Kuffar or Infidels?

[Muslimwoman]

as salaam aleykum

I found the following on IslamOnline and thought I would share it. It is by Dr Badawi and discusses the use of the word kuffar.

IslamOnline.net - Shari'ah & Humanity

I speak arabic every day, yet I was unaware that a good believer could also be referred to as kafir. I shall certainly be more careful in future how I use these terms.

Salaam

[Abdullah]

Assalamualikum wr wb sister

MashAllah, JazakAllah for that article; it's allways nice to learn more about the insights that Scholars have on such matters.

Salaam

[KarimK]

In Arabic (well, at least the Arabic I speak which is the Palestinian dialect), Kafir means blasphemer and it's pretty negative.
I had no idea the word the Qur'an used for infidels was "Kufar", I think it's a pretty harsh word...

The article is interesting ... but I can't help but cringe at the use of the word "kufar" to designate Jews and Christians

Then again, I don't speak Arabic (classical or dialectal) well enough to have any opinion on that matter

[Muslimwoman]

Originally Posted by KarimK

In Arabic (well, at least the Arabic I speak which is the Palestinian dialect), Kafir means blasphemer and it's pretty negative.
I had no idea the word the Qur'an used for infidels was "Kufar", I think it's a pretty harsh word...

The article is interesting ... but I can't help but cringe at the use of the word "kufar" to designate Jews and Christians

Then again, I don't speak Arabic (classical or dialectal) well enough to have any opinion on that matter

Hi Karim and welcome

Yes in Egypt it is also particularly negative, which is why I was so surprised to read the article and wanted to share it. I was hoping that people may use this knowledge to refrain from using the word in the context they generally use it (ie with such negative overtones toward certain groups of people).

I would love to hear about where you are living if you don't mind sharing. Are you Arabic or just living there? Sorry travel is a passion of mine and I love to learn about life in other places (the real place, not the touristy stuff).

Salaam

[KarimK]

Hey Muslimwoman, thanks

I'm guessing the word "kuffar" was sort of neutral at first - it only designated those who "rejected" Muhammad's teachings but gradually (because we all know how bigoted and narrow-minded us humans can be ) evolved literally into an insult.

I gotta say, there are words in the Muslim terminology that I just can't stand. Kuffar is now one of them. Alongside "Jahilliyah" (however you write that in English). Jahilliyah is such a pejorative word used to designate what used to exist before Islam. The Age of Darkness before Light. Barbarism, etc.
Ironically, the Jahilliyah may very well be the Golden Age of our culture...

And as for your question, no, I don't mind sharing, that's why I'm on a forum, right?
I'm a Palestinian - I live in Bethlehem, but I do often feel like a complete tourist (I get a lot of "welcome! welcome! good shop!" and when I answer in Arabic : "La hawlah wala kouwa! You're an Arab?!") ... Officially, I'm a Christian. I say officially because in our backwards pseudo-state, we actually have our religion written on our IDs. Seriously, my ID reads"Religion : Christian". Unofficially, I am ... uh... *ponders* well, agnostic or lost, whichever your like
You live in Egypt? Ever been to Israel/Palestine? You should... Although it's not my dream-place, it's such a special yet weird experience.

[wil]

Originally Posted by KarimK

You live in Egypt? Ever been to Israel/Palestine? You should... Although it's not my dream-place, it's such a special yet weird experience.

Namaste Karim,

Welcome to CR it will be absolutely awesome to hear your take on our discussions....you being in the middle of things as it were...A Palestinian agnostic Christian in Israel...

We get our 'news' from the newspapers and the nightly news and from news radio...I would prefer to get news of the middle east from those that are there! Especially those like MW who straddles the fence and is open enough to expose the boils in the process.

[KarimK]

Originally Posted by wil

A Palestinian agnostic Christian in Israel...

tut, tut, tut... Palestine, not Israel I'm not allowed to be in Israel (seeing as I'm a potential terrorist and all : a teenager. Arab. Male. Which obviously means I'm unstable and manipulated and liable to randomly go bomb a café.)

Thanks for the welcome, wil
Don't get your hopes high, though, I'll probably be as biased as anyone can be!

[wil]

Originally Posted by KarimK

tut, tut, tut... Palestine, not Israel I'm not allowed to be in Israel (seeing as I'm a potential terrorist and all : a teenager. Arab. Male. Which obviously means I'm unstable and manipulated and liable to randomly go bomb a café.)

Thanks for the welcome, wil
Don't get your hopes high, though, I'll probably be as biased as anyone can be!

aaarrrgghhh I don't know my geography?? Bethlehem is in the West bank? It is, my bad...and I've met Palestinians who crossed the border to work...of course they live here now and that was years ago...is that not done anymore...no standing in lines at the fence?

[KarimK]

Yup... It's pretty much on the border between the West Bank and Israel... if someone removed check-points and huge walls and other mild nuisances, I'd take me five minutes to get to Jerusalem.
So, yes, Bethlehem is in the West Bank.

[KarimK]

As for Palestinians crossing borders, of course they exist.
First of all, there is a HUGE gap between what is official here and what is unofficial (we live in one big huge mess of illogicalness ) :

First of all, you need a permit if you're a Palestinian (in the sense that you have a Palestinian I.D... There are Arab Israelis, some of them consider themselves Palestinians others consider themselves Israelis, but they don't have a problem (well...) because they have an Israeli passport. You also have the "residents of Jerusalem" : lost people who don't have any passport, they only have an ID that says they can live in Israel (Jerusalem specifically) but officially they're neither Israelis nor Palestinians) (wow, long parenthesis). So I was saying : you need a permit if you're a Palestinian and want to go to Israel. Usually, permits are given to workers, businessmen, sick people who need to go to a hospital, etc. We also get permits on religious occasions : the Christian Palestinians get permits (not always) on Christmas, Easter, etc. to go to their place of worship (although it's a big excuse, they all go to the Mall :P), the Muslims for Al-Adha, Al Isra wal I'raj (oh god, I'm mutilating the words )...
and THEN you've got illegal crossing of borders. That's sort of what I do (well, did) when I went to school. As I study in the French lycee in Jerusalem, and don't have a 24/7 permit, I cross the border in a French Consulate bus, so I'm sort of illegally in Israel but also sort of (yes a lot of "sort ofs" here... shows you how weird and confused/ing this place is :P) under the protection of the French govt.
Well, actually, I'm also a French citizen, but according to International law, when you have more than one nationality, the nationality you "use" is the one that corresponds to the country you're in : therefore, I'm French in France and Palestinian in Palestine/Israel.

Okay I'm not totally clear but you've got to admit : not an easy situation to explain

[wil]

Originally Posted by KarimK

I'm French in France and Palestinian in Palestine/Israel.

Okay I'm not totally clear but you've got to admit : not an easy situation to explain

No not clear but ok, how did you get to be a French Arabic Palestinian Agnostic Christian in Bethlehem? I should probably be starting another thread...

anyhow...so Palestine is currently a territory of Israel? And consists of the movable border of the West Bank and Gaza strip?

[KarimK]

Originally Posted by wil

No not clear but ok, how did you get to be a French Arabic Palestinian Agnostic Christian in Bethlehem? I should probably be starting another thread...

Loooooooooooooooong story...

Originally Posted by wil

anyhow...so Palestine is currently a territory of Israel? And consists of the movable border of the West Bank and Gaza strip?

Yup, Palestine = West Bank + Gaza Strip.
Palestine (the Palestinian Territories to be precise) is supposed to be autonomous : we have our own government, our own flag, our own citizenship, etc. But in reality, this is mostly empty talk (in my opinion, anyway). As you said, the borders are movable... in the sense that Israel can decide at any moment to enter Gaza or the West Bank or take lands that are supposed to be part of the Palestinian Territories. So we're not exactly a state (if I'm not mistaken, no country recognizes Palestine as an independent state... Or maybe just a handful of countries... and we only have an observer status in the UN) but we're not Israeli territory either. Yet, there ARE Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
And we use the NIS (National Israeli Shekel), the Israeli currency. In a way, we're in limbo. :P We're not exactly an independent state, yet we strive to be one. And at the same time, we're completely dependent on Israel for our economy : Israel after all controls most of our borders, including the ones that connect us to the rest of the world : the main ports and the main airport, for instance, are in Israel.

I think this needs a new thread... and also needs people who understand those details better than me. Because honestly, I can tell you what the day-to-day experience is, but I couldn't figure out what the hell is actually happening.

[Muslimwoman]

Originally Posted by KarimK

I think this needs a new thread... and also needs people who understand those details better than me. Because honestly, I can tell you what the day-to-day experience is, but I couldn't figure out what the hell is actually happening.

Not sure but I started the thread so I think I am possibly allowed to hijack it?

Oh bless your heart, what a way to live. To be honest it is more the day to day experience of living there I am interested in. We only see the media version, which we all know is often biased.

Have you lived there all your life? If you are Arabic, how do the Muslims there accept you and treat you? I only ask because I was so surprised to find in Egypt that Christian churches are often built next door to mosques and the people often celebrate together - I think it is wonderful.

As for visiting the area, I would love to but my husband is Egyptian and very hot headed, so unfortunately I wouldn't dare visit such an area with him. I am ashamed to say that the hatred for the Jewish nation runs very deep here, to a level I simply cannot get my head around. The Israeli/Lebanon war last year almost led to my divorce - seriously, I just did not recognise my husband when he started ranting, so instead of divorce we just banned politics from our home

[KarimK]

I totally understand that. It makes me so uncomfortable when people tell me things like : "You know, the Jews ..." whenever someone begins a sentence like that, I'm pretty sure it's going to end with something that would be very funny in other circumstances because it's ridiculous like "they rule the world, see, and the Holocaust, well it's true, but then they just hijacked it, you know, to conquer our land" etc. etc. etc.
I know exactly what you mean when you say you didn't recognize your husband anymore.

In my school, we're mostly Arabs or French expatriates but all my teachers are Jewish. Naturally, I'm lucky, I know what the "other side" thinks and is. I know the Jews are, you know, people, and not monsters all part of a huge international conspiracy that's trying to take over the world. (besides, it's sort of absurd, isn't it? given the fact that they're all so cunning and sly and everything and have been trying to take over the world and everything for centuries, shouldn't they be done by now? ah....)

But then I go through a check-point and I understand just where this hatred comes from. It's so incredibly humiliating to see an elderly woman getting yelled at and mistreated by some teenage punk.
Once, a friend of mine was going through a check-point. She was sick : usually, you're supposed to get out of the car and go through a maze to get to the other side. She asked the soldier-girl if she could pass. The girl was like : "No, can't, everyone has to go down, etc." So my friend told her : "Okay, fair enough. But can't you bend the rules a bit to be human?"
you know what the girl answered?
"With a green identity card [the Palestinian ID], you can't be human"
Now I know, of course, that not ALL Israelis think like that. Just as not ALL the Palestinians hate the Jews, etc. But still, it's just the sort of story that makes me sad, because my ideal of a one state solution really is a utopia.

As for the relations between Muslims and Christians... well, they're pretty ambiguous. They're good, in a way, nice and all, but you still FEEL the underlying and mutual suspicions. Now people here don't usually say that, they like giving tourists and strangers the idea that we're a united people. Things is, we're not. Christians are, what, 1% of the Palestinian population. If I had to be really schematic, I'd say that religion roughly corresponds to a certain social status and defines your place in society. This is something that Westerners in general have a hard time understanding. When someone says "he's a Muslim" or "he's a Christian", people get all sorts of information (prejudice, but whatever) about someone. For instance, there are Muslims who think Christians are basically traitors, or have no morals, are decadent, filthy rich, etc. On the other hand, there are Christians who despise Muslims and won't even have anything to do with them. But this is specific to Bethlehem and its region, because it's one of the places where the Christian population really is significant.

That's the bad side of the story. Now, the good side!
It does happen that Christians and Muslims celebrate together. -->

"In Islamic cultures, the Prophet or Saint al-Khidr or Khizar; according to the Quran a companion of the Prophet Musa (Moses), is associated with Mar Girgis (St. George), who is also venerated under that name by Arab Christians, especially Palestinian people, and mainly around Jerusalem, where according to tradition he lived and often prayed near the Temple Mount, and is venerated as a protector in times of crisis. His main monument is the elongated mosque Qubbat al-Khidr ('The Dome of al-Khidr') which stands isolated from any close neighbors on the northwest corner of the Dome of the Rock terrace in Jerusalem."


Saint George - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

During the El Khader festival, you often see masses done honoring Mar Giries (Saint George) with A LOT of Muslims attending. Although I really don't care for mass and am hardly a Christian, I like going to El Khader (which is also the name of a village near Bethlehem) when they're celebrating Mar Giries because it's a really nice thing, to see priests giving blessings to Muslims and everything.

I'd say that in general, Christians and Muslims are forced to interact on a social or economic level, but they're kind of reluctant... This of course, is in a nutshell. Thousands of books couldn't even convey all the shades and nuances you have here : I mean everything I said is true, and yet at the same time, there are A LOT of Muslims and Christians living in a friendly atmosphere, etc.

Oh, one last thing about relations between these two communities. Marriage. Happens, quite a lot. But it gives SUCH a BAD impression. I have a friend whose dad is Christian and whose mom is Muslim. Her mom's side of the family won't have anything to do with them.

[KarimK]

I totally understand that. It makes me so uncomfortable when people tell me things like : "You know, the Jews ..." whenever someone begins a sentence like that, I'm pretty sure it's going to end with something that would be very funny in other circumstances because it's ridiculous like "they rule the world, see, and the Holocaust, well it's true, but then they just hijacked it, you know, to conquer our land" etc. etc. etc.
I know exactly what you mean when you say you didn't recognize your husband anymore.

In my school, we're mostly Arabs or French expatriates but all my teachers are Jewish. Naturally, I'm lucky, I know what the "other side" thinks and is. I know the Jews are, you know, people, and not monsters all part of a huge international conspiracy that's trying to take over the world. (besides, it's sort of absurd, isn't it? given the fact that they're all so cunning and sly and everything and have been trying to take over the world and everything for centuries, shouldn't they be done by now? ah....)

But then I go through a check-point and I understand just where this hatred comes from. It's so incredibly humiliating to see an elderly woman getting yelled at and mistreated by some teenage punk.
Once, a friend of mine was going through a check-point. She was sick : usually, you're supposed to get out of the car and go through a maze to get to the other side. She asked the soldier-girl if she could pass. The girl was like : "No, can't, everyone has to go down, etc." So my friend told her : "Okay, fair enough. But can't you bend the rules a bit to be human?"
you know what the girl answered?
"With a green identity card [the Palestinian ID], you can't be human"
Now I know, of course, that not ALL Israelis think like that. Just as not ALL the Palestinians hate the Jews, etc. But still, it's just the sort of story that makes me sad, because my ideal of a one state solution really is a utopia.

As for the relations between Muslims and Christians... well, they're pretty ambiguous. They're good, in a way, nice and all, but you still FEEL the underlying and mutual suspicions. Now people here don't usually say that, they like giving tourists and strangers the idea that we're a united people. Things is, we're not. Christians are, what, 1% of the Palestinian population. If I had to be really schematic, I'd say that religion roughly corresponds to a certain social status and defines your place in society. This is something that Westerners in general have a hard time understanding. When someone says "he's a Muslim" or "he's a Christian", people get all sorts of information (prejudice, but whatever) about someone. For instance, there are Muslims who think Christians are basically traitors, or have no morals, are decadent, filthy rich, etc. On the other hand, there are Christians who despise Muslims and won't even have anything to do with them. But this is specific to Bethlehem and its region, because it's one of the places where the Christian population really is significant.

That's the bad side of the story. Now, the good side!
It does happen that Christians and Muslims celebrate together. -->

"In Islamic cultures, the Prophet or Saint al-Khidr or Khizar; according to the Quran a companion of the Prophet Musa (Moses), is associated with Mar Girgis (St. George), who is also venerated under that name by Arab Christians, especially Palestinian people, and mainly around Jerusalem, where according to tradition he lived and often prayed near the Temple Mount, and is venerated as a protector in times of crisis. His main monument is the elongated mosque Qubbat al-Khidr ('The Dome of al-Khidr') which stands isolated from any close neighbors on the northwest corner of the Dome of the Rock terrace in Jerusalem."


Saint George - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

During the El Khader festival, you often see masses done honoring Mar Giries (Saint George) with A LOT of Muslims attending. Although I really don't care for mass and am hardly a Christian, I like going to El Khader (which is also the name of a village near Bethlehem) when they're celebrating Mar Giries because it's a really nice thing, to see priests giving blessings to Muslims and everything.

I'd say that in general, Christians and Muslims are forced to interact on a social or economic level, but they're kind of reluctant... This of course, is in a nutshell. Thousands of books couldn't even convey all the shades and nuances you have here : I mean everything I said is true, and yet at the same time, there are A LOT of Muslims and Christians living in a friendly atmosphere, etc.

Oh, one last thing about relations between these two communities. Marriage. Happens, quite a lot. But it gives SUCH a BAD impression. I have a friend whose dad is Christian and whose mom is Muslim. Her mom's side of the family won't have anything to do with them.