to achieve new levels of intervention in Muslim affairs." In 2019, Nahdlatul Ulama ,
13184-731: The northwest Hijaz . Additionally, the influence of the Sasanian Empire resulted in Iranian religions being present in the peninsula. Zoroastrianism existed in the east and south, while there is evidence of either Manichaeism or Mazdakism being possibly practiced in Mecca. Features Types Types Features Clothing Genres Art music Folk Prose Islamic Poetry Genres Forms Arabic prosody National literatures of Arab States Concepts Texts Fictional Arab people South Arabian deities Until about
13312-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
13440-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
13568-589: The pagan faiths of Syriac-speakers in northern Mesopotamia, who were mostly Arabs. However, mythologies and narratives elucidating the history of these gods, as well as the meaning of their epithets, remains uninformative. The pre-Islamic Arabian religions were polytheistic, with many of the deities' names known. Formal pantheons are more noticeable at the level of kingdoms, of variable sizes, ranging from simple city-states to collections of tribes. Tribes , towns, clans, lineages and families had their own cults too. Christian Julien Robin suggests that this structure of
13696-436: The poll tax ( jizya ) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation according to some scholars, 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. Jews and Christians were required to pay the jizyah while pagans, depending on
13824-515: 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. Thus the Wahhābīs acted even to destroy the cemetery where many of the Prophet's most notable companions were buried, on the grounds that it
13952-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
14080-570: The role of Allah in Meccan religion. Many of the physical descriptions of the pre-Islamic gods are traced to idols , especially near the Kaaba, which is said to have contained up to 360 of them, including the Buddha statue. Other religions were represented to varying, lesser degrees. The influence of the adjacent Roman and Aksumite civilizations resulted in Christian communities in the northwest, northeast, and south of Arabia . Christianity made
14208-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
14336-436: The settled tribes of towns such as Mecca . Nomadic religious belief systems and practices are believed to have included fetishism , totemism and veneration of the dead but were connected principally with immediate concerns and problems and did not consider larger philosophical questions such as the afterlife. Settled urban Arabs, on the other hand, are thought to have believed in a more complex pantheon of deities. While
14464-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
14592-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
14720-494: The title of fkl lt . René Dussaud and Gonzague Ryckmans linked her with Venus while others have thought her to be a solar deity. John F. Healey considers that al-Uzza actually might have been an epithet of al-Lāt before becoming a separate deity in the Meccan pantheon. Paola Corrente, writing in Redefining Dionysus , considers she might have been a god of vegetation or a celestial deity of atmospheric phenomena and
14848-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
14976-406: The truth. Arabic poets personify the darkness of night as kāfir , perhaps as a survival of pre-Islamic Arabian religious or mythological usage . The noun for 'disbelief', 'blasphemy', 'impiety' rather than the person who disbelieves, is kufr . The distinction between those who believe in Islam and those who do not is an essential one in the Quran . Kafir , and its plural kuffaar ,
15104-571: The view that the parents of Muhammad are saved and inhabitants of Heaven . Shia Muslim scholars likewise consider Muhammad's parents to be in Paradise. In contrast, the Salafi website IslamQA.info , founded by the Saudi Arabian Salafi scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid , argues that Islamic tradition teaches that Muhammad's parents were kuffār ('disbelievers') who are in Hell. By the 15th century, Muslims in Africa were using
15232-424: The word kaffir in reference to the non-Muslim African natives. Many of those kufari were enslaved and sold to European and Asian merchants by their Muslim captors, most of the merchants were from Portugal , which had established trading outposts along the coast of West Africa by that time. These European traders adopted the Arabic word and its derivatives. Some of the earliest records of European usage of
15360-812: The word "native". Currently in South Africa , however, the word kaffir is regarded as a racial slur, applied pejoratively or offensively to blacks. The song "Kafir" by the American technical death metal band Nile on its sixth album Those Whom the Gods Detest uses the violent attitudes that Muslim extremists have towards kafirs as subject matter. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
15488-634: The word can be found in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) by Richard Hakluyt . In volume 4, Hakluyt writes: "calling them Cafars and Gawars , which is, infidels or disbelievers". Volume 9 refers to the slaves (slaves called Cafari ) and inhabitants of Ethiopia ("and they use to go in small shippes, and trade with the Cafars ") by two different but similar names. The word
15616-603: The word was in use in English-language newspapers and books. One of the Union-Castle Line ships operating off the South African coast was named SS Kafir . In the early 20th century, in his book The Essential Kafir , Dudley Kidd writes that the word kafir had come to be used for all dark-skinned South African tribes. Thus, in many parts of South Africa, kafir became synonymous with
15744-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
15872-508: Was a center of idolatry. While ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the Wahhābīs were "the best-known premodern" revivalist and "sectarian movement" of that era, other revivalists included Shah Ismail Dehlvi and Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi , leaders of the Mujāhidīn movement on the North-West frontier of India in the early 19th century. Whether a Muslim could commit a sin great enough to become a kafir
16000-420: Was considered to be a deity, possibly a creator deity or a supreme deity in a polytheistic pantheon . The word Allah (from the Arabic al-ilah meaning "the god") may have been used as a title rather than a name. The concept of Allah may have been vague in the Meccan religion. According to Islamic sources, Meccans and their neighbors believed that the goddesses Al-lāt , Al-‘Uzzá , and Manāt were
16128-482: Was disputed by jurists in the early centuries of Islam. The most tolerant view (that of the Murji'ah ) was that even those who had committed a major sin ( kabira ) were still believers and "their fate was left to God". 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 . In between these two positions,
16256-501: Was dominant from the fourth century onwards. The contemporary sources of information regarding the pre-Islamic Arabian religion and pantheon include a growing number of inscriptions in carvings written in Arabian scripts like Safaitic , Sabaic , and Paleo-Arabic , pre-Islamic poetry, external sources such as Jewish and Greek accounts, as well as the Muslim tradition, such as the Qur'an and Islamic writings. Nevertheless, information
16384-405: Was known to pagan Arabs as the supreme god. Winfried Corduan doubts the theory of Allah of Islam being linked to a moon god , stating that the term Allah functions as a generic term, like the term El- Elyon used as a title for the god Sin . South Arabian inscriptions from the fourth century AD refer to a god called Rahman ("The Merciful One") who had a monotheistic cult and was referred to as
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